This blog is designed to enable participants and presenter to exchange opinions and reactions to the OLLI course From de Tocqueville to BHL (Bernard-Henri Lévy). The purpose of the course is to offer an opportunity for each of us to reflect on the current state of affairs in the United States and whether today’s United States is an American Dream or an American Nightmare. We begin with an excerpt from Hector St. John Crèvecoeur’s “Letters From an American Farmer”.

WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?

“I WISH I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride, when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these extended shores. When he says to himself, this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took refuge here. They brought along with them their national genius, to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and what substance they possess. Here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new manner, and traces in their works the embryos of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which flourish in Europe. Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated!”

Novus Ordo Seclorum

What today is called the commercial revolution in Europe began in the late medieval period, primarily in Italy and the Netherlands during the 14th and 15th centuries. By the 16th and 17th centuries, scientific and religious revolutions were transforming European societies from agrarian aristocracies supported by a unified, hierarchical Catholic church to a number of competing nation-states based on international trade and an increasing number of new Protestant churches and several reformed Catholic religious establishments. This was the world into which English and European settlers first established colonies in north america. 

By the end of the 18th century, two new revolutions had occurred: the Enlightenment – the increasing belief in the superiority of science and reason over Christian faith; and the Industrial Revolution, the application of science and technology to production of a wide variety of goods. In 1776 Adam Smith published his analysis of a new economic system based on the law of supply and demand and a free market created and sustained by the new nation states. The American War for Independence occurred in the same year, and 13 years later in 1789, at the very moment that representatives from the 13 new American states were agreeing on a new form of constitutional government, representatives of local governments throughout France met and began to form a new, constitutional government for the French nation.

The translation of the Latin inscription beneath the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States is “A New Order of the Ages”. The motto and seal were adopted in 1782, the same year that French-American Hector St.John de Crevecoeur published “Letters From An American Farmer”. 100 years later a Christian Socialist named Francis Bellamy was asked to compose a pledge of allegiance for American school children. He concluded the pledge with the words, “with liberty and justice for all”. In 1954 the U.S. Congress added the words “under God” to the pledge at the request of President Eisenhower. Debate over the nature of this “New Order” began almost immediately during the presidency of George Washington, fueled by the differing views of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, the former proclaiming the virtues of limited federal government while the latter celebrated the virtues of a powerful federal govenment.

In 2015 American historian Daniel Immerwahr published his book, Thinking Small: the United States and the Lure of Community Development, in which he wrote, “Having caricatured our past, we impoverish our ability to think clearly, and critically, about our present” (Nook, p. 24)