A Certain Idea of America, page 21
Those three words captured, in my imagination, a lot about humanity, about what we’re like—you see a miracle, good, but you still have to eat—and everything about the mood of the then-still-dawning twentieth century: America was chock-full of miracles, they were expected. You oohed and aahed but accepted it in the course of things and finished your tuna.
Googling around the other day I saw that the plane could have come from nearby Roosevelt Air Field, in Westbury, Long Island. Charles Lindbergh took off in the Spirit of St. Louis from there, in 1927, for the first solo transatlantic flight, to Paris. Amelia Earhart flew out of there too, and Wiley Post. It was named for Quentin Roosevelt, Teddy’s son, a World War I combat aviator who was killed in action in an aerial dogfight over France.
Anyway, it was lovely, her sweet memory of a summer day. I have recounted it from memory, didn’t take notes because I didn’t realize it would stay with me. It’s come to mind after ten summer days in Manhattan and on Long Island, of conversations with all manner of folk. I think I sense a general mood of carefulness about the future, a sobriety that isn’t down, precisely, but is, well, watchful.
At almost every gathering artificial intelligence came up. I’d say people are approaching AI with a free-floating dread leavened by a pragmatic commitment to make the best of it, see what it can do to make life better. It can’t be stopped any more than you can stop the tide. There’s a sense of “It may break cancer’s deepest codes,” combined with “It may turn on us and get us nuked.”
My offered thought: AI’s founders, funders, and promoters made a big recent show of asking Congress to help them fashion moral guardrails, but to my mind there was little comfort in it. I think they had three motives. First, to be seen as humble and morally serious—aware of the complexities of this awesome new power and asking for help in thinking them through. Second, they are certain government is too incompetent and stupid to slow them down or impede them in any meaningful way, so why not. Third, when something goes wrong they can say, “But we pleaded for your help!”
That unfriendly read is based on thirty years of observing our tech leaders. They have a sense of responsibility to their vision and to their own genius, but not to people at large or the American people in particular. They always claim they’re looking for better communication and greater joy between peoples when in the end it turns out they’re looking for money and power. And they only see the sunny side of their inventions because they were raised in a sunny age, and can’t imagine what darkness looks like, or that it comes.
A subject that came up only once, and indirectly, is Ukraine. I think support for that country is no longer the unalloyed thing it was. People once eager to discuss it now don’t. Time passes and doubts creep in. The loss in blood and treasure is high, the West is simultaneously proudly united and out on a limb, and Russia is in a way already defeated (huge financial and reputational loss, military humiliation, its government revealed as ridiculous). Vladimir Putin is possibly a psychopath and gives every sign of going out like Al Pacino in Scarface—“Say hello to my little friend.”
We don’t know where this goes. All who call for a battlefield victory as opposed to some sort of attempt at a negotiated settlement, unsatisfying as that would be, will probably eventually have to factor this in: that public sentiment means something, always, and it can change. Last week we hit five hundred days since Mr. Putin invaded. People don’t like long wars.
I tried the patience of a foreign-policy specialist by saying that if China were thinking creatively it would stun the world by pushing itself forward as mediator and peacemaker. China has natural sway with Mr. Putin, but also would with Volodymyr Zelensky, who must be thinking of his country’s potentially brilliant postwar future in tech and industry. Two things Ukrainians have shown: They are a gifted people, and they are a people. You can go far with that. Anyway, everyone wants to be friends with big bad China. Xi Jinping has the standing to make a move. It would improve his country’s reputation after a dozen years in which that reputation has grown dark and menacing. Why not make a move that surprises the world?
A foreign-affairs specialist said that this was a romantic idea. True enough. But the problem with the world isn’t that there’s too much romance in it, is it?
I close with a small lunch at a white-walled restaurant on Long Island. Present were accomplished foreign-policy thinkers and lawyers. After something said at dinner the previous night, the subject of ghosts crossed my mind. What do you think, I asked, are they real? Suddenly we were off to the races. One was a skeptic but the kind of skeptic who’s clearly spent time thinking about it. Another thought ghosts a real phenomena—the ghost of his late father, an artist, was seen in his studio. This led my mind to the enduring mystery of prophecies and dreams in history—Lincoln’s repetitive dream before major Union victories, his prophetic dream of his own death. Dreams are…something. Not just your mind at rest firing off neurons, not just an undigested piece of cheese, not only expressions of repression or family dynamics in the Freudian sense. They are something we don’t know. Maybe AI will figure it out.
Then the talk turned to magic. It was nice—all these smart and accomplished rational thinkers agreeing there’s a lot of mystery in life, things all around us that we don’t know, forces we can’t see and don’t credit, and that it’s all connected somehow to a magic within life. Hearing they thought this—it was sweet.
THE PILGRIMS TAKE MANHATTAN
November 21, 2018
Since tradition is on our mind I’ll tell you of one that has been happening in a Manhattan home the past twenty years or more. A core of a few dozen old friends and relatives, enlivened by surprise guests—once we had an Indian maharajah in a turban—gather with their children for Thanksgiving. It’s a varied, bubbling, modern crew: former spouses, co-workers, stepchildren, the woman across the street. Every year after dinner we put on a play about Thanksgiving. Everyone takes part—a broadcast journalist is Samoset, a grade-schooler is a Pilgrim woman, a businessman is Lincoln.
There is a narrator, whose job it is to intone, “In the year of our Lord 1609 a hardy group of dissenting Christian Protestants, called Pilgrims, left their native England in hopes of finding religious freedom abroad. They tried Holland, but it didn’t work. And so they decided to leave Old Europe, and journey to what was called…the New World.”
In September 1620 they set sail from Plymouth, England, on a ship called the Mayflower. Aboard were about one hundred passengers, among whom roughly forty were Pilgrims, who came to call themselves Saints. The remaining were called Strangers, not religious dissenters necessarily but a mixed lot of tradesmen, debtors, dreamers, and I hope a brigand or two. If you’re going to start a new nation it might as well be an interesting one.
The journey would be long, just over two months, and hard. The seas were high, the wind against them, hunger spread, disease followed. People got on each others’ nerves. Disagreements arose among Saints and Strangers.
Here the kids read their parts with great enthusiasm.
Saint: Stranger, you do not worship as I do or dress as I dress. You are odd! This makes me want to ignore you, and forget to give you bread at dinner.
Stranger: Saint, you people wear funny hats, and strange buckles on your shoes. You take your religion seriously, which is nice, but God wanted us to have a sense of humor, too. Please don’t be so stern and righteous.
At this point of course comes forward Pilgrim leader William Bradford. He’s usually played by a distinguished guest.
Bradford: Gentlemen and ladies, there is no need to fight. We are not enemies, but friends. We are fleeing Old Europe—together. We journey to a new home—together. We will make our lives on the new continent—together. Let’s think things through and create a new arrangement to better order our relations.
And so they did. Meetings were held, debates ensued, agreement reached. There would be full equality between Saints and Strangers. They would govern themselves by majority rule. They would mark their unity by calling themselves by one name: Pilgrims. All the Pilgrim gentlemen signed this agreement, which they called the Mayflower Compact.
It was the first, great founding document of what would become the United States of America. Here sometimes someone goes, “Hear, Hear!”
Now land is sighted, Cape Cod. A Pilgrim girl shouts, “Land ahoe! Hard to starboard! Mainfast the jibney!” She’s talking gibberish because she’s excited: It’s the New World!
The Mayflower eventually finds a small natural harbor, named years before by Captain John Smith. It is called Plymouth. In time, one by one, the Pilgrims disembark and step upon Plymouth Rock.
Here—hokily, happily—we have a brief moment of silence.
Building a settlement is hard going, snow and sleet slow things. Almost half the Pilgrims died.
Then springtime, and a miracle. A lone Indian brave walked into the settlement. The Pilgrims were afraid—they’d never seen an Indian up close. The brave, Samoset, sensed and understood their fear, and said to them the one word he knew in English: “Welcome.”
They invited him to stay the night. He did, and later returned with another Indian named Squanto.
Our young friend George usually plays this part, because of his ebullience.
Squanto: Hello. Good to meet you! I have known many English over the years. In fact I’ve been to England. The captain of one of his majesty’s vessels took me there a few years ago. I learned the King’s English and people were good to me, and now I return the favor. I will teach you how to tap maple trees for sap to turn into syrup. I’ll show you which plants can be turned into medicine, and which are poisonous. I’ll teach you how to grow and harvest Indian corn. I’ll show you where to fish.
Squanto saved their lives. Harvests improved, and in time the Pilgrims had enough food to put away for winter—vegetables, fish packed in salt and cured over fires.
The Pilgrims wanted to thank God. And so their new governor—William Bradford, of Compact fame—proclaimed a formal day of gratitude.
Here in the play Bradford stands and ringingly invites everyone—the settlers, Indians, parents, and children—to meet, pray, and thank Providence for the abundance with which they’ve been blessed.
Bradford’s speech gave us our sweetest memory of the play. Our friend Harry, editor and Englishman, had just become an American citizen. He was so moved by Bradford’s words his voice broke. His wife hugged him, and we all went Aahhhhh.
Everyone came to the first Thanksgiving—Squanto and ninety braves and their families. There were footraces and games. The braves demonstrated their prowess with the bow and arrow, the Pilgrims with their muskets. One man played a drum. Everyone ate together at big tables and on blankets.
Years later, George Washington proclaimed a day of thanksgiving, as America won its war of independence. But it was Abe Lincoln who, in 1863, formally declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. In our play, as in his proclamation, he readily acknowledges the horror of the Civil War, but then takes a very American turn. There is much to celebrate. Peace has been preserved between America and all other nations. Harmony has prevailed everywhere except the theater of direct battle. Our population has increased. We have every reason to expect a “large increase of freedom.” No human hand has done this. “[These] are the gracious gifts of the most high God.”
At the end, the players declare their hopes for the future:
Samoset: For the broad establishment of peace,
Pilgrim Girl: For the spreading of prosperity,
Squanto: For increases in human health, and great strides in the areas of human inquiry and invention,
Washington: For the continuance of our Republic,
Lincoln: And the deepening of our democracy,
Bradford: That ye remember with special gratitude Squanto and his little ones and tribe, who were so very kind to the Pilgrims in those hard days long ago.
* * *
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And so our little play, put on again this year, in the heart of sophisticated Manhattan. I’m always struck: There’s such division in America, and so much country-love. I don’t know the political views of all our players. I’d put most as liberals, with me a confessed conservative. But halfway through our show we are captains and Indians and presidents. We are moved by the story of how we began. We honor it. And we are not saints and strangers but pilgrims, together.
WE NEED A FARSIGHTED CONSERVATISM
May 2, 2019
I want to say something big, quickly and broadly.
This week I talked with an intelligent politician who is trying to figure out the future of the Republican Party. He said that, in presidential cycles down the road, it will be a relief to get back to the old conservatism of smaller government, tax cuts, and reduced spending.
I told him what I say to my friends: That old conservatism was deeply pertinent to its era and philosophically right, but it is not fully in line with the crises of our time or its reigning facts. As Lincoln said, the dogmas of the past are inadequate to the present: “As the cause is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”
Here is how I see it:
The federal government will not become smaller or less expensive in our lifetimes. There is no political will for it among elected officials in Washington, many of whom privately admit this. Nor is there sufficient will for it within the Republican or Democratic party, or among the majority of their voters. Even if there were such a will, both parties in Washington have trouble working together on such big things.
But beyond that fact is something bigger. America needs help right now and Americans know it. It has been enduring for many years a continuing cultural catastrophe—illegitimacy, the decline of faith, low family formation, child abuse and neglect, drugs, inadequate public education, etc. All this exists alongside an entertainment culture on which the poor and neglected are dependent, and which is devoted to violence, sex, and nihilism. As a people we are constantly, bitterly pitted against each other, and force-fed the idea of America as an illegitimate, ugly, racist, and misogynist nation. Even honest love of country isn’t allowed to hold us together anymore.
America to my mind is what Pope Francis said the church was: a field hospital after battle. We are a beautiful and great nation but a needy, torn-up one in need of repair.
All that takes place within a larger historical context. You can’t see all the world’s weapons and all its madness and not know that eventually we will face a terrible day or days when everything will depend on our ability to hold together and hold on. Maybe it will involve nuclear weapons, maybe an extended, rolling attack on the grid, maybe bioterrorism. But it will be bad; there will be deep stress and violence. The great question in those days, under that acute pressure, will be Will we hold together? Will we suffer through and emerge, together, on the other side? Which is another way of saying, Will we continue as a nation, a people?
My belief is that whatever helps us hold together now, whatever brings us together and binds us close, is good, and must be encouraged with whatever it takes.
If these are your predicates—America in cultural catastrophe, and hard history ahead—you spend your energies on a battle not to make government significantly smaller, but to make it significantly more helpful.
That would mean a shift. Republicans should stand for a federal government whose aim and focus are directed toward conservative ends, a government focused on concerns that have to do with conserving. They should do this not furtively or through strategic inaction but as a matter of declared political intent, in a way that is driven by moral seriousness, not polls and patter about populism.
What would a large government harnessed toward conservative ends look like?
Judging by what its presidential candidates are saying on the campaign trail, the Democratic Party intends to aim its energies in a progressive direction—global climate change, free college, reparations for slavery. A conservative path would address the immediate crises Americans on the ground see all around them.
On domestic issues this would include the following:
Whatever might help families form and grow.
Teaching the lost boys of the working and middle classes, black and white, how to live. The infrastructure bills floating out there are good because we need better bridges, tunnels, and roads, and the pride that would come from making them better. But also because they could provide a stage for a national mentorship program in which men teach boys how to do something constructive. Heck, they should go out and recruit in the poorest neighborhoods, drag teenage boys out of the house, and integrate them into a world of dynamism and competence.
Resolving the mental-health crisis. We need a vast overhaul of services so families can get the help they need. We deinstitutionalized sick people and closed the hospitals in the 1960s through ’80s. Liberals pushed it for reasons of ideology and conservatives accepted it for reasons of savings. It marked a great denying of reality: We need hospitals for the mentally ill.
Helping immigrants become Americans. However the illegal-immigration crisis is resolved, or not, there are tens of millions already here. Who helps make them Americans? We used to have settlement houses for the great waves of immigrants who came in the early twentieth century. Why not now? They need instruction on the meaning and history of America. Here it should be noted that we have some of the best immigrants in the world, who work hard and have no hostility to American religious culture. In fact, they’re part of that culture. Help Americanize them in other ways.
