America Is Many Million Purposes; W. H. Chamberlin

AMERICA MILLION IS MANY PURPOSES DEFINING America's national purpose has become a con tagious fad. A considerable number of more or less dis tinguished persons have tried their hand at it in long articles; and it will be surprising if there is not, in due course, a spate of books on the subject. But somehow these attempts at definition, even when made by men with a scholarly knowledge of American history and above average awareness of contemporary American life, have not come off very successfully. What often comes out of these efforts is little more than a string of plati tudes and a list of causes with which the writer is per sonally identified. A vital point that is often overlooked is that in a na tion like America, "conceived in liberty," as Lincoln said, there is no absolute authority, individual or collec tive, that can prescribe a set of national goals, binding on all citizens. National purpose in America is a syn thesis of millions of individual purposes, sometimes conMr. Chamberlin has written a number of books, has lectured widely, and is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and many nationally known magazines.

275 276 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN flicting, yet adding up to a very rich national total, spiritually, culturally, materially. The old~fashioned mon archies and aristocracies of Europe, against which the American Revolution was a political revolt and a phil osophical protest, did have their ambitions, aims, and "purposes" directed, not toward the well~being of their peoples, but toward national aggrandizement by war and seizure of territory. The Founding Fathers of the American Republic had a radically different idea. They proposed, first of all, to guarantee the freedom of the citizen and his inalienable rights of life, liberty, property, "the pursuit of happi ness" (what cynical sneers that last ideal must have ex cited among European reactionaries who read the Dec laration of Independence) by a scientific balancing of power against power, so that no individual, no group, no instrument of government could wield unlimited authority.

This excluded, so far as was humanly possible, the exploitation of the people by any ruling group. ~t placed on the new republic an indelible stamp of voluntari ness, of genuine consent of the governed. It eliminated the possibility that any group of Mr. Bigs, however sure they were right, however exalted their motives, could order and plan and push around and apply compulsion to their fellow-citizens. One of the wisest and keenest of the foreign observers of the American Republic, Alexis de Tocqueville, was quick to note the difference between Europe, with its instinct for reliance on the State, and America, where AMERICA IS MANY MILLION PURPOSES 277 government intervention was regarded with distrust and private initiative and self-reliance were outstanding qualities of the people. "When a private individual meditates an undertak~ ing," writes Tocqueville, "however directly connected it may be with the welfare of society, he never thinks of soliciting the cooperation of the government, but he pub~ Iishes his plan, offers to execute it himself, courts the assistance of other individuals, and struggles manfully against all obstacles. Undoubtedly he is often less suc~ cessful than the State might have been in his position; but in the end the sum of these private undertakings tar exceeds all that the government could have done."

(Italics supplied) This streak of self-reliance, of dependence on one's own resources, individually or in voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors, gave to American life a special and peculiar quality. In times of great stress and crisis there have been leadership and discipline. But it was leadership that was voluntarily accepted, not imposed by fear of a firing squad or a concentration camp. An Individualistic Order The American Revolution shows no equivalent for the French Jacobins or the Russian Communists, no highly organized conspirative, tightly disciplined party imposing its will and laying the groundwork for a tyr anny more ruthless and efficient than the one which was being destroyed. It reflects rather both the strength 278 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN and weakness of a revolt against foreign arbitrary rule by a highly individualistic frontier society. From a technical standpoint it was a messy affair. Vol unteer militia units behaved splendidly on some occa sions and failed badly on others. It required infinite pa tience, along with other high qualities of patriotic lead ership, for George Washington to hold together an army that was usually unpaid and sometimes almost starving, to cope with the problems of limited term enlistments and the absence of a regular system of finance and supply.

And yet, when Yorktown surrendered and it was all over and - the United States took its place among the nations of the world, the foundations of a free society had been laid more securely than if victory had been won by a military leader at the head of troops whose allegiance was to him, not to their country and the re publican cause, or by a fanatical party intent on stamp ing out any opposition as "counterrevolution." Washing ton himself, after guiding the destiny of the country during eight years of war and eight years of peace, could sound a note of sober rejoicing in the last sentence of his Farewell Address: I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize, without al~oy, the sweet enjoy ment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the be nign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors and dangers.

These same elements of voluntariness, consent of the AMERICA IS MANY MILLION PURPOSES 279 governed, multiple purposes of citizens of the nation rather than any single "national purpose, or purposes," prescribed from the top, have marked America's develop ment from the agrarian society of three millions, cling ing to the fringes of the Atlantic, to the mighty industrial nation of 180 millions which we know today. Moments of Decision Of course, there were moments of decision, as when Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, or when Presi dent James K. Polk took measures calculated to round out America's permanent frontiers in the Southwest and Northwest. But no one worked out five-year, or any other plans for the settlement and cultivation and develop ment of what was once the frontier area of Kentucky and Ohio and of its steady westward extension. This was the work of large numbers of individuals, impelled by a great variety of motives, among which acquiring better conditions for themselves and their families pre dominated.

No bureaucratic agency in Washington said to the men and women who moved to the West in an endless caravan of covered wagons: So many of you shall go this year to this district and you shall chop down so many trees and plant so many acres with corn and so many with wheat. The winning of the American West, one may be sure, went better because these agencies at that time were few and limited in powers and functions. It is the glory of America that, at least up to the time 280 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN when it became fashionable and popular to substitute state help for self-help, it has been a land of multiple purposes and unlimited individual opportunities. Amer ica is infinitely many purposes. It is the scientific inven tor-like Morse or Alexander Graham Bell or Charles P. Steinmetz or Edison-working in his laboratory on some invention that will change the pattern of life. It is Edgar Allen Poe, with his dark broodings, and Walt Whitman in his ecstatic jubilation, and Ralph Waldo Emerson working out a typical American phi losophy of life, and the fruit of the imaginings of Haw thorne and Melville and the New England poets, with their more conventional messages. These and other simi lar figures were not, like writers in a totalitarian so ciety, the hired. propagandists of any particular order of things, political, economic, or social. They were follow ing their own artistic impulses, expressing their own ideas, and thereby adding stone by stone to the edifice of American culture.

America offers, along with its big and often well equipped state universities, a unique exhibit of private schools and private liberal arts colleges, often founded as an expression of religious faith or of devotion to a special educational or cultural ideal. And this strong concern with education, which has been marked since the early period of American life, has left its imprint, again on a basis of private initiative, in many foreign lands. One thinks of the colleges founded, with or with out a missionary association, in China, Japan, India, Korea, T~rkey, Lebanon. Some of these have been casAMERICA IS MANY MILLION PURPOSES 281 ualties of totalitarian suppression; others are still func tioning. But here again is a unique example of private initiative in the cultural field, reaching out and probably winning more friends and exerting more cons tructive in fluence than all the expensive programs of government aid and "cultural exchange."

Voluntary Cooperation To suggest that America's greatness lies not in trying to frame national goals and purposes, but in making it possible for millions of individual Americans to real ize their goals and purposes is not to intimate that Amer ica is devoid of ideals or lacking in the capacity for vol untary cooperation. Quite the contrary. The American pioneer, by his very way of life, was more self-reliant than the European peasant who was dependent for his livelihood on the local country squire in England, or nobleman in France. But, in the case of an Indian raid, the lives of the pi oneer and his family might depend on the willingness of his neighbors to come to his help. There was also cooperation in building cabins, in clearing woods, in husking corn. And this tradition of voluntary mutual aid finds expression in the very different conditions of modern life, in the service club that looks after handi capped children, in the alumni group of a small or medium-sized college' that raises funds for scholarships for the students who have followed them and whom they wish to help.

282 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN As for ideals, it is doubtful whether any other nation came into existence in such a ferment of discussion of natural rights and natural laws and the nature of liberty and how liberty can be effectively implemented. In the literature of the American Revolution, from weighty essays on political theory like the Federalist Papers to resolutions of state assemblies and newspapers and peri odicals, one finds constant emphasis on these five natural rights of free men: life, liberty, property, conscience, and happiness. These are regarded not as privileges which an arbitrary government can bestow or withdraw at will, but as inalienable rights derived from the Creator him self. So John Dickinson wrote to the Committee of Cor respondence in Barbados: Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness ... They are created in us by the decrees of Provi dence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives. In short, they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice.

And Alexander Hamil ton proclaimed this same theory of natural law and natural rights when he issued this flaming refutation of the Tory argument that ,New York had no charter and New Yorkers therefore did not pos sess charter rights: The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

AMERICA IS MANY MILLION PURPOSES 283 Most modern revolutions are directed in varying de gree against the rights of private property; but the Amer ican colonists never doubted that the right to acquire and own property and to be free from arbitrary levies on this property was among the basic inalienable rights of free men. So the town of Newburyport gave these in structions to its representatives in the Massachusetts Gen eral Assembly: That a people should be taxed at the will of another, whether of one man or many, without their own consent in person or by representatives is rank slavery. For if their su perior sees fit, they may be deprived of their whole property, upon any frivolous pretext, or without any pretext at all. And a people, without property or in the precarious possession of it, are in no better state than slaves: for liberty, or even life itself, without the enjoyment of them flowing from property, are of no value.

Indeed the American Revolution was in some degree a vindication of the rights of property against the arbi trary incursions of the British Crown. Prominent among the charges listed in the Declaration of Independence to justify the severance of the connections with Great Britain are that George III "has cut off our trade with all parts of the world," "has imposed taxes on us with out our consent," and "has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." (On this count a new Declaration of Independence has long been over due.) There is no compatibility between respect for inalien able rights of man, based on natural law, and establish284 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN ment of a "national purpose," binding on all citizens, or of compulsory economic planning. It is, of course, anyone's privilege to say what he thinks America's na tional goals should be, or how he would like to see our economy develop. The sticking point is the injection of compulsion into either of these processes.

It is sometimes argued that the challenge of commu nism makes it necessary to scrap or greatly modify the principles to which the signers of the Declaration of In dependence "mutually pledged our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." The Ideals of Ancient Athens Twenty-five centuries ago there was a similar challenge in ancient Greece. Sparta, the totalitarian state of that time, was waging war against Athens, which stood for a freer way of life. Here is how the greatest Athenian states man of his time, Pericles, responded to this challenge as he pronounced a funeral oration over the first victims of the war: The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes .... If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit from our liberality. We trust less in system and policy than in the native spirit of our citizens. While in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painAMERICA IS MANY MILLION PURPOSES 285 ful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger ....

We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowl ,edge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it . . . We have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our dar ing, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of the resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died. Pericles believed that Athens would defend itself best not by imitating its enemies, but by remaining true to its own ideals. There is a lesson here for modern Amer ica. It would be a sorry and ridiculous paradox, in the name of fighting communism, to take over, even uncon sciously or subconsciously, some of the methods of com munism, political or economic. National ideals, Yes. We should become more familiar with them and live up to them better.

National purpose, as something set apart from the multiple purposes of millions of ambitious, devoted, ca pable American citizens, No.