This is the first of a few posts on America. This first one is about a speech I gave at a combined Toastmaster’s meeting in September 1991. In Part Two I will compare the content of my speech with an article by John Gray written in 1993. Part Three will compare the content to an article written by Samuel Francis in 1993.
In 1991, I was watching part of a Senate Confirmation Hearing on C-SPAN when I received a call from my Toastmaster Club. The person who was to give a speech the next day couldn’t, and I was asked to speak in his place. My speech would be given before a combined club meeting of my own Lompoc club with the two Toastmaster clubs at Vandenberg Air Force Base, so I decided to combine the interests of the military audience with the idea of the Senatorial hearing I was watching, and write about an aspect of America and what it meant. The speech had to be relatively short, which meant I had to focus on a very narrow topic.
I was idly looking at a map that had the words “The United States of America” printed boldly across the multi-colored geographical relief of our part of the North American continent. I had been thinking about the hearing, and I thought, “What if we couldn’t hold public hearings, if we had no way to see what was going on in our government? How un-American that would be!” It struck me, with a sudden sense of puzzlement, that there was something about America that was different from the other countries on Earth, that it was possible for our country to change in ways that are directly against our beliefs as Americans.
But if such anti-American changes were made, we would still be living in the United States! In the same way that France and Germany and Italy and China and Brazil keep on through drastic changes in governments and philosophies, the United States would still be the United States despite any such change. But it seemed to me that with profound changes we would not believe that we still lived in America! I looked at the map in my hands, and in my mind’s eye I saw the word “America” lift up from the map of the United States and float above it.
It struck me then that America is not a country. It is a State of Mind, a Way of Life, an Ideal, an Ideology filled with details. And the fact that this State of Mind co-exists roughly with a solid, dirt-in-the-ground, mountains-and-rivers-and-plains sort of country known as the United States should not confuse the matter.
I sat down that evening in 1991 and wrote a speech, “Where Is America?” This speech is included below. It makes several important points about America, and I didn’t know it then, but this was the first step on a journey of discovery. It was also, though again I didn’t know it, the first shot I fired in my personal involvement in the Cultural War.
THE SPEECH: “WHERE IS AMERICA?”
Our country is known as both America and the United States. We think they’re used interchangeably, but they’re not. We all know that we can find the United States on a map; but where exactly is the America of “The American Dream”?
Now, I’ve always loved the songs “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.” They both speak of the splendors of America, of mountains and prairies and spacious skies, of the magnificent land of the United States. But if the American Dream is to make sense, it would seem that “America” is not like Germany or Pakistan or Brazil—“America” is different from our land, however much we cherish it. It is something more. Something different.
So is it the people? Our magnificent people? Yet, a few of the most vehement haters of America are U.S. citizens. Such people who condemn the American Dream and Values are not America, however much they share the fields and fruits and skies of the United States. And we know that there are foreigners who are America—people so in love with America that they endure extreme hardships for the chance to come here, even at the cost of their lives, in search of a place where they can be free to fulfill their dreams. So I think that what makes someone truly America is not where you are born.
And then, as I watched the hearings in Washington right now, the confirmation hearings for positions of power in our land, I saw one of the rooms absolutely empty of people, and I was struck by a simple fact: Seemingly empty, the room yet held deep significance. The form of the room. The chairs behind the panel’s table, whereon would sit the people publicly elected to represent America. The chairs in front, for those who would face the panel and the public scrutiny, for those who argue for and against. The chairs for those who watched, as we ourselves watched on TV. All with a sense of commitment to the process.
Let me repeat that word: Process.
These rooms, set up in different configurations for the Processes of our government, these rooms —the Senate, the House, the White House, Institutions, Hearing Rooms—all are physical embodiments of certain basic, fundamental ideas.
And that gave me the answer.
America can be physically embodied, but it is not that physical reality, it merely borrows it. For it is a Process. A process with very definite, very important patterns. Inviolable patterns.
It is a process that embodies certain ideals. Inalienable ideals.
These ideals are deceptively simple in their statement. In one of their paper embodiments—The Constitution—they can be enumerated in as few as five pages—pages about forming a more perfect Union, about Justice and Human Rights. About the formal nature of these patterns of process.
In The Declaration of Independence, these ideals comprise two short sentences: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That governments are instituted among men to secure these rights.”
In those physical embodiments that require human form—that need the fire of living breath, the magic of the human mind, the power of the human hand, the wildness or the measured tread of aspects of the human soul, the free enchantments of the human tongue—these patterns find their form in words and deeds that resonate throughout the world.
So simple—and so complex. This is America.
It is a Dream. It is a Process. It is as large as all the aspirations of Mankind, but simple enough to be encompassed by a few simple words. It is embodied by structures as large as a continental nation, and as small as a flag. It is a process as monumental as a just war, valiantly fought, and as complex as a national election dignified by secret-ballot. It is as deceptively commonplace as a group of people coming together, voluntarily, to learn skills and expand their awareness.
Mister Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters, Guests—this very club itself, wherein we celebrate the freedoms of assembly, of speech, of self-determination—this is an embodiment, a momentary solidification of America.
America is a Dream that fires the soul. Its magic is powerful enough to change the world. The American Dream was real in the hearts and minds of those who fought in the Gulf War. It is embodied by all who wear the uniforms that proclaim the defense of America, in whatever capacity, throughout the world.
America existed—actually existed—in the hearts and minds of those who stood their ground in Tienanman Square, of those who tore down the Berlin Wall, of those who faced the tanks in Moscow. There are those who kiss the very ground that represents America when they return from some far-off enterprise of danger.
Recently, it moved us to see those, in Albania, who heard the music of America so strongly sounding within them that they bent to kiss the car our Secretary of State arrived in. And we’ve had the extraordinary vision of countless thousands of American flags, clutched in hands of strangers, in strange lands, in languages sounding strangely in our ears, crying out their “oneness” with us. Sharing America. Sharing our Dream.
At these moments, America itself existed in those far-off realms, within those minds that stared out at us through eyes that viewed a different physical world, but the same Dream.
If America has a Place—it is in the Heart and Mind and Soul.
If America has a People—it is those who share the Dream.
If America has a Dream—it is that which embodies its Process.
I started my search for America by mentioning two songs that we all love: “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.” They have been mentioned at times as substitutes for our National Anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”
But I see now why I must disagree with any substitute, wonderful as those other songs are. They extol our land—our beautiful land, with all its splendors. They extol the United States that Americans have made, and rightly so. But America is much, much more than this.
It cannot be spanned by a piece of land. It is a dream, and a process. Its most tangible symbol is the American Flag. Its most tangible embodiments are the institutions of our Republic. That is why we pledge our allegiance to the Flag, and to the Republic for which that Flag stands.
And that is why “The Star Spangled Banner,” which in all four of its verses speaks of the Flag and of the values it represents, is justly our Anthem.
The arena of War, over which victory our Flag still waves, is not just the fort Francis Scott Key watched being bombarded while he wrote the anthem; it is the War that everywhere is fought in men’s minds and hearts, a War that shows its victories by the presence of our Flag, however alien the hand that holds it, or the land over which it waves. There, for that moment, there is America. America encompasses it all.
America is the Dream. It is the Process. It pulsates with Life. And the Dreams of Life require a special effort. A man who knew something about Dreams, Lawrence of Arabia, said:
All men dream . . . but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
Every dawn awakens us to face a new day—and a continued responsibility. While those who insult and condemn America struggle fitfully in a Nightmare of their own creation, we—those of us who love America, who carry it with fierce pride in our hearts and minds—we Dreamers of the Day must walk through the world with our eyes wide open—to make Real that most glorious Dream of all:
The Dream we call “America.”
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, The Random Yak, guerrilla radio, Big Dog's Weblog, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Stuck On Stupid, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Wake Up America, LaTogaStrappata®, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Leave a comment