"Character," according to Webster's, is "one of the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an individual ... the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group or nation." Character - our very personalities - lies at the heart of who we are, what we think, what we choose, and how we act.
A country, too, has a character, a style of living, a dominating influence in its institutions that drive its culture. What, historically, was ours? What was the character of America?
Immigration gave us a tremendous advantage, a natural filter, right from the start: It takes an unusual person to pack up, ship out, and get dropped into a new land, knowing they're going to have to improvise, adapt, and overcome to achieve their dream of success.
Most of Europe, given the choice, decided to continue slowly starving to death. But America? We got the cream of the crop, the people willing to face adversity and handle challenges, to jump into life with both feet and gamble their wits and ability against the fortunes of the world around them, people who weren't afraid to take some risks, people with a can-do attitude acting to bring about their dreams.
It was predictable, looking back, that the pattern of such a society would ultimately run afoul of the powers-that-be: King George III and his minions. By 1776, we had real battles on our hands coming at us from every angle. Have you ever thought about the risks the colonists took when they declared their independence from Britain? When our forefathers signed on their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor," they weren't kidding: Those are the things all of them stood to lose if beheaded as treasonous traitors to the king.
What kind of dream can motivate men to gamble everything they own, including their very lives, in an attempt to bring it about? The dream of the promise of liberty: that a country could be established on sound principles of social organization where no man or government would have the right or power to control the free interaction of free individual minds.
This was the character of America, our country's vision and dominating idea: the belief in individual rights and individual freedom. Honesty, self-reliance, independence, integrity, ingenuity, responsibility, and productive capability were our virtues, and observe where they led us: By 1900, our good old "American know-how" was merrily laying the foundations for the modern industrial world.
And then ... what of that character now, a century later? How fares America today?
Not very well. For many decades past we have chosen to abandon the constitutional principles we were founded upon, dramatically increasing the size and scope of state authority in our lives instead. Hosts of petty political fiefdoms now clutter the land, ruling and throttling our social and economic discourse. We've had our honesty corrupted by the influence of "pull-peddlers," our self-reliance eroded by the "welfare" state, our independence battered by the centralization of political power and our integrity polluted by disintegrating standards of human value.
Consequently, adrift with no moorings, we find ourselves beset by crisis: worthless paper dollars and impending financial doom have us floundering at home while enemies who hate our guts, along with an over-extended military, drain us abroad. Still flying but on broken wings, the very lifeblood of our republic flows freely into the soil around us, and obstacles confront us everywhere we turn. If ever there was a time of need for the character of America, this is it: Where are the heirs of Patrick Henry, the men and women who resist dominion with a smile, who don't bow down, give in, or give up?
It might just be too late, you know - we may have misplaced our spirit for good. That could be the problem: that our souls are dead and the character of America has gone completely. And that would mean: We continue slumbering while our country collapses around us and we eventually join the rest of the has-beens on the ash heap of history, a broken bubble that might have been. That's a distinct possibility.
Maybe ... maybe - but I don't think so. Because buried under that onslaught, submerged in that morass like a solid granite rock, lurks the fiber of the men and women who built this place from scratch - and, once they have awakened, would-be dictators and bumbling bureaucrats will reckon with them at their own peril.
Yes, but ... will we wake up?
That's our call, isn't it?
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine and a freelance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
