"A Common Culture?"

 We are less than two weeks from the Inauguration. Like some of you, I look forward to a change in leadership, not only because I am conservative, but, more important, because we will know who is in the driver’s seat. I should not be surprised – though I will not be around to witness their assessments – that when historians consider the last four years from the vantage of a few decades the focus will be, who was in charge? President Biden’s sad cognitive decline was obvious from the beginning. But what was really wrong was that his advisors and the press did their best to keep the public ignorant of his deteriorating condition. Living with an Administration with which we disagree is part of democracy. But having a government run by those we don’t know violates the very essence of a democracy.

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Common Culture?”

January 8, 2025

 

“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.”

                                                                                                                                The Declaration of Independence

                                                                                                                                July 4, 1776

 

Many Americans bemoan a decline in culture. But what do we mean by culture? Are we speaking of the arts, religion, traditions, or a shared history? Are we referring to behavior? In a review of Eliot Stein’s Custodians of Wonder, Brandy Schillace wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Our lives are connected to the land and the animals. Yet we are also threads in the tapestry that stretches back into prehistory, a part of a superorganism that is culture itself.”

 

So, what is culture? Definitions have changed. Noah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary, defined the word according to its etymological roots: “The act of tilling and preparing the earth for crops.” Forty-three years later, Edward Burnett Tyler, in Primitive Culture, defined the term in words we better understand today: “Culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” From the Oxford English Dictionary: “Culture –The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” In 1952, U.S. anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, cited 164 definitions of culture. I think of culture, first as a system of shared beliefs, values, behavior and practices – based on our Judeo-Christian heritage and embedded in our founding documents – and second as works of art, literature and music. 

 

For most of our nation’s history differences ruled. Rural and immigrant communities were often distinct entities. Until the mid-19^th Century, most Americans never ventured far from their homes. But from the mid 19^th Century on, technological advances unified us in a way unknown to earlier Americans. First we had steam ships, trains and then, later, the automobile, which allowed people to experience the size of our country. Radio then television brought other parts of the country and the world into our lives. The number of newspapers began to shrink. So that by my generation, people read the same news, listened to the same music, watched the same TV shows, saw the same movies, and heard the same nightly newscasts. In 1956 (in a country half the size it is today), Elvis Presley sold 10 million copies of a single song, “Hound Dog.” According to Pew Research, every evening during the 1960s between 27 and 29 million people listened to Walter Cronkite’s news on CBS, an audience greater than today’s combined daily audiences for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

 

While we had differences back then – the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and early ‘60s and the anti-War protests of the late 1960s and early ‘70s – the country was, generally, unified, at least in terms of what we read, listened to, and watched. That has changed. The expansion of social media posts, podcasts, YouTube and other platforms have meant we listen to and watch entertainment and news that fits our biases.  A Pew research study from last September suggests 91% of Americans aged 18-49 get their news, “at least some of the time,” from digital devices.

 

While it is estimated that more than 350 languages are spoken in the U.S. today, English is our common language. To be successful, one must adopt it. Even in colonial America a variety of languages and dialects were spoken, including German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Irish and Welch, along with myriad variations. The roughly 450,000 African slaves then in America spoke numerous languages. As well, the estimated 250,000 Native Americans spoke approximately 300 different languages. Because of an anti-British sense, a few founding fathers preferred adopting German as the new nation’s language. But English prevailed and Webster’s Speller was published in 1783. In The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall quoted Noah Webster: “Our political harmony is therefore concerned in the uniformity of language.”

 

We will not return to a time when we all listened to the same music, read the same newspapers, and watched the same television programs. As Americans we are not hindered by a class system that is integral to Europe’s and many other societies’ history and traditions. We are a nation of immigrants, born of multicultural parents. We are beneficiaries of a unique government and society, birthed during the Enlightenment, one that cares more about the individual than who her or his parents were. In his 1931 history, The Epic of America, historian James Truslow Adams wrote of what we all yearn: “The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In August 1790 President George Washington visited Newport, Rhode Island. Afterwards he wrote a letter to Newport’s Hebrew Congregation, founded in 1763: “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean[1] themselves as good citizens.” 

 

In my opinion, the answer to the question posed in the title is yes, the United States does have a common culture. Besides our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have a common language, rooted in the words so eloquently expressed in The Declaration of Independence; it is fostered by a government elected by the people, which secures those rights, and operates under the rule of law. It is reflected in a society that promotes tolerance and respect for others, and that allows for the accommodation of differences. It is a culture that depends on personal responsibility and accountability, a culture built on individual freedom.

 

Our culture requires we be governed by our peers, with a government, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, of, by and for the people. Our culture does not shy from dissent but reflects an undefinable something that draws us together in time of strife when commonalities rise above differences. It is a culture that is, however, always at risk of being lost; so it cannot be abandoned to self-serving, ephemeral policies like DEI, identity politics, or promoting a lifestyle that permits men to compete against women in sports or encourages gender alteration among prepubescent children and teenagers.

 

In 1919, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote President Woodrow Wilson words that echo today: “I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first…I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it.” Does anyone believe that if China were to become the global hegemon the world would be better off? We cherish this unique culture that is ours. It is not transient. It is embedded in our unique origins. It is our culture that draws to these shores the industrious and aspirant, because they know that it offers an environment in which they will be free to thrive. 

 

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[1] The word demean was defined then as “to behave; to carry, to conduct.”

"Perseverance - A Lesson Learned"

 First, I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year!

 

Young and old, we learn lessons in life throughout our years. This short essay depicts one I have never forgotten, despite the passage of sixty-five years. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Perseverance – A Lesson Learned”

January 4, 2025

 

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going…Never, never, never give up.”

                                                                                                Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

                                                                                                Speech to the British people, June 18, 1940

 

The temptation to quit when one is lonely and homesick is common. I know; it happened to me. 

 

On April 27, 1960 I was offered a job with Fort Reliance Minerals, Ltd. The job entailed being part of a mineral exploration team that would be prospecting along Canada’s Northwest Territories’ South Nahanni River. The previous summer, a “major discovery” of tungsten had been found by the McKensie Syndicate, along the Yukon-Northwest Territories border about 100 miles north and west of where we would be. The job offer came through a family friend and neighbor, Thayer Lindsley, who had mining interests in Canada.

 

In mid-June, after a series of flights across Canada, I arrived in Fort Nelson, British Columbia. The next day a two-seater pontoon plane flew me the roughly 200 miles to the team’s base camp where I would be the cook’s helper. The camp was located at around 60 degrees N latitude, more than 200 miles from the nearest road. We were nineteen in number: Doug Wilmot, manager; a helicopter pilot and his engineer; fourteen prospectors; the cook and me. The prospectors were divided into seven two-man crews. Each team was helicoptered weekly to a designated site where they prospected up stream beds and along ridges. Communication was via radio. A month in, one of the prospectors – practicing “quick-draw” – shot himself in the leg, so was airlifted out. I, with one college course in geology under my belt, took his place.

 

The veteran prospector to whom I was assigned was a taciturn recluse who spent summers prospecting and winters trapping. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist. After a day spent collecting rock samples, as we hiked up river beds, crossed alpine tundra, and descended through boreal forests, there was still light to read, write letters, and – more often – to yearn for home and friends.

 

I had only been with my partner about two weeks when the base camp was to be relocated about 100 miles north, above Virginia Falls which are twice as high as Niagara Falls and about one quarter the width. I told Mr. Wilmot I was homesick and wanted to quit. He said okay, just help us move, which I did and which took about a week. Once the new base camp was established – approximately 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle and about 150 miles east of the closest town, Watson Lake – Mr. Wilmot arranged for his teams to return to the field.

 

Mr. Wilmot never again mentioned my desire to leave, nor did I. When it came our turn, I boarded the helicopter and set out for another five weeks of prospecting with my dour partner. During this period we crossed glaciers, and saw elk, grizzly bears and mountain goats. It was an experience for which I have always been thankful.

 

The urge to quit when things aren’t going one’s way is natural. Doug Wilmot did not try to dissuade me. He let me reflect on my choices and allowed me to make the decision by myself. I did. Success, as Winston Churchill once said, includes the “courage to continue.” I am glad I did. Thank you, Mr. Wilmot.