Heroes of History, by Will Durant
Durant’s ‘heroes’ of history are far from perfect. In most cases, their flaws exceed their virtues. But there is no doubt they were all influential. What I find most interesting is that in times of crisis, someone invariably arises who provides a pivot point that shifts the flow of history one way or another. Someone who has been pushed too far and who has the necessary combination of ideas, personality, and circumstances, ends up being a catalyst for change, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. The individuals are both a consequence of events and a catalyst for them. It’s the wider events, though, that I find most interesting, and the same types of things seem to recur throughout human civilization.
Let me just provide a brief quote from the book (page 125 on the Roman Revolution of 133 B.C.) that describes one such repeating motif.
…in every civilization and in almost every generation, the natural inequality of economic ability, and the popular institution of inheritance, had produced an increasing concentration of wealth… Periodically such concentration is challenged by social unrest, sometimes by revolution.
Sound familiar? This kind of situation has arisen time and again since the dawn of recorded history. Sadly, we still haven’t discovered a way to prevent it.
The idea of America made it different. Arguably, it made it better than most other nations of the late 18th century. The United States was the first country to adopt ideas of the Enlightenment as founding principles: notions such as individual liberty, freedom of religion and freedom speech, equal opportunity, democracy, separation of political power, and a government by and for the people with no aristocracy or inherited social classes. America became, in a way, a philosophical laboratory to test if these liberal notions of human rights and freedom could actually work. Could a nation survive without a ruling class to control what its citizens did, what they said, what they wrote, and what they believed? Many at the time thought not.
In other places and at other times, people of the wrong class, the wrong religion, or the wrong ideology were denied opportunities. Sometimes they were imprisoned or even executed. This robbed their societies of contributions they might otherwise have been able to make. But in the melting pot of America, different people with different beliefs and backgrounds could meet and work together. They came from all over the world and created a marketplace of skills and ideas, mixing and mingling the best to create something new. They came to improve themselves, and in so doing, they improved the nation.
So when I hear American politicians fueling fear and anger and ranting about excluding people from a chance to share the American dream, I tend to shudder. Denying freedom, restricting opportunity, closing doors to those seeking sanctuary or simply a better life is not what America is about. We’re better than that. I hope we remain so. Let’s not forgot what America means.
The men, collectively known as the founding fathers, who created the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were intelligent and educated. They knew history and were well acquainted with the works of Enlightenment thinkers. They took note of their ideas and incorporated several of them into the design of what would become the new United States.* The result was a new form of government, one that they were not entirely sure could survive. It was, quite literally, revolutionary.
We were, in large part, a nation of immigrants, and Constitutional amendments and the laws that followed codified rules so that anyone could become an American through naturalization. Being born here wasn’t a requirement. There were also provisions to add new states, so that other places could ask to join us if they wished. We began with thirteen. Now we are fifty. Anyone could be American. Any place could be American. We had a dream for a new kind of nation, and we wanted to share it. ‘Come, join us,’ we said.
The idea that defined America spread, inspiring people around the world. Opportunities denied in other places due to religion, political opinion, or social class, were available here. And people came. Over the years, America welcomed the castoffs of other nations, those fleeing religious intolerance, famine, dictatorial rule, oppression, poverty, war, genocide…. But what they were fleeing from was only part of their motivation. They were also being drawn to something. The idea of America. It was a place of opportunity. No other nation recognized as well, or cherished as a matter of principle, the fact that the every person had something valuable to contribute, if only given the opportunity to do so. America was more than just a chunk of land. America was an idea, an inspirational one that many who were not yet American shared.
When I was just a young lad in the latter half of the last century, my parents would often tell me to eat everything on my plate because kids were starving overseas. I couldn’t imagine how eating my last bite of meatloaf would help them, but I complied because my parents were ‘old school’ about spanking, so not doing so could lead to unpleasant complications. I think a lot of kids of my generation were given the same instructions under the same implied threat.
Except, of course, we’re not. We’re all members of the same species. Our genetic differences are trivial, and they certainly can’t account for why people from the U.S. would be better off than people from Poland or Mexico or Morocco or anywhere else. After all, the ancestors of the majority of people born in the U.S. came from other places relatively recently, a great many only within the last few generations, so the idea that Americans are somehow intrinsically better is absurd.
I didn’t fully appreciate this obvious fact as a kid, but I think I always wondered why it was that the United States seemed to be more prosperous than some other places. Part of the reason, I figured, was geography.
I’m not sure what’s going on in America, now. It’s as if we’ve forgotten who we are, forgotten what we are, forgotten what America means…again. But those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as the saying goes.
Today, there are those who are attempting to instill an exaggerated fear of Muslims, Mexicans, gays, and probably several other things. They talk of building a wall, banning immigrants, deporting foreigners, denying basic rights, and sanctioning faith-based discrimination. To my mind, these notions intended to protect America are more than misguided. They are contrary to what America means.
The Avery Slom Philosophical Laboratory 