Two kinds of people populated Europe back in the day, a German politician once told me. Most Europeans were dutiful citizens, rule followers, whose chief virtue was dependability. A smaller group were untamed, ambitious risk-takers, the politician said.This European founding myth for the United States of America concisely captures our nature as self-starters and mavericks. It points towards the spirit of individualism.
But our most common founding myth — specifically the story of the folks who all got on a boat to flee Europe — carries a different lesson. The Thanksgiving story is not a tale of individualism, but of community. We celebrate the Pilgrims by breaking bread together at a large table, and we tell tales of how families working together overcame adversity and tamed this land.
As much as Little House on the Prairie paints a picture of the rugged frontiersman blazing his own path, Norman Rockwell paintings show an America made up of tight-knit small towns and little platoons.
If you can hold these two competing visions together, you can understand America as she turns 250 years old. American culture is one of individualism embedded in an extraordinary network of civil society.
