American Best: Variety, Optimism, Bounty, Talent: an Accounting

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We celebrate ourselves and sing ourselves. We've sung ourselves so often we may have forgotten the reasons why. Open your eyes and take it in. The quiet little towns sit like drowsy dogs at the sides of the rivers. The city office buildings mirror one another in walls of blackened glass. Sing airport noises, freeway noises and broad smiles and arm-wrestling matches in a Minnesota diner with the President watching Rocky on T.V. and Bix Beiderbecke tooting blues in the corner. How about them Mets? O Kissinger. O Cher. The bellowing variety, the great mixed bag of nations. Of course we celebrate ourselves. The fact of our existence is reason enough to shout.

But can you pin it down precisely? In a week or two, a hundred million citizens will be cooing at the Statue of Liberty and popping Chinese firecrackers like machine guns far away. Another Fourth. Can anyone say why, exactly, we think we're something special? After all, the Chinese made more than firecrackers, and the Greeks and the Romans ran the world once too (not that we really do). In a heavenly accounting, those civilizations could provide a hefty list of what they offered to the world. If St. Peter asked Americans what they have offered, what would we say? Do car phones count?

In fact, the list of contributions is impressive, if something of a mess. We have our inventiveness to celebrate, our efficiency, the dollars. Old pluck and luck, hard work, can do. We have our generosity to celebrate, our respect for the rights of others, fair play--in principle, if not always in our conduct. We celebrate the principle. National good nature; we have that to think about as well, and laughter at ourselves. "Don't get the idea that I'm one of these goddam radicals. Don't get the idea that I'm knocking the American system," said Al Capone. Celebrate the contradiction, the ironies. Celebrate the changes: the church becomes the bank becomes the alehouse becomes the madhouse becomes the whorehouse becomes the church. Celebrate the mobility, that we are a people in perpetual motion, whose motion is not aimlessness but optimism. A dreamy lot.