The Idea of America

From the Founders to the School of Resentment and beyond...

“All fiction, in the end, is autobiographical.” 
~ Jorge Luis Borges

Two decades ago, your peripatetic editor placed a long distance call to his parents on the other side of the world.

“Great to hear from you, son!” they exclaimed from their home in sunny Australia. “How’s life treating you in rainy ol’ London town?”

The son looked out... not over Hyde Park or Buckingham Palace or Covent Garden... but across Manhattan Island. From the observation deck of the Empire State Building, we could see all the way downtown, towards Wall Street and the storied Financial District. 

“Uh... how do you feel about America?” we asked, after and before a long pause. 

It would be another five years before we came to live in New York City full time. First, as The Fates would have it, we had to journey to Baltimore... and to become involved with a free-wheeling group of writers, bons vivants, intellectual fringe-dwellers, investors, lunatics and assorted other ne’er-do-wells. 

That group called itself Agora, after the ancient Greek marketplace. They trafficked in ideas. Some were good. Others less so. All were subject to opinion... the opinion of the market, that is, by whose whim they would thrive or whither. 

One of the things which struck your antipodean editor right “off the bat,” was the freedom to say practically anything one wanted. Even - and in some cases especially - in print. 

“First Amendment,” our American colleagues would state, matter-of-factly, by way of explanation. The “it’s part of what it means to live in a free country” addendum was politely implied. 

It may come as something of a shock to our American readers, but such fundamental rights (you know them as “inalienable”) are not simply presumed across the western world. Far from it, in fact. 

In many places, including our own country of birth, such rights are considered contingent... which is to say, they do not derive from natural law, as the Founding Fathers saw it, but rather as something to be conferred by the state. Not a right at all, in other words... but more like a privilege.

The difference is more than mere semantics. Indeed, one doesn’t require an active imagination to see what can (and usually does) go awry in the absence of such basic rights. Just pick up a history book... or this week’s paper. 

(Or check out this video, uploaded just last week, from “inside Australia’s covid internment camps.” Yes. You read that correctly.)

The “Idea of America,” as expounded by its Founders, lived by its citizens and preserved in the hearts of many more besides, is not something to be taken for granted. Despite what those in the “school of resentment” would have you believe.

For this reason, and others besides, your editor recently published a novel of literary fiction: Morris, Alive. In it, our titular protagonist journeys to the US to discover the Idea of America... or what’s left of it. 

We were tremendously grateful to be able to discuss these themes with one of the very first “Agorans” we met after moving to Baltimore, our good friend and occasional publisher, Addison Wiggin. 

Addison has written extensively himself on these matters, both in the newsletter space and as author and co-author, with Bill Bonner, of several NYTs bestselling books. (See Empire of Debt and Demise of the Dollar for starters.)

And so, from an American looking out, and a non-American looking in, please enjoy a pair of perspectives on the Idea of America...  

What does the Idea of America mean to you? Feel free to leave comments below.

And, as always, enjoy your week... 

Cheers,

Joel Bowman
December, 2021 ~ Buenos Aires, Argentina