Happy Fourth to the American Dream

During a lovely Independence Evening taking in fireworks shows of North Carolina and Virginia from the I-64, I started to wax a bit about how truly different our country’s basic premise is from any other on the globe and how amazing it is that this premise has spread. This premise is that newness, innovation, change, and youth are generally good, that tradition and age are at best slow and tired, at worst parochial and narrow-minded. Michael Jackson’s extensive plastic surgery and Barack Obama’s political campaign platform both embody this.

What is amazing about this theme is how much we take it for granted, even though it is pretty much revolutionary, so much so that movements and cultures all over the world have embraced it and it has changed them. Every time someone crows about the new hip restaurant in Budapest or protests a corrupt election in Iran, s/he is embracing the themes of America. Personal reinvention in particular is the freedom that most of us who will never use our First Amendment Rights to protect ourselves from coercion into a religion or censorship actually take advantage of as Americans.

We are often too quick at the same time to be irreverent toward tradition and conservatism (with a lower-case “c”).

It is a bit scary to think of a society careening on values that translate to youth renewing skin cream and Madonna’s changing persona and just about every American television show, but it is also an amazing freedom to be able to live in a country where we are not limited by our class, even if we are somewhat defined by it.

And on that note, Happy belated Fourth, everyone. It’s nice to celebrate the holiday with a competent president in office.