What Makes America Great: Individualism, Ingenuity, and Toughness

Introduction

The fact that America is largely an accident is a footnote in history by now. It was accidentally discovered by Columbus, who was actually sailing for India. It was considered a Great Experiment by the Founding Fathers. Washington called it as much, and historian Paul Johnson has remarked that "the creation of the United States is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story holds such tremendous lessons, for the American people themselves and for the rest of mankind" (3). America has been called the New Rome, the New Jerusalem, and the New World. More than any other nation, it has been at the heart of the modern world for the past four centuries. Its exploits have shaped, determined, and impacted the rest of the globe's population as though it truly were a light shining on a hill.

What is it about America that has made it so great, so powerful, so bright, and so magnificent? If one had to reduce it to just three things, one could point to America's individualism, ingenuity, and all-out toughness. American exceptionalism — the idea that the United States occupies a unique and consequential place in world history — rests on precisely these three pillars. America is unlike any other nation in the world. Its critics like to point out its flaws, but those who appreciate it for what it is recognize that America has always been the "land of opportunity" — more so than any other country in the world (Keuilian). From the conquistadors to the colonialists to the Founding Fathers to the industrialists, America has been the stage where the world's imagination has flourished and found the most food for thought and fuel for innovation.

American Individualism

No discussion of what makes America great could be complete without first addressing American individualism. America is truly the birthplace of freedom. Paris gets all the credit for its emphasis on "liberty, equality, and fraternity" and its French Revolution — but the American Revolution preceded the French one by a good decade. America set the stage for revolution. It wrote its defiant open letter to the King of England and dared to call it a Declaration of Independence, well before doing so was a trend among smaller nations attempting to throw off the yoke of neo-colonialism. The colonists wanted the English Crown out of the New World, and the War for Independence won them the right to rule themselves. Ever since, American individualism has been a force to be reckoned with.

The 31st U.S. President Herbert Hoover declared that "individualism has been the primary force of American civilization for three centuries. It is our sort of individualism that has supplied the motivation of America's political, economic, and spiritual institutions in all these years." The first colonialists were individuals branching out on their own in the New World, cutting themselves off from their European roots and making a fresh start in a foreign land. The pioneers pushed the boundaries of the frontier and blazed the trail westward, facing the challenges and dangers that came hand in hand with expanding the territory. The Founding Fathers stood their ground against not only the English crown but against the very institution of monarchy at a time when monarchy was still the accepted form of government.

American individualism was so deeply felt that individual states refused to accept a centrally controlled government. In order to ratify the Constitution, the states demanded guarantees that state governments would not be overrun by federal authority. The states even fought a civil war over whether individual states had the right to decide for themselves whether to remain part of the Union — that is how fiercely individualism was protected and cherished in America.

Freedom and democracy have been the hallmarks of this individualism, but the idea of picking oneself up by the bootstraps and making one's own way in the world is an essentially American idea. The value placed on the individual is so deeply ingrained in American culture that it still strikes Americans as troubling to contemplate collectivist societies in which every person submits to the will of a single leader who makes all decisions for the group. Such an idea is, by its very nature, anti-American.

American Ingenuity

American individualism was supported by American ingenuity — the innovative spirit that fueled the nation's development. From the rise of American industrialism (the railroad, the steel mills, the meatpacking industry, the oil industry, the agricultural industry) to the rise of Big Tech in Silicon Valley, America has been at the forefront of every major scientific breakthrough. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of all invention.

America's reputation for ingenuity took early shape with the construction of the Erie Canal in the first half of the 19th century. When the original planners, engineers, and workers failed to achieve the goal, the farmers of upstate New York stepped in, doing the work of routing the canal's course through sheer determination and practical know-how. The simple American farmer understood what needed to be done — and had the tenacity to do it.

That same intuition drives the American character today. Everyone has heard of Dolby Surround Sound. If they have ever been to a movie theater, they have sat in seats while Dolby systems delivered the sounds and music accompanying the images on screen. Where did that system come from? Ray Dolby. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History explains: "Ray Dolby was that distinctively American character — the independent inventor — who has always been such a prominent feature of our nation's innovation ecosystem. The middle-class son of a salesman and homemaker, Ray's patented noise suppression technologies changed the way we all enjoy music and movies" (Sherman). And Dolby is just one example among hundreds of thousands. From the creator of the cotton gin to the inventor of the telephone, the Model T, Windows, and the iPhone, America has shown itself to be a uniquely rich source of innovation and ingenuity.

Conclusion

What makes America great is the character and vitality of the American people. It is not a specific ideology or a specific way of life. America is filled with all sorts of people from all over the planet, yet what makes them similar is that when they come to America, they share the same vision of what an American should be: tough, innovative, and individualistic. America is about reaching one's potential and not letting anything stand in the way of one's goals. It is a country where everyone is allowed to dig down and reach up.