What does America want?

Abstract

Studying old maps of North America is a rich pleasure. To arrange them in chronological sequence is to observe the human mind making the most of what it thinks it knows. The cartographers did the best they could with what they themselves had seen and what explorers had reported to them. They worked by candlelight in an immensity of darkness and for a student there is drama in watching the light grow stronger. There is a similar but more important pleasure in studying maps of a much less well-explored unknown, namely, American life and the American way of life. Americans, our country, and our people are a great nation. But are we great enough? It depends upon whether you look at the whole fruit of the work of free men or see only the blemishes. We know we have not reached our high ideals, but we are still trying. Around us swirl the problems of the day. We face them just as our forefathers did. Each generation has had its own special problems. There has always been a struggle, but we did not quit. We kept on working and striving. And so it goes. Today, complaints and criticisms blow about our heads with every passing breeze. Civil rights! Labor and strikes! High prices! Industrial monopolies! Racial and religious prejudice! Housing! The atom bomb! Yes, we have our problems. But all peoples at all times and in all places have had them. Ours are not insurmountable. What is needed is a declaration of policy on the part of every American and it should be accompanied by a statement of his firm intention to exert full effort to procure its acceptance and furtherance. Emphatically, this does not mean that our platform should be put forth as an ultimatum, which other people must accept or reject totally. On the contrary, the first plank in our platform should be a firm commitment on our part to accommodate our purely selfish interests to a program that can be accepted as fairly representing the interests of all. But equally, there is imposed on each person an obligation to state honestly and openly what he conceives his individual interest to be, as well as his conception of what measures will best serve the general interest. What does America want? It wants the sum total of what the citizens want. Then what do we citizens want? Americans have displayed a singular diffidence in the matter of formulating an individual