Home > Publications >

American Ideals Can Be Lost If They Aren't Taught
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday, June 20, 2008

ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: June 19, 2008

It has become fashionable today to consider ourselves "citizens of the world." We brandish "God bless the whole world" bumper stickers, urge corporations to be good "global citizens" and idealize entertainers and activists who urge us to curb our nationalism and elevate our "global consciousness" instead.

Yet for all our cosmopolitanism, we still feel visceral attachments to the institutions and traditions of our own backyard. St. Louisans were reminded of this last week with news of the buyout bid for Anheuser-Busch. For many of us, aversion to a foreign takeover of "America's brewery" stemmed as much from a gut-level revulsion to the homogenizing effects of globalization as from concerns about local job losses. We know that a brewery sale hardly constitutes a national disaster, but it seems to strike another blow to an increasingly endangered commodity: our American identity.

Critics often deride American-identity worries as mere nativism or naiveté. But a new report from the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation suggests that our concerns are justified. And our anxiety over losing outward markers of our national identity may be linked to our increasingly tenuous grasp of the ideals that define us as Americans.

The report, from the Bradley Project on America's National Identity, combined Harris Interactive survey results with studies and observations from academics, journalists and policy experts to conclude that "America is facing an identity crisis" in which younger Americans know too little about our history and founding ideals, and "many Americans are more aware of what divides us than of what unites us."

The study found that 84 percent of Americans believe we "share a unique national identity based on a shared set of beliefs, values, and culture." Yet 63 percent of those who affirm this national identity say it is growing weaker. Almost a quarter of Americans believe we already are so divided that a common national identity is impossible. Belief in American identity is particularly weak among the young, who are less likely than older Americans to be proud of their country.

Such civic indifference is accompanied by a lack of knowledge. The 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress Civics Test found that most American eighth graders could not explain the purpose of the Declaration of Independence. Only five percent of high school seniors could describe how presidential power is limited by Congress and the Supreme Court.

College students did not fare much better: A study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and the University of Connecticut's Center for Survey Research and Analysis found 99 percent of seniors in top-ranked schools could identify Beavis and Butthead, but most did not know the purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Such ignorance poses serious dangers. As a nation founded on shared ideals rather than ethnic ties, our democracy's survival depends on each new crop of citizens understanding and assimilating our commitment to freedom, equality and the rule of law. A generation of "world citizens" who do not know the story of America's founding or the origins of American ideals cannot effectively serve their nation. Students and immigrants schooled only in America's flaws and divisions cannot convince fellow citizens to correct injustices if they lack the shared values and common moral language that have allowed previous generations to do the same.

After more than two centuries of success, it's easy to think that our American experiment runs on auto-pilot. Our founding fathers knew better. Upon leaving the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked if delegates had created a republic or a monarchy.

"A republic," he answered, adding a caveat as true in our day as his, "if you can keep it."

-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.