Americans... a new and vulgar people

As we took off from London for New York a few days ago, our three
over-excited children asked if there was any chance of the plane being blown
up. I explained that the likelihood of that happening was virtually zero,
and wondered how we were going to maintain some semblance of order during
the flight. One did not wish the sedate American passengers by whom we were
surrounded to form the impression that British parents are unable or
unwilling to impart the rudiments of good manners.

Luckily, American Airlines had provided a screen on the back of the seat in
front of one's own, on which one could watch old movies. There was also a
map showing how far we had gone, on which places of interest were marked. It
began by showing only two places: London and Chartwell.

The Americans are more old-fashioned than us, and what is equally admirable,
they are not ashamed of being old-fashioned. They know Churchill was a great
man, so they put his house on the map. There is a kind of Englishman to whom
this sort of behaviour seems painfully unsophisticated.

We are inclined, in our snobbish way, to dismiss the Americans as a new and
vulgar people, whose civilisation has hardly risen above the level of
cowboys and Indians. Yet the United States of America is actually the oldest
republic in the world, with a constitution that is one of the noblest works
of man. When one strips away the distracting symbols of modernity - motor
cars, skyscrapers, space rockets, microchips, junk food - one finds an
essentially 18th-century country. While Europe has engaged in the headlong
and frankly rather immature pursuit of novelty - how many constitutions have
the nations of Europe been through in this time? - the Americans have held
to the ideals enunciated more than 200 years ago by their founding fathers.

The sense of entering an older country, and one with a sterner sense of
purpose than is found among the flippant and inconstant Europeans, can be
enjoyed even before one gets off the plane. On the immigration forms that
one has to fill in, one is asked: "Have you ever been arrested or convicted
for an offence or crime involving moral turpitude?" Who now would dare to
pose such a question in Europe? The very word "turpitude" brings a smile,
almost a sneer, to our lips.

The quiet solicitude that Americans show for the comfort of their visitors,
and the tact with which they make one feel at home, can only be described as
gentlemanly. These graceful manners, so often overlooked by brash European
tourists, whisper the last enchantments of an earlier and more dignified
age, when liberty was not confused with licence.

But lest these impressions of the United States seem unduly favourable, it
should be added that the Americans have not remained in happy possession of
their free constitution without cost. Thomas Jefferson warned that the tree
of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and
patriots. To the Americans, the idea that freedom and democracy exact a cost
in blood is second nature.

We went to the fine new museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, devoted to the
American Civil War. It was the bloodiest war in American history. Americans
slaughtered Americans in terrible numbers before the North prevailed. You
can look up the names of soldiers on a computer, and I found to my slight
surprise that a man called Joseph Gimson served on the Union side as a
private in the 37th Regiment of Coloured Infantry, and was "severely and
dangerously wounded" in the battle of Northeast Station on February 22,
1865.

We stood at Gettysburg, scene of the bloodiest battle of all, on a field
covered with memorials to the fallen. Here Abraham Lincoln gave his great
and sublimely brief address, ending with the hope "that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

Again some Europeans will give an unkind smile. All this sounds so Puritan,
so naïve and so self-righteous. We cannot help feeling that the Americans
ought to have been able to settle their quarrel without killing each other,
and, while we cannot defend the institution of slavery, we wonder whether
the North had the right to impose its will by force.

These are vain quibbles. The North went to war and was victorious.

The Americans are prepared to use force in pursuit of what they regard as
noble aims. It is yet another respect in which they are rather
old-fashioned. They are patriots who venerate their nation and their flag.

The idea has somehow gained currency in Britain that America is an
essentially peaceful nation. Quite how this notion took root, I do not know.
Perhaps we were unduly impressed by the protesters against the Vietnam war.

It is an idea that cannot survive a visit to the National Museum of American
History in Washington, where one is informed that the "price of freedom" is
over and over again paid in blood.

The Americans' tactics in Iraq, and their sanction for Israel's tactics in
Lebanon, have given rise to astonishment and anger in Europe. It may well be
that those tactics are counter-productive, and that the Americans and
Israelis need to take a different approach to these ventures if they are
ever to have any hope of winning hearts and minds.

But when the Americans speak of freedom, we should not imagine, in our
cynical and worldly-wise way, that they are merely using that word as a
cloak for realpolitik. They are not above realpolitik, but they also mean
what they say.

These formidable people think freedom is so valuable that it is worth dying
for.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=O?xml=/opinion/2006/08/11/do1102.xml


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