The stories of America

Nations are crafted out of the mental battlefields of myths and principles as much as through blood and war. I have seen the evidence of both on this trip, the former arising from my trip to the Grant Memorial in NYC (related in the Post Hoc blog) and the information on the forging furnace of the Civil War. Religion and heroism are both used in the latter case to continually refresh the claims of the American nation on the hearts and minds of citizens.

When a Haitian taxi driver in Chicago asked how the UK differed from the US I said that no politician would ever publicly invoke God so, "God Bless Britain" would never be heard. He looked askance that such a little thing would not be permitted but of course religion is not a little thing here. It is an everyday thing. It's not the number of churches. There are many but it's not particularly more obvious than the UK given the c19th building spree. It's more how religion is embedded for example the church service of the month column (more like two pages) in Texas Monthly magazine which reports on the congregation mix, the readings and the quality of the sermon. Remember this is no parish circular. Texas has a population of 24 million. It's in the religiously founded hospital one of which, a specialist heart centre is called Christ Hospital which uses the strapline "Give your heart to Christ". It's shown by the tablet carved with the Ten Commandments which is erected in the grounds of the Capitol building. God is just around the neighbourhood a lot.

The hero also receives a good deal of press. During my day in downtown Austin I went to the excellent History of the State of Texas museum. Somewhere like Texas where life needed to be established in hard conditions there is the myth of Ranger, the rugged horseman without parallel who defended citizens from indians or during the Civil War from yankies and also the legendary cowboys. This translates now to the military. There is a strong movement to bring the troops home (I spoke to the Women in Black standing for peace protest group standing by Austin's Capitol for example) but there is an evident respect for the troops. All hotels publicly list their reductions for military personnel and the Austin Hilton even offered free rooms for stranded members of the armed forces. So the historic heroes of the interior have been joined in the Big Tent American Pantheon by heroes asked to perform deeds abroad. A motivation for the willingness to serve abroad emerged from the exhortations carved into war memorials that I found in the grounds of the Austin Capitol to be vigilant and to protect America : "Freedom is not free" on the Koran War memorial erected in 1999, "Remember Pearl Harbour - Keep America Alert" put up in 1989 and the 1951 statue erected by the Boy Scouts of America as part of their unspecified "Crusade to strengthen liberty". It seems as if there is a desire and a willingness continually to renew America. Experiencing the vastness of the physical land mass as I have flown over it, the teeming population in huge cities and bustling through hundreds of airports, the continuing immigration pulling language and culture in different directions I continue to think that it is amazing that such diversity has been melded together. Compare this with the spluttering, stop/start European Union which is of a similar size but is forever hamstrung by the more dominant country level identities. Loyalty needs to be perpetually reinforced and it seems to me that the founding myths remain essential in the on-going project to believe America into existence.

"History is the story of the victors" was a favourite title for my Oxford entrance exam and the Museum of the History of Texas sympathetically showed what has been left out from the founding myths. Hero status and liberty were not given to the Indian nations who were harried from and exterminated from the land or for any freed blacks who were not permitted to stay in Texas once the state declared its Independence from Mexico in 1836 and whose status was such that in any land grants from the 1820s onwards they merited up to 80 acres per slave below the 160 acres available pre child, 320 acres to a wife and 640 acres to the (male) head of a household. Even a century later in Chicago which was theoretically integrated, there were race riots when blacks tried to move out of the black areas of Southside into white areas. There are still dues to be paid I think not in money but in opportunity if the truths of the myths are to be equally shared.