What Is An American? A Truly Noble Man

Last week I discussed the philosophical and legal foundations of our nation, and the motivating principles behind it. I assert that America is the answer to a fundamental question - What is the best way to organize civilization? The answer; self-organization. I assert that there is another preceding question - Why create, organize and defend human civilization? I assert that the purpose of America’s civilization, as it was founded, is to maximize human flourishing.

America’s founding philosophy and legal structures are the fertile crescent for this flourishing. Our ancestors astutely observed ancient history and their own epoch and rightly concluded that individuals, free from the bonds of government control and centralized authority, and buttressed by the legal framework of property rights could reach their full potential and enjoy the responsibilities and material comforts of their freedoms and achievements.

The colonists and the founding generation were concerned with the form of government. The energy they vested in defining it is not a measure of how important government is to the human flourishing project, but rather how of all of the institutions, it is the most likely to inhibit it. It is government that needs to be constrained so that individual creativity and potential can flourish.

It is the private associations, churches, institutions of learning and businesses that the citizenry build themselves at the local level that best serve the individuals that comprise society. Unlike in government, they do so directly in cooperation with the freely associating people who create them, not by ganging up in a voting booth to legalize theft and enforce the collective majority’s decisions through the coercive power of government.

America at its founding was organized for the benefit of the individual human being. It is the individual’s ability to flourish that is of fundamental importance. After all, what institution can flourish if the individual cannot? If the individual cannot flourish, then what is the point of the institution and what wretched state must it be in if it flourishes while the individuals it purports to benefit do not?

This is why the bulk of the discussion of the American project did not center around the form of government, but around the quality of the individuals who comprise the nation. The goal was to free individuals to interact voluntarily, freely negotiating the terms of their interactions with each other.

A man who is free is a man who must be responsible in order to maintain and profit from his freedom. A man who is free in a civilization whose organizing principle is self organization must be valorous to maintain his freedom and to preserve and support that of his fellow man. Arriving at the individual we arrive at the very reason for individual liberty for we arrive at the very being that is a human life.

Now present with the individual, we can ask, What is an American? An American is a man who embraces his individual liberty and relishes the responsibilities and opportunities that are required of him to preserve it and use it to his benefit.

An American is a truly noble and civilized man. He has constructed a legal and civic order for himself and his fellow man that permits them to exercise their individual freedoms to flourish and prosper. An American is a man who believes in himself. He prizes his abilities. He embraces and cultivates self reliance. He believes in the better nature of his fellow man and prizes all individuals who are self reliant. He values cooperation and seeks it out. He joins company with men of honor, skill and a thirst for creating and improving the world around them.

He accepts failure as a part of reality. He understands that time and resources are limited and that to shackle himself and others to failure is a burden. He takes the long view. He is not entitled to an outcome he feels he deserves nor wicked enough to force it upon society at any cost. He bends the knee to no one, but when he sees a virtuous man of accomplishment, he tips his cap with gratitude and appreciation.

He is a part of a greater tapestry of individual choices and preferences, and if his creations are not valued he lives with the consequences and learns how to better serve himself and his fellow man. He is resilient and determined. He is courageous for he is willing to live with risk before he sees a reward.

He does not envy his fellow citizens and bend to the destructive impulses that seek to inhibit and plunder them. Rather he encourages and celebrates their inventions and their industry. How does he encourage and celebrate them? Is he passive and waiting? No. He invests himself and his resources into his enterprises and those of his fellow citizens. He contributes his talents, creativity and industry into the ever growing crescendo of technological, material and spiritual progress. For this he is the embodiment of wisdom.

An American sees the worth in all men who contribute to the human project. He does not admire a man solely because he is rich. He admires a man because of his contributions and achievements and the values and virtues he cultivates within himself to make them manifest. He doesn’t see a janitor and scoff at him - a man who needs pity, help and uplift. He sees a man who contributes and honors his worth by making his own way for himself and his family. He sees a man who is proud enough to earn his way; who can define his own happiness and who may someday create something of unimaginable grandeur - perhaps his children will thanks to his example.

He doesn’t look at someone with titles and degrees and awards and from instinct laud them. He doesn’t automatically place them above him and the society at large. He seeks to understand the quality of the person’s work and ideas. He knows that those who do are the ones who pass the test of reality. He knows it is the deeds, character and creations that come forth from the man and their objective quality that merits the man respect, appreciation and admiration.

He knows that there will always be those afflicted to seek unearned status and positions. He recognizes the historic tricks of title and pedigree to usurp the resources of society to their zero-sum benefit. He remembers the order of old and its shiny trinket trickery. He is not impressed by boasts of, “I went here and I went there and this is who I went there with.” He politely dismisses the ignoble acquirer and braggart. He keeps a vigilant eye that such men do not weasel their way into unearned positions of power and influence as they will surely abuse it for the purposes of self aggrandizement.

He is always learning and educating himself that he may make and improve his own assessments of what and whom he is surrounded by and what and whom he surrounds himself with. He is a man of impeccable discernment.

He seeks impartiality in the application of justice. He eschews the political and its degenerate gravity of moral and fiscal corruption. He loathes the mob and the group. He sees individuals and judges them on the facts of a given matter. He holds to objectivity in seeking truth. He ensures that the legal structures, institutions and the men who uphold them are maintained and held to the highest standards. He safeguards and invests in the perpetuation of the legal order by investing in the knowledge and wisdom essential to upholding it.

He knows what justice is. It is liberty granted to the individual that he may live life on his own terms, constrained not by arbitrary rules and rulers, but by his ability to develop and use his gifts and by the upholding and enforcement of property rights, contract law and the non-aggression principle.

At the time of the American Revolution an ancient, ever fashionable and seductive idea plagued the West. The Aristotelean vision of the individual, capable of reasoning, discerning and negotiating reality for himself that had re-emerged during the Renaissance was waning in Europe. The Platonic vision of man had reasserted itself. This is the notion that man as a whole is a wretch, and that only a select few, self ordained in a moment of mystical revelation know best how to rule and negotiate reality.

In 18th century Europe this vision of man and his order was called Divine Right. Platonic to its core, it said that by the magic of heredity a chosen few were God incarnate - those sole and rightful rulers and arbiters, uniquely capable of negotiating the reality that we call life. They asserted that it was in their benevolent hands that all power must be held.

In the American colonies, the Aristotelian order of spontaneous, self organizing individuals observing, discerning and negotiating reality for themselves on their own terms, combined with a legal structure for resolving property disputes took root. The aristocrat’s legal structure was adopted and even usurped by the common man who in a new, less inhibited environment ripe with opportunity, could acquire wealth for himself with full legal protection. The common man could adopt the legal structures of the old aristocracy and live on an equal legal footing with all of his fellow citizens. It was an ingenious way to abolish the Platonic aristocracy.

From that fertile ground a new man with a new image of himself arose. He was not the servant of a Lord whose titles, property and privileges were issued by fiat and backed by the sword and torture devices du jour. This new man was himself a King in his own right with his own rights equal not subordinate or supreme to others. He was not bound in service to a legal superior, but freed to be of service to himself and his fellow man by the means of his choosing. He was not born and stuck on a rung. He was free to ascend and fall and ascend again on the merit’s of his deeds and abilities to better himself. His worth was not proclaimed by power and authoritative decree, but measured by the merits of his ability to benefit himself and others through the exercise of free choice.

The chivalrous ideal of the feudal King and his nobility, benevolently using their legal privileges and divinely ordained supremacy for the good of all, was called out as a fairy tale - for two sets of laws and rules enforced by those who make them are ripe for exploitation and abuse.

The American colonists rose up and announced to the world this new vision of themselves and their place in the world. They declared themselves worthy and capable of defining for themselves how to negotiate reality. They asserted their rights and worth as individuals. They acknowledged human nature and accepted it rationally. They did not depose a King and make themselves the new one. They did something much more noble than that.

They acknowledged the rights and potential for good in themselves and their fellow citizens. They announced themselves equal under the law. Even more bold and daring, they announced that self organizing individuals were a far more potent force for good than centralized power and control. They announced and created a new system of self organization where individual creativity, valor, industry and merit propelled through voluntary human interaction now reigned supreme.

Of course, these rights could not just be claimed. They had to be won in the fields of battle. They pledged their sacred honor, fought the world’s greatest military and navy and won.

Rather than waste energy controlling and limiting their fellow man, they unleashed their innovative gifts by trusting that the better majority of them would respect and retain the proper legal and incentive structures for their mutual benefit. They resisted the urge to create a caste of betters to rule, discern and decide. Instead, they took a bold and regal step.

They invited their fellow citizens to hold their own coronations - to forge and lay claim to their own individual crowns; a lifelong coronation of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They courageously embraced the responsibilities and opportunities that come with individual liberty. They unleashed time and energy better spent creating and doing rather than ruling and commanding. This bounty of creative time and energy freed cooperative, self organizing individuals to create the most advanced civilization the world has ever seen.

America’s legal and civic structure as founded and practiced through the 19th century can be seen as a call to man to elevate himself to the highest moral, ethical, technical and spiritual stratus - a call to embark on the most noble of endeavors, a call to civilize himself. That call was made by individuals who cooperated to make that call together and who, at risk of death, made good the pledge of their sacred honor to bring it into the world.

In summary, what is an American?

An American is a noble individual who has answered that call to elevate himself, to become an embodiment of civilization. He elevates himself in order that he and his fellow man may realize their highest potential. An American is a man who answers the call to uplift and realize his most noble and dignified self so that he and his fellow man can create, contribute and achieve - peacefully, freely and cooperatively to maximize human flourishing.