We Americans

When my I and my twin Peter were seven, and our brother Erik was eight or nine, we bickered among ourselves as much as kids do. My mother wouldn’t have it. She gave us a little lecture. She said, "Remember, a single stick can be broken, but if you put sticks in a bundle, you can’t break them."

This message from my mother is a parable for America. We cherish individualism, but we survive and thrive collectively.

1. Individuals versus community.

Teddy Roosevelt was famously an officer in the Spanish American War. He wrote a memoir of his exploits there called The Rough Riders. It so emphasized Roosevelt’s own role that humorist Peter Finley Dunne’s much-loved character Mr. Dooley said that the memoir should have been called Alone in Cuba.

Obviously Roosevelt wasn’t alone. No war is won alone.

And Apple and Microsoft weren’t built alone. And no single person put the rover Curiosity on Mars. Many people share credit for its success. If it had failed, failure would have been collective failure.

But, sure, individual initiative is essential. Whoever knows of Apple credits the inspiration and leadership of Steve Jobs. And every war has its stand-out heros, its indispensable people, like its great generals and its medal-of-honor winners.

A fair trial verdict usually depends upon a fair judge, good witnesses, a decent trial lawyer, and wise jurors. But though they join together to find justice, each contributes to the discovery of justice as an individual.

2. America lists.

But maybe America has listed too far toward a go-it-alone mentality. Barack Obama’s you-didn’t-build-that statement was Exacto-knifed out of his speech about the cooperation between the individual, government, and society to create success. Many people have denied that anybody else has contributed to their successes, and I think this in part is from an eagerness to be contrary to anything Obama. So people claim to be self-created. And that just ain’t true.

The paradigm-case of the self-creation myth happened years ago with actor Craig T. Nelson. When he was interviewed by Glenn Beck, Nelson famously asserted: "I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No."

Somehow, Nelson overlooked that he survived by help from the government. But Nelson doesn’t stand out; it’s what many of us want to believe about ourselves. Yet I have heard that over ninety percent of Americans have at some time received government help.

3. The weight on the other side: religion.

In opposition to this attitude stands our religion. In religion, in Christianity for example, believers assemble together to worship.

Paul’s letters often call for unity among believers and decry division among them. For example:
In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. [1 Corinthian 11:17-18 (NIV).] Or listen to Jesus, through John:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. [John 13:35 (NIV).] Or hear the unknown writer of Hebrews:
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. [Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV).]
Certainly, we are popularly supposed to have a "personal" relationship with God. And that’s true. God relates to us as individuals. He knows each of us by name, and he knows our hearts better than we know ourselves.

But God also relates to us as groups and churches. So, in the Book of Revelation, chapter 1, God spoke to seven churches as churches – the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea .

And in Philippians 2:12, Paul writes to the church in Philippi to "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling . . .." Maybe Paul was addressing individuals, but I believe he was also addressing the church as a church. Personally, if I am saved, I believe that the choices of others in my church will influence that.

3. The weight on the other side: politics.

And politics, and American politics, are inherently collectivists. Democracy is individuals voting to determine the common future of the body politic.

People are known to wonder what the point of voting is, because an individual vote makes no difference. That misses the point. Voting is a collective act. And it is a powerful collective act.

Who becomes president makes a giant difference to the fate and fortune of the nation. And that selection is made by determining which candidate can gather the most voters to support his candidacy.

Of course an individual vote makes virtually no difference. But a voter (usually) prevails by joining the larger group.

4. Conflict.

The Citizens United case is widely disliked. That's the case by which the Supreme Court gave the same free-speech rights to corporations that individuals have. That's the case by which the Supreme Court said money is speech. The Supreme Court overturned limits on corporate and union spending on elections.

Citizens United gives the already-very-powerful a very loud voice. That very loud voice drowns out the average citizen who’s political authority is humbly asserted as part of a nationwide group. Citizens United offends most people's notions of democratic equality.

In Citizens United the Supreme Court struck down limits on political spending by organizations (corporations and unions), which tends to drown the collective efforts of individuals. But the dislike of that case does not come from a simplistic sense that individualism is good or bad, or that collectivism is good or bad. The dislike of Citizens United comes from it's particular application of the principles of individualism and collectivism. It comes from a sense that Citizens United wrongfully withdraws political power from the average American by shifting it to the wealthy and to corporations.

People have strong opinions about the right or wrong calibration of power between the individual and the collective. Some people oppose even the nation as a whole from a love of a particular group. Some Americans so identify with a political party or with those who share their ideals that they hate the nation as a whole, because it hosts people whom they oppose or hate.

5. Individualism, as practiced, shows that groups are important.

Even passionate individualism proves the importance of groups. People who little-value the nation’s shared good often exalt the idea of the individual with near Ayn Rand-ian fervor. In their fervor, they try to attract others to their ideas. They might suggest that someone read Atlas Shrugged. They might donate to the political party that is sympathetic to their ideals. They might post on Facebook to encourage the like-minded. So even extreme individualists make effort to multiply their power by making common cause with others.

There is no escaping collectivism unless that escape is to a remote part of a forest.

6. The shifting calibration.

I cannot claim that there is one right calibration between we’re-all-in-this-together and the hail-to-the-solitary-man-or-woman. No one calibration fits every person in every place at all times.

But we are individuals; and small communities; and cities and counties and states and a nation; and Lions Club members; reunion-committee members; or Hell’s Angels members (or all of these). And we must constantly work this calibration out. And the right-seeming calibration never stays the same.

7. Three proposed rules.

Even though the calibration between freedom and community is elusive and shifting, here are three thoughts about how to get it right.

(1) It’s better to have loyalties to groups that mesh rather than to groups than conflict. It just makes things easier.

(2) But conflict is inevitable. It’s a fallen world. The most basic conflict is between the unconstrained freedom on the individual and any need to conform to fit within any group. I would suppose that even anarchists have rules that must be followed for the sake of group cohesion.

And loyalties might be split between one group and another. Your soccer team might have an important game on Sunday when church meets. Your boss might want you to cut legal corners, which defies your duty to the larger society to obey the law.

(3) So we have to decide how to mediate such conflicts. This is like an ethics exercise. All virtues are good; that’s why they’re called virtues. But sometimes they conflict.

The classic dilemma is this: it’s good to tell the truth; but you have a choice to make if it’s World War II, and you are hiding Jews in your attic, and Nazis come to your door and ask you if any Jews live with you. It’s good to be truthful, but it’s more important to love God and love your neighbor than to tell the truth. In Christianity, the duty to love is a meta-rule that mediates among lesser duties. So you lie and deny that you are hiding Jews.

That is, you follow the meta-rule. In other words, you have a rule that breaks ties among virtues.

Every person needs to know which loyalty breaks the tie among other loyalties. Your loyalty to God? Your loyalty to Country? To Family? To Work? To yourself?

This is an issue in which it is easy to be superficial. That’s because it’s easy to be virtuous when virtue is hypothetical.

But it’s better to be honest. That might make you re-calibrate for the better.