History help!?

Question

Define and describe what you think the modern character of the United States is? and why, what events etc

Answer 1

I think it has multiple layers, which allows it to be generous and suspicious without actually being hypocritical.

By this I mean, an altruistic motive might make a person want to help someone who is down on his luck, but the caution that comes from a protective nature might make the same person reluctant to invite this same poor soul home to dinner, where he'd be exposed to his kids.

This nature is projected into our relations with other nations. We have our current population, and we want to protect that population, protect their health, protect their safety from violence, and protect their abilities to provide for themselves and their families productively, without having to take anything away from the rest.

But, we also see people around the world in a bad way, and our hearts go out to them. We see them struggle for their freedom, and that rings a bell in the American heart, that's how we started wasn't it? We'd like to be able to help them to help themselves, to create a better life for themselves and their people in their country, rather than ours.  

So, we find ourselves in the position of having to make choices. Maybe this man's kid in some far away land has a child who needs bread and milk, I might be able to hold off buying my kid a new laptop to help him feed his children, but I'm not going to take bread and milk from my kid to feed someone else's.

It's really about what we feel we can afford to share, and the choices are personal more than political.

It doesn't sound like we're being helpful, at least not when things are so bad elsewhere, but we're willing to encourage, help when we can, and applaud their successes, but we can't take bread from the mouths of our own babes.

We're faced with the same thing with the starving billions in the world. We'd like to help, and we will when we can, but we can't take the bread from our children's mouths to feed someone else's child.

These things came from troubles. We've all had troubles, all the nations of the world. It always seems like ours are worse than someone else's, that's human nature. We had the depression, we had the Civil War, we were attacked on our own soil. It seems worse because it happened here, not there, even though other parts of the world experienced the same things.

Look at the Greatest Generation, these people grew up in the Depression and learned "the value of a dollar" as the saying goes, but it was nearer the value of a nickel.

The Boomers, like me, are their children. And, as they are the children of the Depression, we are the grandchildren of the Depression. So we heard these stories when we were growing up. "When I was your age, I would have thought a nickel was a lot of money", and some absorbed it, and are more careful than others, some rebelled against it and are less careful, the majority are somewhere in between.

I don't think this was much help, but when "I was your age" (kidding, really) I had a full semester class called "The American Character", and it was just as puzzling then.