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 "The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope," a new book by Andrew Delbanco, Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia, makes a number of thought-provoking assertions:
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That America today is a nation without a collective story;
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That our sense of continuity between past and future has faded;
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And that--in this age of deconstruction--our confidence in the future is imperiled.
In his book, published recently by Harvard University Press, Delbanco writes, "Human beings need to organize the inchoate sensations amid which we pass our days--pain, desire, pleasure, fear--into a story. When that story leads somewhere and thereby helps us navigate through life to its inevitable terminus in death, it gives us hope. And if such a story establishes itself over time in the minds of a substantial number of people, we call it culture."
"The Real American Dream" argues that our culture has developed around three concepts or forces in which Americans have found hope: God, Nation, and Self.
"The master spirit over this short book is Alexis de Tocqueville," Delbanco explained in a recent interview. "It was de Tocqueville who conceived and expressed most clearly the American difference. The United States has never had, broadly speaking, an aristocracy. We did not inherit class antagonisms. And, from colonial times, we were an immigrant culture."
Delbanco begins his examination of America's unique development with a discussion of the stringent God of Protestant Christianity, who exerted immense force over the institutions and customs of the culture for nearly 200 years. But in the mid 19th century religion began to diminish as the source of our national story.
"The old story that religion told was no longer credible to many people," Delbanco said. "We should never underestimate the number of people who still believe in some version of it, but no one would argue that it holds the same place as it did 300 years ago."
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