Dahesh, through the power of inspiration, realized the positive and negative things about the United States and also had a vision about its present and future. According to this overall vision, if the United States is able to overcome its negatives, it could lead the world, become a safety beacon, and set itself as an idealistic example for others to follow, otherwise, it will collapse—as Rome did despite its might and glory. What Dahesh was able to see in totality through inspiration, had also been felt partially by many prominent American thinkers. In the June 28/July 5, 2004 issue of U.S. News & World Report, a number of insightful articles written by a variety of American thinkers and each made certain observations about the United States and its citizens. The following are excerpts of what they had to say:

1. From the article: “A Place Like No Other,” by Michael Barone:

“We are, as political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset writes, “the most religious, optimistic, patriotic, rights-oriented, and individualistic” country in the world. At the same time, however, we are also the most materialistic, self-absorbed, and swaggering nation on Earth. When we speak of American values we are speaking of something unique, as Tocqueville observed. But they are values that are almost constantly in real or apparent conflict with one another. How, for example, can the world’s most egalitarian nation allow such a yawning gap between rich and poor, a gap that grows wider with each passing year? How does a nation of immigrants, with its impulse for inclusiveness, square with its history of division and racial strife?”

“America is a country that goes every year to the doctor,” Brooks wrote, “and every year it is told that it has contracted some fatal disease—whether it is conformity, narcissism, godlessness, or civic disengagement—and a year later, the patient comes back with cheeks still red and muscles still powerful.”

2. From the article: “Those Rugged Individuals,” by Joannie Fischer:

“And today, a chorus of critics worries that the philosophy of individualism has slipped its original moorings, threatening the well-being of the nation and, ironically, individuals themselves.”

“Born of the Protestant Reformation, the ethos was carried across the Atlantic by the Puritans, who believed that each person received marching orders directly from God. In their new society, the reformers decided, people would interact as equals, and God would reward the just. Their reasoning appealed to other groups landing in the New World.”

“…and over time, says Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, “The Puritan legacy became the American essence.” The first American individualists were thoroughly steeped in a one-for-all mentality on the assumption that all moral persons would devote themselves to the good of the group. Just before landing in Salem Harbor, John Winthrop, the soon-to-be governor of Massachusetts, reminded parishioners: “We must…make others’ conditions our own…always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.” And even as Thomas Jefferson wrote of the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, he pictured a nation of independent yeomen who, after tending their land all day, would gladly participate in community meetings.”

Not until the mid 1800’s did the pursuit of individual fulfillment come to connote a retreat from the group. Ralph Waldo Emerson first preached the concept in his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance.” “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” he declared. “Whose would be a man must be a nonconformist.” For him, the self was more important, more interesting, than the group. “ I have only one doctrine,” he wrote: “the infinitude of the private man.” Emerson’s friend Henry David Thoreau went further, deeming it necessary for him to physically part with society to develop his own integrity. And Walt Whitman, in poems such as “Song of Myself,” introduced to the country what Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah calls “expressive individualism,” the valuing of personal pleasures such as sensuality and leisure above all else—something that would have been anathema in the religion –dominated Colonies.”

“God helps them that help themselves” was a maxim Benjamin Franklin not only touted but lived, perhaps more than any other American ever.”

“Since then the nation has created a vast safety net of financial aid. We still prize self-reliance, but we are a relatively generous people, with 3 out of 4 households donating to charity.”

“Dissent helped shape America, but America is also a nation built on cohesion and the enforcement of common goals and shared values. Those two competing impulses—which drove the Massachusetts Bay colonists to flee the religious restrictions of England and then establish one of the most strictly conformist societies in history—appear again and again throughout our history. Defining national character is never an easy task, but recognizing the sometimes schizophrenic interplay of individualistic idealism on the one hand and the recurrent desire to “go along to get along” on the other is surely a crucial part of understanding the American way of seeing ourselves and our roles in civil society.”

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Thoreau asked in Civil Disobedience. His conclusion, that citizens certain that the government is dead wrong on critical issues such as slavery “should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government,” is “one of America’s most successful political exports,” says Teuber. Thoreau’s ideas, he says, formed the basis for Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance to British rule in India, which later inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement. “Thoreau plants the seed in Gandhi’s mind,” says Teuber, “in turn transforming the lives of millions.”

 

4. From the article: “The Faith of Our Fathers,” by Jay Tolson:

“America remains a godly nation. Among advanced industrialized countries, it is easily the most religious. Some 60 percent of its citizens say religion is very important to their lives, about six times the percentage of the French. But the divine looms even larger in most Americans’ hearts than those figures suggest. Some 90 percent say they believe in God—94 percent if you add those who revere a “universal spirit”—while less than 1 percent call themselves atheists or agnostics. It is very possible that an American might still live to a ripe old age without meeting an atheist or infidel.”

“But economically, at least, history speaks eloquently for itself. From our very tenuous beginnings has arisen the most innovative and wealthy society the world has ever seen. A nation of hustlers, indeed.”

5. From the article: “Whoever We Want to Be,” by Alex Markels:

“The ability to escape the burden of the past, both collective and individual, is the central dream of the modern world,” James M. Jasper writes in his book, Restless Nation: Starting over in America. In the land where that dream is realized by someone almost every day, Jasper continues. “Americans’ famous optimism comes from the confidence that you can always find a new place that is right (or at least better) for you, a place where you can start over on a better track.”

6. From the article: “Our Exceptional Innocence,” by Michael Kazin:

“What does set the United States apart is that so many of its citizens believe in its moral superiority. The conviction began with the nation itself. “We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, “wrote Tom Paine during the Revolutionary War, “and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.””

“Americanism is a faith designed to apply to all humanity. In their innocence, millions of Americans believe it is both their right and their duty to spread that faith around the world. Such Naiveté can lead to disaster, as it did in Vietnam and may again in Iraq.”

7. From the article: “Bumpy Road Ahead--Two Eminent Social Critics Put our Culture
on Red Alert,” by Malcolm Jones:

In addition to what was mentioned in the U.S. News & World Report, in the May 31, 2004 issue of Newsweek, Malcolm Jones wrote an article titled “Bumpy Road Ahead- Two Eminent Social Critics Put our Culture on Red Alert.” From this article we present the following excerpts:

“So when [Jane] Jacobs hits us with a new book–her seventh and most accsessible–titled “Dark Age Ahead”, arguing that we’re stumbling into the same cultural decline that befell the Roman Empire, we at least know enough to put our skepticism on hold. And when Samuel P. Huntington tells us in “Who Are We?” that massive Latino immigration threatens the fabric of American culture, we may find his ideas distasteful, but we know better than to walk out on the guy who argued in the early ‘90s that the next global battles would be fought over culture and religion…”

“Different as these thinkers are, they are united on one point: a culture left to drift along on its own is almost sure to fail. But there is good news. As Jacobs points out, dark ages are not inevitable. Still, as she persuasively insists, a healthy culture demands full, hands-on participation by its members…”