Testing the currents of hope

by Mike Hopping

In any list of defining American values, hope and ambition have to rank high. European colonists and later immigrants landed on these shores hoping for a new and better life. Where they’d come from, the social order was well-established. Here they had a chance to remake it.

Hopeful ambition wrested the continent from indigenous inhabitants and built empires on every scale. We authored the book on modern free trade and created the most powerful military in history. The United States didn’t invent the law of the jungle, but American-style initiative continues to employ and even admire ruthlessness in the pursuit of private interests.

Former president Bill Clinton recently defended this trait before a West Virginia audience: “If a politician doesn’t wanna get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office. If a football player doesn’t want to get tackled or want the risk of an occasional clip he shouldn’t put the pads on. . . . Let’s just saddle up and have an argument. What’s the matter with that? That’s what America’s about, right?”

History is in no position to argue with him. But it was a different sort of hopeful ambition General Omar Bradley spoke of when he said, “It is to the United States that all freemen look for the light and the hope of the world. Unless we dedicate ourselves completely to this struggle, unless we combat hunger with food, fear with trust, suspicion with faith, fraud with justice - and threats with power, nations will surrender to the futility, the hopelessness, the panic on which wars feed.”

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