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America Works Despite all the Odds

By JACKSON TOBY

Our American society is an implausible reality. E pluribus unum may be written on our money, but it takes more than a slogan to unify 235 million individuals: adolescents and adults, men and women, whites and blacks, city dwellers and farmers, radicals and conservatives, egocentrics and altruists. [...]

If everyone were kind, generous, loving and peaceful, selfish and aggressive. Given that kind of raw material, how is an organized society possible [...] In “ The Leviathan,” published in England in 1651, Hobbes argued that “in a state of nature,” life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Social life, though imperfect, was better than in a state of nature. What prevents society from being a jungle, said Hobbes, is that human beings, realizing the danger of anarchy, give up their freedom to a powerful king who protects them from one another. [...]

Hobbes, believing that a king was necessary for social order, could not anticipate that a democratic U.S. would hold together for two hundred years, outlasting kingdoms and dictatorships. He would have considered it implausible that s stable political system can emerge from a process in which an elected president shares power for four years with an elected Congress – and then surrenders the office peacefully if not reelected.

Hobbes assumed that countries are ethnically homogeneous, as England was in his day. Unlike other modern democracies, the U.S. lacks the built-in stabilizer of an ethnic core. Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and black Americans have equally strong (or weak) claims to being 100% Americans. Arabs born in France, Irish born in England or Finns born in Sweden are not French, English or Swedish in the same sense as hyphenated people in the U.S. are Americans.

The U.S. is not a melting pot; ethnic groups persist. Nonetheless, Americans feel a bond to other Americans that transcends differences in ethnic origins. [...] Cleavages between blacks and whites still exist, but race relations in the U.S. are better in 1985 than they were in the 1960s when violent racial disorders exploded in Watts, Chicago, Newark, Detroit and other cities.

Hobbes also did not anticipate a society in which the state kept hands off the religious beliefs and practices of its citizens. In Hobbes’ day, the religion of the ruler was the religion of his subjects. [..) More than a century after Hobbes, the Founding Fathers of this nation recognized that the diversity of denominations made the official establishment of any one of them a practical impossibility. They essentially agreed that any religion is legitimate – and that even atheists and agnostics can be moral people. [...]

Hobbes asked the right question: How is order possible unless human beings are as tame as pussycats? Knowing that they aren’t that free of egocentricity, he thought that order was possible only in an ethnically homogeneous, politically, religiously and economically coercive society. [...] Apparently, something other than coercion glues free societies together. What sociologists learned later is that common values prevent freedom from becoming anarchy.

Most Americans ignore the intricate miracle of how millions of ethnically heterogeneous people form a religious tolerant, politically democratic, and economically pluralistic society. Implausible or not, the U.S. exists and sends a signal that free societies are indeed possible.

The Wall Street Journal

CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION

Which of the following themes are mentioned in the text, and what is said about them:
1. the American political system
2. the American judicial system
3. the American attitude to the rest of the world
4. the American attitude to religion
5. the American economic system
6. the American attitude to nuclear war
7. the Americans and race.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
1. Do you agree that social life is better than a state of nature?
2. what are the danger of anarchy?
3. explain the title of the text. Why are the odds against America working, in the writer’s opinion?
4. how does the motto “E pluribus unum” apply to the United States?
5. are you as optimistic as the writer concerning the way America works?

LANGUAGE PRACTICE
A) ...common values prevent freedom from becoming anarchy.

Use prevent...from + Verb + -ING to make answers to the following questions.

1. what’s the point of using so much sun-tan lotion?
2. why have Mr and Mrs Blythe had bars put on their windows?
3. why do you wear a pin in your hat?
4. what’s the advantage of wearing a seat-belt?
5. why do so many pop stars wear sun-glasses when they go out?

B) Expressing concession (“...despite all the odds”), using despite/in spite of or although. (Despite/in spite of are prepositions; although is a conjunction)

1. Rephrase the following sentences, using despite/in spite of.

a. Although I don’t like him, I’ll help him this once.
b. Although it was snowing heavily, he offered to drive me home.
c. Although Grandma is 85, she enjoys dancing.
d. Although my husband objects, I’m going to get a job of my own.
e. Although it’s not perfect, I’ll buy it.
f. Although we tried hard, we couldn’t save everyone.

2. Rephrase the following sentences using although

g. In spite of the rain, we went on our picnic.
h. Despite his parents’ opposition, he’s determined to go into politics.
i. Despite my accountant’s advice, my partner plans to invest abroad.
j. In spite of the bad weather conditions, he took his boat out.
k. Despite the heat, we enjoyed our holiday in Greece.
l. In spite of the difficulties, he intends to set up his own business.