D'Souza, Dinesh - America: Imagine a World without Her by D'Souza Dinesh

Author:D'Souza, Dinesh [D'Souza, Dinesh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History - Politics
ISBN: 9781621572282
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2014-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE VIRTUE OF PROSPERITY

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently occupied than in getting money.1

SAMUEL JOHNSON, BOSWELL S LIFE OF JOHNSON

In 1893 the historian Frederick Jackson Turner published a famous essay declaring that the American frontier was closed and that the American dream based on the acquisition of new land must finally end. Jackson argued that the frontier had defined America from the beginning. But now, he said, we have reached the Pacific Ocean and there is no more land to discover and occupy. Jackson identified the specific traits the frontier brought out in Americans. “The coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness, the practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients, that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends, that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are the traits of the frontier.” One can see that Jackson is not uncritical of frontier traits, but he also knows the role they played in building the country. Jackson declared that the closing of the frontier represented the end of an era. “Four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”2

Jackson’s thesis has been hotly debated. The first question I want to consider is whether he’s right that there is no more frontier. I don’t think he is. Jackson presumes that the American dream is built on land, and for more than a century, it was. People of limited means would move west in order to find someplace new. But now there is a new frontier, and it is new wealth and new technology. Instead of finding someplace new, we make something new. Today’s wealth is not primarily in land; it is in making things that didn’t exist before. I’m not just thinking about the wealth created by new communications technology—we have computers and cell phones now that didn’t exist in 1893—but also of the countless innovations and amenities in medicine, recreation, work efficiency, and home life. Someone has to come up with this stuff, and in a way it’s more difficult than simply to push west and develop new tracts of land. My point is that, under entrepreneurial capitalism, once the land is gone there are new ways for America to create wealth and opportunity. The frontier is never closed.

Progressive criticism of the Jackson thesis has focused on challenging his assumption that America has historically offered new land waiting to be discovered. The progressive view, as we know, is that America was already a fully occupied country and therefore “settlement” is another name for “theft.” We have examined this argument in previous chapters. Now we consider whether capitalism, innovation, and free trade, the new forms of wealth creation that drive the American and the global economy, are also forms of theft.

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