Today, the United States of America marks its semiquincentennial. We are officially 250 years old. While I consider myself one of the 68% of Republicans who, according to recent CNN polling, believes the purpose of the Fourth of July is to celebrate America (it’s shameful that this is no longer stated as a plain fact and asked as a question), there is an argument to be made that what makes the Fourth of July special as an experience is spending time with family to honor our nation. Those are the moments that make this nation what it is.
After the founders finished the Constitution, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" His famous answer, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The entire cultural experience of the Fourth of July exemplifies what makes America the country she is. It would be odd if everyone decided to stay home and save themselves from the hassle of hosting or traveling, no hot dogs were eaten, and no fireworks were set off. It is our shared culture, history, language, and values that make our nation, but it is the celebrations, trends, and miscellaneous parts of the social fabric that energize it. In fact, it is one of those miscellaneous parts where part of the topic comes from for this week’s piece.
What was Ben Franklin talking about? How did he envision keeping this republic? What is the American Spirit?
These are questions that are hard to ask, given the number of people that reject the very premise of the question and claim that there is no such thing as an American Spirit in the first place, and is even harder to answer.
I could explain the traditionally Conservative answer, recite the founding documents, and tell story after story about American perseverance. But one cannot find spirit purely in words written centuries ago. After all, the Constitution is only as alive as her citizens are vigilant. Instead, it is these moments, trends, words, foods, and more, that both impel us to ask and help us find the desperately needed answer to this question.
What is the American Spirit?
On God’s timing, I just finished watching all seasons of Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso, a week ago.
Please be advised that there will be spoilers.
In the American made, UK-set show, American football coach Ted Lasso is called to Richmond, England, to coach Premier League soccer team, AFC Richmond. The team’s new owner Rebecca, however, had ulterior motives to destroy the only love of her unfaithful ex-husband from whom she won the team in their divorce settlement. Rebecca expected the inexperienced Ted to fail miserably. When Ted Lasso, a quintessential middle-aged, brown-haired, mustache-bearing, tea-hating, outgoing Kansas City native arrives, his success is beyond impressive considering the hate that he gets from Richmond fans (who nicknamed him “wanker”), and attempted subversion from his own boss, Rebecca. Despite various failures, losses (both in games and on the team itself), fights, and mistakes, Ted slowly wins over the team, the fanbase, and Rebecca herself.
Although the feeling of what made Ted and the team so successful is palpable, staring past the end credits of the last episode into the black TV screen, I found it hard to put into words.
At the risk of getting too caught up in a show that, admittedly, is not a direct analogy for the American Spirit compared to the European mindset (the show unfortunately shows same-sex relations on camera and various side comments implying something other than reverence for Lasso’s home country), I believe it necessary to contextualize the show with another work important to understanding the American Spirit.
In 1831, French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the then 55-year-old United States of America to observe the country that both heralded from Europe and developed a distinct culture, writing what would become the famous anthology, Democracy in America.
To Tocqueville, the spirit with which Americans conducted their daily duties as citizens astonished a man accustomed to the European state of affairs: extremely divided between those still in favor of a pure monarchy, and those who recognized that an American-inspired democracy might prove more conducive to the people’s flourishing. The same appears for Ted Lasso’s audience, as Ted’s relentless optimism, creativity, and affability come from his American cultural background, which especially stands out in the stoic English culture.
Ted Lasso teaches us what it is to love our country that we neither chose nor expected to be a citizen of, as it is that same love that he has for his team that he neither chose nor expected to lead.
In Part 1, Chapter 14 of Democracy in America, Tocqueville observes: “As the American participates in all that is done in his country, he thinks himself obliged to defend whatever may be censured; for it is not only his country which is attacked upon these occasions [of international scrutiny], but it is himself.”
Upon arriving in Europe, Ted Lasso quickly begins to see his team as an extension of himself, which quickly causes him to risk his own personal honor (and salary) for others on the team. In Season One Episode Eight, Ted and Rebecca meet at a sports bar to talk business when Rupert, intent on annoying and embarrassing Rebecca wherever she goes, enters with his new fiancee by his side. He informs her that he bought shares of the team, meaning he has a seat next to her in the owners’ box every game. When he won’t leave her alone and publicly insults her and Ted, Ted creatively redirects the conversation, getting Rupert to challenge him to a game of darts, wagering that if Rupert won, he could have control over the team’s last two games and if Ted won, Rupert couldn't sit in the owners’ box for the rest of the season. Rupert, confident that he can obliterate Ted, accepts. At the end, the match seems almost impossible for Ted to win, but when Rupert calls the game for himself, Ted imparts some American wisdom upon the bar, telling a story about how kids used to make fun of him when he was younger.
“One morning, I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman… ‘Be curious, not judgemental.’ All them fellas who used to belittle me, not a single one of the curious…Cause if they were curious, they would have asked questions… like ‘have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’ To which I would have answered, ‘Yes sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from ages 10 till I was 16, when he passed away.’”
Ted wins the match, but to him it was more than a game, but a victory for his team and his boss, to whom he felt he owed allegiance.
“The citizen looks upon the fortune of the public as his private interest, and he cooperates in its success, not so much from a sense of pride or duty, as from what I shall venture to term cupidity” postulates Tocqueville.
In the show, it is only after Ted’s profound impact on the team that non-American characters begin to exhibit the same sentiment towards their brethren, seeing each other’s success as a source of their own happiness.
“The government of democracy,” Tocqueville argues, “brings the nation of political rights to the level of the humblest citizens,” elevates their voice, and leads them to recognize their potential as an equally contributing member of society.
Much like the structure of our non-unitary system, Ted does not believe in a hierarchy of coaches, or having the authority over everything. In the previous episode, (seven) he returns a speech that the team’s kit man, Nate had given him to use in a pre-game talk. Nate, portrayed as the lowliest member of the team, needed Ted’s encouragement to recognize his potential as an equal contributor.
“I do not assert that it is easy to teach men to exercise political rights; but I maintain that, when it is possible, the effects of which result from it are highly important; and I add that, if there ever was a time at which such an attempt ought to be made, that time is our own.”
Alexis De Tocqueville, Part 1, Chapter 14
In the next episode, Ted elevated Nate to the position of co-captain.
Ted considers the success of the team as a success of his own. Not in a prideful manner, but in the way that naturally comes from loving his team as his family. He believes that lifting his fellow Richmond teammates up is not just the “right” thing to do, but what makes the team great. He risks his own status, salary, and sanity for people not because he sees them as his subjects, but his equals.
Ted Lasso is a living example of what the last line of the Declaration of Independence implores us to do:
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
It is not government alone that makes our nation and animates the American Spirit, but the mutual covenant we have with each other as not merely citizens, but brothers.
And so, we return to the question, “What is the American Spirit?”
I believe the American Spirit is something that has crossed centuries, and touches the hearts of all who encounter it. The American Spirit is a spirit of love, (at times, tough love) that wills the success of our countrymen. The American Spirit is a spirit of vitality and optimism that does not blind us to the harsh realities of the fallen world but gives us the hope to power through them. Ted Lasso is the American Spirit.
When the founders realized that the only way to achieve justice was to, outnumbered, outgunned, and at a great strategic disadvantage, declare independence from the system that saw subjects as pawns and people as pets. It is in the lines of the Declaration that the American Spirit was conceived, the battlefields of Lexington and Concord that it was born, and the 2.5 centuries that followed that it has matured.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that the American Spirit is in danger today. We are beginning to feel the consequences of a “low trust society,” the term that the younger generation has adopted. This is the most important time to ask ourselves this question.
What is the American Spirit?
We may know the answer, but our words are only as alive as our vigilance. It will be difficult to fully reclaim the American Spirit, and we may only realize we have done so after the fact, which is why we must always work as if we have nothing else to fight for. If we lose the spirit that embodies the country, we lose the country itself.
Practically speaking, there is much work to do, but I believe the most important parts of the culture are the traits that we take for granted. As we speak, tourists here to support their team in the World Cup (ironically) are going viral online for their own Tocquevillian discoveries, balking at the size of our grocery stores, free refills at restaurants, and the taste of ranch dressing.
If they can cultivate such a reverence for the United States based on the trivial parts of our everyday lives, our culture is still worth fighting for. As you congregate with family and light up the grill today, let patriotism energize your actions and words. Don’t speak ill of our future and lament our past, for to do so would violate the very trait that defines the 250-year-old American Spirit. “I believe in hope,” says Ted in the last episode of the first season.
Today, I wish you a Happy Semiquincentennial and a Hopeful Fourth of July.
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