Developing an Ethic of Independence

We call our nation's birthday Independence Day for good reason. The American form of liberty has always had the competent, rough and ready quality of independence. A free man can still be a lost man. A man who is politically free may choose servility if he finds it convenient. But when we say someone is independent, we imply that he is sufficient to his own duties, competent, of sound judgment. America has always venerated heroes who were self-reliant: the Explorers, the Frontiersmen, Native Americans, and Cowboys. But where have all the Cowboys gone?

Throughout the financial crisis we saw how scandalously dependent Americans have become. Many live with an astounding amount of household debt and have recently found their horizons limited due to decisions made on Wall Street, in Congress, or at the Federal Reserve. Those who we might think make a good living are living paycheck to paycheck. They have all the same freedoms of our forefathers—often more—but they have no independence.

Many average investors, dependent on financial experts, still have no idea how their retirements were cut by a third. Independence would not guarantee successful investment, of course. But those who take an active interest in their investments are less easily conned by the Bernie Madoffs of this world. Those who are self-reliant would also keep savings as a hedge against disaster.

In the public sphere, local governments are now scrambling to raise revenue, Letter s afr aid th at state gove rnments will withdraw aid. State governments fear the closing of the federal spigot. What happened to the New York State that built the Erie Canal, at its time the largest public work in America, without aid from Washington?

What has happened to our towns and villages? When we try to lower the burdens for operating a business, instead of asking for tax cuts or deregulation, we demand Empire Zones or other schemes that encourage dependence on Albany for a special status.

In the domestic sphere, it was not long ago that men and women, when faced with a household problem, might have consulted a book like How Things Work and set out to fix their own electricity or plumbing. Household appliance were sold with schematics because Sears assumed that men would want to know how to fix and maintain their products themselves. No more. If you live in an apartment, condo, or co-op, independent tinkering and repairing is forbidden.

The ideal of American freedom in the 1820s was embodied by a man living by his wits in the West. In the 1910s it was an independent businessman, a store­owner. In the 1950s it was the suburban homeowner, working on his car. Now our ideal free man is the consumer: someone spending his days in a cubicle, waiting on hold for a tech support technician from Bangalore, waiting for his financial advisor to call him back, waiting for another credit line approval, sitting home between 10 am and 5 pm for a cable repairman. Freedom without some measure of independence, loses its savor.

Of course not every American can be independently wealthy, nor should we encourage a hermetic attitude that rejects society and cooperation. But we must develop an ethic of self-reliance, or being sufficient to the task.. It's time for every American to declare their own Independence Day.