Why America Needs Its Myths
To make a cohesive country, there’s a real value in a story that reaches beyond strict facts
Once upon a time, people venerated their ancestors as wise creators, mighty heroes and fonts of wisdom. That veneration slipped with the onset of the scientific revolution and has diminished ever since. Here in our technologically advanced 21st century, the average Joe considers himself superior to all who came before. After all, we moved past the dark ages of superstition and folk tales, and now we use pure reason backed by scientific fact.
So why is everybody miserable, and why is American life so devoid of meaning? Perhaps we moderns lost something along the way.
Looking Back in Regret
Most intellectuals look upon our ancestors with regret, if not outright contempt. Not only were those old-timers ignorant and backward, they were immoral by modern standards. Sure, Isaac Newton made a few scientific discoveries, but how did he get sidetracked by something as silly as alchemy? What a moron! And Abraham Lincoln might have been called “the Great Emancipator,” but he refused to legalize same-sex unions. Tear down his statues!
This same chronological chauvinism rejects the classics since some guy who died 2,000 years ago couldn’t possibly teach us anything about modern society. And so many naive myths about our country are either exaggerated, disproven or can’t be verified through academic research.
But myth has two definitions. Today, we stick to the first: “an unfounded or false notion.” But the second definition is more important: “a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone. Especially, one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society.” At their best, myths are not meant to obscure truth but to illuminate virtue.
The Value of ‘Mythos’
Every functional society had a mythos—an ethos based on myth. In antiquity, Mesopotamians, Greeks and Norsemen had a long list of rather unruly gods. These, in turn, provided stories to inculcate values and bind that society together. More recently, the rise of the nation-state combined many local groups, transferring the mythos from the city or tribe to the country at large. For example, the “Kalevala” was an ancient epic among the people of Karelia in the borderlands of Russia and Finland. Its translation into modern form was the basis of Finland’s identity after centuries of being ruled by her neighbors.
The United States offered a special challenge, since it comprised citizens of different nations, faiths and civic ideals. As the people weren’t connected by blood, soil or even language, we focused on the few ideals we did share. The Declaration of Independence outlined several of these beliefs, the Constitution codified them and storytellers demonstrated how they could work in the real world. Young girls were weaned on tales of Betsy Ross and Molly Pitcher, while boys compared Nathan Hale’s bravery to Benedict Arnold’s treason.
Our early unifying myths included the shared struggle of the American Revolution (even though many stayed on the sidelines) and the superhuman virtues of our Founding Fathers (despite their human flaws). As that generation passed from the scene, we focused on promulgating our “new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Through relentless migration to the west, we would enlighten the whole continent with our superior ideals.
As we filled in the blank spaces on the map and immigrants flooded our shores, the mythos added the self-made man, who by the Protestant work ethic achieved Horatio Alger-style transformation. Outsiders could do likewise, provided they jumped into our national melting pot.
As you can see, a national mythos isn’t a static canon but a living tradition. Mythical stories are not necessarily false, but symbolic. Their purpose is to point toward truths about human character, national aspiration and communal destiny. Where history is prose, myth is poetry.
Unlike ancient myths, the American mythos wasn’t about demigods, but average men and women overcoming fate and fortune to achieve greatness. The Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and Paul Revere’s ride fed into our creation myth. Daniel Boone’s trailblazing, Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin and the ability of impoverished kids to become Vanderbilts and Carnegies fleshed out the narrative further.
These stories explained how our nation was formed, created a pantheon to look up to and provided an ideal for citizens to strive toward. They focused not on our differences, but on our commonalities, unifying radically different groups into a cohesive whole. This grand American mythos showed us what we think about ourselves and who we aspire to be.
These stories are not all strictly factual, but they are true in a deeper, cultural sense—true in the way that myths have always been true. Every nation, like every individual, tells stories to make sense of itself.
The national mythos builds a shared identity, fosters patriotism and sustains the social cohesion necessary for a democratic republic to function. As all human history has proven, these stories are essential to bind individual citizens to their community, their heritage and their homeland.
The Backlash
Anti-American critics don’t like this at all. In “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn rejected the “fundamental nationalist glorification of country,” a revisionist effort joined by many academics. This was lauded as a rejection of false myths and a return to cold, hard facts—America, “warts and all.” Left unmentioned was the fact that Zinn’s work was warts only.
More recently, Nikole Hannah-Jones created The 1619 Project to replace every bullet point of our mythos with a redirection to the evils of slavery. Although much of her own historiography was ultimately disproven, it was eagerly adopted by educators and the media. They decided it was high time someone rejected the lies we were taught in elementary school. As a mature nation, we needed to hear the ugly truth, the whole ugly truth and nothing but the ugly truth.
Despite Zinn’s and Hannah-Jones’ claims of rejecting false myths with harsh reality, the debunkers’ efforts did no such thing. They merely replaced one mythos with another. In the old telling, America is exceptional as a force for good. In the new, America is exceptionally evil. American exceptionalism itself is never doubted.
History is never taught as a list of facts. If it were, a biography of George Washington would include his weight over the years, what he had for breakfast each day and where he took Martha on vacation. Instead, certain facts are plucked out of the record and transformed into a story—a highly curated myth to represent a noble hero or a moral monster.
The question isn’t if we’ll have an American mythos, but which we will choose. Do we want a national story that divides citizens by class and color, recasts our successes as failures and identifies ourselves as irredeemably evil? Or will we choose a tale that unites society, teaches us aspirational ideals and encourages Americans to reach even greater heights?
A restoration of the American mythos will take a generation of hard work, but it promises to bring our nation together, warts and all. History lessons might appeal to the mind, but myths are necessary to shape our hearts.
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