This Noble Land (2 page)

And finally, from these varied experiences I had just cause for believing that my land was indeed noble, a conviction from which I have never retreated. Consider how it treated me. After a bleak early period I was spotted as a lad able to learn and was encouraged to attend nine universities and centers of learning, including the incomparable Swarthmore and Harvard, and always at public expense. When I finished, I was eligible not only to pursue an enviable private career as a writer, but also to serve our nation as a naval officer (very junior grade) and as a member of some half-dozen government committees supervising the arts, the postal service, the space agency and the agencies both in Washington and Munich that were combating the Communism of the Soviet Union, a task in which I was engaged for many years.

I ended these adventures as a middle-class American who I think understood the problems of both the rich upper classes and those impoverished at the bottom. It is from such a background that I view my homeland as—I hope—a responsible and knowledgeable critic.

W
hen President Nixon wanted to appoint me to a board requiring a full-field loyalty check, the FBI reported that whereas I seemed to be a normal American citizen with no blemishes in my record, I had worked and lived abroad in a staggering number of foreign countries. The figure was somewhere in the seventies, and when I volunteered the names of other lesser locations they had understandably missed, the number came to a hundred and two. I had lived for substantial periods in Italy, Korea, Japan, Hungary, Austria, Afghanistan, Israel, Spain, South Africa, Poland, Canada, Mexico and the island groups in the South Pacific and the Caribbean.

In several of these countries I rented my residences, but I never acquired any real estate, although I was often tempted. I continued to pay my taxes in Pennsylvania and voted from there, even though in those years a writer, artist or actor could avoid taxes by taking residence abroad, especially in Ireland or Switzerland. I noticed, however, that the young men of my acquaintance who did so became severely disadvantaged. The writers and artists fell out of the mainstream of America; the actors were forced to accept mediocre parts in mediocre films shot on inadequate budgets in Italy and Spain. The émigrés saved a little money but paid a devastating penalty: the decline of their professional careers. I learned early that it was far more profitable
to stay home, pay my taxes and march ahead with my contemporaries.

Nevertheless, I loved travel and went literally to all corners of the world, missing only a few choice places like Tibet, the South Pole and Machu Picchu in Peru. When I was eighty-five I finally made it to Antarctica and saw a world of wonders about which I had only dreamed, including vast icebergs, some as big as small villages. Through it all, I kept my emotional footing in the United States.

As I explored one country after another, I found myself saying repeatedly: ‘I could live here very happily!’ and I would sometimes go so far as to identify specific spots that I would enjoy and in which I was sure I could do good work: a Swiss valley surrounded by the Alps, a ranch in Spain’s Andalusia surrounded by gnarled olive trees, a fishing village on the Japanese seacoast, a remote lakefront in Canada, a woodland in Brazil, or a colorful English village south of London and convenient to the theaters and museums of my favorite city in the world.

But always I resisted the allurements, for I had developed a conviction that I needed to be home and was needed back there. I could never go into exile. Today I regret each heavenly spot I missed, but only as a sensible man feels about those dream girls he might have won had he tried.

While jumping from one major locale to another and seeing the very best of every country in which I worked—the most interesting villages, the most romantic natural settings and the most instructive people—I began formulating the following questions for evaluating the worth of a nation, and I continue to use them in my analyses and judgments of the nations of the world today. In the succeeding chapters I will evaluate our noble land in light of several of these questions, ones that concern what I believe are the most important services a nation should
provide its citizens. Does the nation provide an equitable distribution of wealth? Equal treatment for all minorities? Good educational services? Adequate health care? Good performance in these criteria is an indication of a nation’s ability to perform nobly.

Here are the questions I ask when assessing nations:

1. Has the nation been able to create a stable society?

I don’t like police states, but I do want my society to be firmly rooted and devoted to the great traditions of the region. I want it to sponsor a climate in which the individual citizen can go to bed at night with reasonable assurance that when he rises the next morning his world will still be there, and next year, and forty years down the line when his children can take over with the same expectation of stability. Fundamental to every judgment I make is my strong desire to enjoy, improve and pass along a stable society. I would sacrifice much to ensure this.

I reached my conclusion on the importance of stability in society early in my studies of American history, for although I had the deepest respect for Thomas Jefferson and would surely have been one of his strongest supporters at the close of the eighteenth century, as the new century began I’m sure I would have equally appreciated the strong, no-nonsense conservatism in fiscal and governmental matters that Alexander Hamilton espoused. Even then I would have cherished the stability that he provided and without which no society can properly flourish. I have worked in a score of emerging nations in which life would have been so much better in most respects if there had been a local Alexander Hamilton.

A vital factor in the stability of a nation’s society is the stability and strength of the society’s basic unit, the family. I shall devote an entire chapter to a discussion of how the current deterioration
in the traditional structure and strength of the American family is weakening the solidity of the entire nation.

2. Does the nation provide a reliable money system?

This is essential to the orderly progress of a nation. Individuals should have the right to expect that the money they save today will be of comparable value ten years later. Businesses can be strangled by wild fluctuations in currency.

But I am not so sure that the nation as a whole suffers too much from these fluctuations. I have watched explosive inflation in Germany and Brazil, and in a more limited sense in Japan, where I used to get 640 yen to one dollar, while now the rate is less than 100 to one. Nations, which coin and distribute their own money, can absorb such fluctuations, and I have begun to think that a sovereign nation cannot go bankrupt. The land is still there, so also are the people and the industries, and Japan and Germany have proved to the world that a nation can suffer brutal inflation and come roaring back much stronger than it was before. It is quite possible that the same might happen in America within twenty or thirty years.

But, of course, when such inflation strikes, it is the middle class of the population that suffers the most, and the lower and upper classes seem to survive with minimal damage. Since I am a member of the middle class, I shy away from those nations that cannot guarantee the stability of their currency.

3. Does the nation have a political system that ensures peaceful transitions of power from liberal to conservative and vice versa?

One of the glories of American and British government is the orderly way in which such transfers of power occur. In the United States we have an election on a Tuesday and by eleven o’clock that night the entire nation knows and accepts the fact that a new political power is now in charge. In nations like Italy and Israel,
with their proliferation of fragmented political parties, sometimes no one knows who won an election for the two or three weeks required to sort out the electoral mess.

A concerned friend in Israel told me: ‘We hold the election today and count the votes, without any conclusive result. So the real election begins tomorrow when the multiple various parties jockey for position. More often than you might think, some fringe fanatical party that won only three seats is able to dictate which of the major parties will take over, and then the entire nation is held at the mercy of those three votes. For God’s sake, Mr. Michener, never allow proportional representation to gain a foothold in your country. That way lies disaster.’

From watching many such elections in Europe, I have grown to deplore proportional representation and the nurturing of marginal parties. They lead to indecision, make clear-cut programs practically impossible, and prevent society from initiating a bold change in direction under a clear winner who has been given a mandate to govern. The volatile nature of third-party movements like the Ross Perot phenomenon of 1992 makes us susceptible to the worst abuses of pluralism and proportionalism.

I appreciate the system in New Zealand, where liberals and conservatives alternate with surprising frequency. At the start of any campaign in which one party is likely to oust the other, this is one of the first pledges made and honored: ‘We will preserve every good law our opponents have passed. What we’ll do is administer them more effectively.’ And power changes hands amicably, the hallmark of an effective political system.

I am aware that frequently in American history the brilliant philosophers of some third party have championed sensible improvements in government, improvements that the two major parties have been wise enough to appropriate. Opening the eyes and hearts of the major parties might be the acceptable role of
the third party. I can live with such a system, provided that the third party is not awarded an assured portion of the electoral vote.

4. Does the nation provide its citizens, especially the young, with adequate health services?

The events in the United States in recent years have shown how volatile this issue is and how far we are from a reasonable solution (I shall discuss this essential factor more fully later). In the meantime we are the world’s only major nation without a health system that protects everyone. The recent flood of persuasive ads in which doctors and nurses state that ‘America has the best system of health care in the world’ prompts the cynic to ask: ‘For whom?’

And just as society should hold itself responsible for giving a child a healthy start in life, so also should it provide some easy and honorable way to ease the ending of a person’s life. I do not mean the support only of nursing homes or retirement areas with nursing facilities; I mean the structuring of an entire society so that medical services and continued and loving care are kept available. I do not advocate any form of euthanasia, but I firmly believe that states should pass legislation making the thoughtful use of living wills available and operative. No patient should be obligated to undergo prolonged heroic measures to save his or her life when that life has deteriorated to the point when it is no longer meaningful.

5. Does the nation provide effective schools, colleges, universities and schools for industrial training?

I shall also discuss this question of education more fully later; education is so important that every year I live I give it increased weight in my judging system. Put simply, a nation that allows its schools to become ineffective dooms itself to a secondary position when competing with the workforces of other nations, such
as Japan and Germany, that have not only maintained educational standards but improved them. An effective school system is a preeminent obligation for any society; children have enormous potential that can never be brought into effective use without the most careful and persistent training. The son of a Neanderthal family had to learn to make arrowheads and trail wild animals. And for the child born in America today it is essential that he master the computer.

6. Does the nation provide free libraries?

Of vital importance is whether the nation provides free libraries at which adults can continue to educate themselves after graduation or to help them educate themselves if they have not finished school or college. I shudder whenever I hear that a community has closed its library. With the revolutionary changes occurring in our workforce, and with radically new demands being made by potential employers, the people young and old who do not continue educating themselves run the risk of becoming unemployed or unemployable. ‘Learn and earn’ could well become the mantra for the oncoming generations in all the nations of the world and especially in the United States.

7. Does the nation provide adequate employment opportunities for the young person as he or she approaches adulthood?

Obtaining a first job is a crucial step in the maturation of a teenager who has just left high school or a young man or woman who has been graduated from college. The leap into adult citizenry starts with a job. Young people must not be deprived of the vital opportunity of working for a living, of actually supporting themselves and perhaps a family and of becoming contributors to the nation’s wealth as well as consumers of it. The Ph.D. scholar who cannot find employment can become a social menace; any young person who is denied work and a living wage can become a walking time bomb.