by Sarah Palin
That’s a seductive, edgy message for a Hollywood movie, but how does it work in real life? Time and again, real-life American success stories are of people doing the opposite—of working hard instead of dropping out; of taking advantage of opportunities instead of thumbing their noses at them; of beating the odds instead of becoming a statistic.
One of these stories that particularly moves me is that of Booker T. Washington. Born a slave, Washington defied the odds to become one of the greatest men of his time. No one thought to build this self-taught young man’s self-esteem. In fact, society had nothing but the lowest expectations of him. But Washington had something that too many of the kids being taught to chant “I am somebody” today do not: a positive attitude toward demanding, physical labor instilled in him by a wise, devoted mother and a few remarkable teachers.
In his autobiography, Up from Slavery, Washington tells the story of how he gained entrance to a school established for former slaves a few years after the Emancipation Proclamation. After a harrowing journey from his native West Virginia to the school in Hampton, Virginia—a trip that included being turned away from an inn for whites only and being forced to sleep under a wooden sidewalk in Richmond while he worked to earn money to continue his trip—Washington finally reached the school.
I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I could only get a chance to show what was in me.
After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: “The adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it.” It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.
I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head teacher. She was a “Yankee” woman who knew just where to look for dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls, and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked, “I guess you will do to enter this institution.”
I was one of the happiest souls on earth. The sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction. I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed.
What made such a lasting impression on Booker T. Washington wasn’t just that hard work was something for him, a former slave, to do to get ahead. It was the example of others he came in contact with. In his book he tells the story of being asked to come back to school early one year to help prepare the building for the return of the students.
During these two weeks I was taught a lesson which I shall never forget. Miss Mackie [the headmistress who had asked him to help out] was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured families of the North, and yet for two weeks she worked by my side cleaning windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order, and what not. She felt that things would not be in condition for the opening of school unless every window-pane was perfectly clean, and she took the greatest satisfaction in helping to clean them herself. The work which I have described she did every year that I was at Hampton.
It was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her education and social standing could take such delight in performing such service, in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate race. Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.
. . . at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.
Washington went on to found the Tuskegee Institute to produce teachers to educate newly freed African Americans in poor, rural communities. In the face of systemic racism and official segregation, Washington had every incentive to, as the producers of American Beauty might put it, give the finger to The Man. Instead, he worked to pass on to others in need the virtues that had given him success. He didn’t take the easy path; he took the hard path. He earned his success and his self-esteem. And that, in the end, made all the difference. This is the lesson our children need: every able-bodied American should be expected to work, and your work ethic gives you wings!
It’s very easy to imagine the reaction of one of today’s pampered American teenagers at being asked to sweep a floor or do some other menial job. We have promised these young people meaningful, rewarding careers without remembering to teach them that working hard and earning an honest day’s pay is, or ought to be, rewarding in itself.
Did you ever wonder where the producers of American Idol come up with the seemingly endless supply of people who can’t sing but are deluded enough to get up in front of a national television audience and screech out a song anyway? Many of the contestants’ ability (or, more accurately, inability) to carry a tune reminds me uncomfortably of me. But they get up and sing anyway and are unaccepting and horrified when the judges’ critiques begin. Chalk some of them up as victims of the cult of self-esteem. No one they’ve encountered in their lives—from their parents to their teachers to their president—wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth. So they grew up convinced they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson.
On American Idol, of course, these self-esteem-enhanced but talent-deprived performers eventually learn the truth. After they’ve embarrassed themselves for the benefit of the producers, they are told in no uncertain terms that they, in fact, can’t sing, regardless of what they’ve been told by others. But in the wider world, these kinds of instances of hard-truth-telling are increasingly rare. Instead of eventually confronting the limits of their inflated egos when it comes to paying the rent and putting food on the table, Americans are increasingly being told not to worry about it. Someone else will provide for them. I think a large part of the appeal of American Idol is the spectacle of Simon Cowell pouring cold water over the heads of these young people. Cowell can be a little harsh at times, but he upholds the highest standards, and something in us recognizes and responds to that.
Unfortunately, Cowell is almost alone in his willingness to tell hard truths. Instead, a growing chorus of voices is t
rying to convince our kids that hard work isn’t necessary anymore, that they’re entitled to a lengthening list of benefits paid for by others, and that they don’t have to accept the consequences of their actions when those consequences are bad. These voices seem to think that the purpose of government—the purpose of America—isn’t to promise equal opportunity but to produce equal outcomes. If we all just magically had the same number of material possessions, we’d all be happy. And their preferred way to bring about this magical situation is by redistributing income. During the campaign, Obama called it “spreading the wealth.” Whatever the term, it means government taking from some and giving to others.
The problem with this plan is that Americans don’t think it’s . . . well, American. To their credit, most Americans don’t view their lives in zero-sum terms; they don’t see their neighbor’s success as their failure. In Europe, politicians have an easier time stirring up class envy to justify redistributing wealth through high taxes. Not so much here. One of the roots of our exceptionalism as a nation (as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out 150 years ago) is that we are not obsessed with class differences; everyone wants to get to the top. That’s the reason we work so hard.
But it’s not necessarily the money we’re after; it’s the satisfaction of achievement. In his excellent new book The Battle, American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks explains how, despite what Washington may think, Americans aren’t motivated by the promise of a free lunch. Citing loads of survey data, Brooks argues that what makes Americans happy isn’t just having money and status, but earning money and status.
Earned success means the ability to create value honestly—not by winning the lottery, not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn’t even mean making money itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek explosive value through innovation, hard work, and passion. But it isn’t just related to commerce. Earned success is also what parents experience when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, and what artists feel when they create something of beauty. People who believe they have earned success—measured in whatever life currency they want—are happy. They are much happier than people who don’t believe they’ve earned their success . . .
If money without earned success does not bring happiness, then redistributing money won’t make for a happier America. Knowing as we do that earning success is the key to happiness, rather than simply getting more money, the goal of our political system should be this: to give all Americans the greatest opportunities possible to succeed based on their hard work and merit. And that’s exactly what the free enterprise system does—makes earned success possible for the most people. This is the liberty your founders wrote about, the liberty that enables the true pursuit of happiness.
Above all, what Todd and I want for Trig and all our children is happiness. We know that that means they’re going to have to work hard, and we’re trying to prepare them for lives that will consist of moments of both success and failure—and, more important, well-deserved contentment.
But in this endeavor, we are working against a significant headwind. What happened to the old-fashioned American ethic of hard work and selflessness, of trying to build a better country for your kids than the one you inherited? I think Americans still believe in this, despite all the promises of a free lunch being dangled in front of them by their government.
There is narcissism in our leaders in Washington today. There’s a quasi-religious feeling to the message coming from them. They are trying to convince us that not only are they our saviors, but that we are our saviors—not hard work, not accomplishment, just “believing in ourselves” and what we can accomplish together through government. As candidate Obama proclaimed on Super Tuesday 2008, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.”
I believe in a humbler, less self-involved America. I believe in that simple, commonsense wisdom that has come down to us through the ages: Everything that is worthwhile comes through effort. There is no free lunch. Anybody who tries to tell you otherwise is selling something—usually something paid for by your tax dollars.
In the Middle Ages there were hucksters called alchemists who claimed that they could take worthless metals and combine them to make gold. They were frauds. But America has an alchemy of her own, and it’s real: it’s when the liberty created by the system of our Founders combines with our work ethic. The result is Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and the most prosperous and generous nation on the face of the earth. We have to preserve in our children not just a reverence for our founding liberty, but a willingness to dig deep and work hard in order to take advantage of that liberty. They can learn these lessons on the playing field, in their classrooms, or around the family dining table, but they need to learn them. Because this is the road not just to their material well-being, but also to their happiness. If I can give Trig anything in return for the many gifts he’s given me, it is a country whose citizens still know how to dig deep and whose government still honors their efforts.
Seven
The Indispensable Support of Freedom
One morning, the summer after I turned eleven, I walked out of my summer camp cabin in Big Lake, Alaska, surveyed my surroundings and had a life-changing realization. It’s one of the wonderful things about Alaska: When you’re there, you’re never without inspiration. All you have to do is step outside and look around at the majestic peaks, the midnight sun, the wild waters and wildlife.
I’d done it dozens of times before, but somehow that morning was different. I walked outside, looked out at the Chugach Mountains to one side and Mt. McKinley to the other and it hit me: if God knew what He was doing when He created Alaska, then He certainly had some ideas in mind when He created a speck like me. It was then that I realized that surely God has a purpose for all of us—and He expects a lot from us! From that day forward, I put my life in God’s hands. Feeling reborn, I moved forward, finding out that not only will faith get you through tough times, but it will also guide you in the good times.
Relying on a foundation of faith, I’ve always believed each man is created with a purpose. And it’s when we are calm and still that we can sense our true calling. For me, the thing tugging at my heart was a desire to be of service to others—my neighbors, my community, my state, and eventually my country. That desire pointed me in the right direction (some would say the “right” direction). It provided me with what has become my life’s work.
For the past twenty years, since I’ve been in public life, I’ve thought a lot about how my faith relates to my service. Unlike in Western Europe, where religion is viewed as strictly a private affair, faith is an active and sometimes complicated presence in America. Religion is at once deeply personal and inescapably public here. We cherish our freedom to worship—or not worship—as we choose. We rightly regard what is conventionally known as our Constitution’s “establishment” clause separating church and state as one of the pillars of our democracy. But at the same time we see faith’s power to transform lives and organized religion’s benefit to society. I know from my time as Alaska’s governor, for example, that volunteer clergy in prisons and law enforcement provided an invaluable service. For this benefit and for more personal reasons, we seek leaders and institutions that reflect the morality of our faith, and we rely on faith to make our free and open society function properly.
Does that mean we’re a Judeo-Christian nation, solely because most Americans believe in Judeo-Christian tenets? No. But it does mean that the faith of our Founding Fathers shaped our nation in critical ways. They created a country that, in George Washington’s words, relies on faith as an “indispensable support.” They explicitly disavowed government establishing any particular religion, but they unmistakably relied on religion to produce the kinds of citizens tha
t could live successfully in a state of political freedom. And this, I firmly believe, is one of the things that has always made us an exceptional nation.
When I was growing up, John F. Kennedy was a model that many looked back to when it came to religion and public life. It happened before I was born, but I later learned about Kennedy’s 1960 campaign for president in which his status as a Roman Catholic subjected him to smears and religious bigotry. It seems incredible today that this was even an issue, but it was highly controversial at the time. Catholicism had long been held in suspicion by the Protestant majority, who feared that a Catholic president would secretly take orders from the Pope. Even in 1960 many people didn’t believe that a Catholic could—and many didn’t believe a Catholic should—be elected president.
JFK gave a famous speech in Houston trying to put the issue to rest. I remember being taught that Kennedy’s speech succeeded in the best possible way: it reconciled public service and religion without compromising either. All candidates had to do, the conventional wisdom now dictated, was what Kennedy did. They could hold fast to their religion and not worry about the press or the voters.
But what was it, exactly, that JFK did? As an adult I’ve revisited Kennedy’s famous speech and have discovered that it is actually quite different from the way it is often described. Instead of reconciling his religious identity with his role in public life, Kennedy entirely separated the two. “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” he said unequivocally. In the best American tradition, he nobly defended religious tolerance and condemned official governmental preference of any faith over any other. But his language was more defensive than is portrayed today, in tone and content. Instead of telling the country how his faith had enriched him, he dismissed it as a private matter meaningful only to him. And rather than spelling out how faith groups had provided life-changing services and education to millions of Americans, he repeatedly objected to any government assistance to religious schools.