THE LORD’S WORK
America’s exceptional attitude toward work is based on our Judeo-Christian tradition and was further developed in the writings of philosophers such as John Locke.
In his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, philosopher and author Michael Novak explains that “Judaism and Christianity are distinctive among the world religions because they understand salvation as a vocation in history. It is the religious task of Jews and Christians to change the world as well as to purify their own souls; to build up ‘the Kingdom of God’ in their own hearts and through the work of their hands.”3
Novak later explains the theological implications of John Locke’s insights into work and creation:It may have been John Locke (1632–1704) who first articulated the new possibility for economic organization. Locke observed that a field of, say, strawberries, highly favored by nature, left to itself, might produce what seemed to be an abundance of strawberries. Subject to cultivation and care by practical intelligence, however, such a field might be made to produce not simply twice but tenfold as many strawberries. In short, Locke concluded, nature is far wealthier in possibility than human beings had ever drawn attention to before.
Permit me to put Locke’s point in theological terms. Creation left to itself is incomplete, and humans are called to be co-creators with God, bringing forth the potentialities the Creator has hidden. Creation is full of secrets waiting to be discovered, riddles which human intelligence is expected by the Creator to unlock.
… After Locke … [n]o longer were humans to imagine their lot as passive, long-suffering, submissive. They were called upon to be inventive, prudent, farseeing, hardworking—in order to realize by their obedience to God’s call the building up and perfecting of God’s Kingdom on earth.4
America provided the perfect laboratory and proving ground where this moral vision of work could be put into practice.
Work is one of our most significant sources of personal identity. From the time of the Apostles, Christians everywhere have sought to reconcile their identity and their work with the will of God. They have placed the highest priority on discerning and obeying God’s call in their lives. The famous opening of Augustine’s Confessions (397–98 AD) summarizes this yearning beautifully, as Augustine prays to God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
Throughout American history, we find the religious-tinged view that work is a moral good in and of itself. “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” President Coolidge declared, adding, “The man who works there worships there.” Henry Ford was even more adamant: “Work is the salvation of the human race, morally, physically, socially.”5 At the turn of the twentieth century, the sociologist Max Weber memorably described this kind of industriousness as “the Protestant work ethic.”
Alexis de Tocqueville found that a “kind of spiritual energy coursed through America’s mechanics and artisans, farmers and carpenters, men and women of every station who felt charged to make their own world.”6 Ken Burns’ documentary on building the Brooklyn Bridge describes this same American energy and work ethic: “People in every country in Europe received letters back from recent emigrants to America, all making the same point: ‘Well, it is true you can make yourself rich in this new country, but if we had ever worked this hard back home, we could have gotten rich there too!’”7
AN AMERICAN MERITOCRACY
As Benjamin Franklin observed, in America merit has always determined a man’s worth. Merit serves as the great leveler, as even those born into difficult circumstances can—and do—succeed through hard work and intelligence. As George Washington asserted in 1784, “A people … who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see, and who will pursue their advantages, may achieve almost anything.”8
To achieve “almost anything,” the American people needed a system that rewarded work and risk-taking, incentivized discovery, and encouraged commerce. God’s gifts were not to be hidden away, but illuminated by work and enterprise enabled by the flame of liberty. Such a system requires secure property rights, minimal government interference in trade, and an outlet for innovation and experimentation. It rewards knowledge and understanding with success, and in the process it affirms the dignity of the individual and his unique talents.
In colonial America, with its abundance of free land and relatively small population, labor was always in short supply. American wage levels and job opportunities could not be matched in Europe, providing powerful incentives for migration to the New World, especially among refugees from Europe’s religious wars.
The vast majority of colonists were middle- and lower-income Protestants. The colonies grew wealthy producing crops for export to European and Caribbean markets. Virginia quickly became solvent through the tobacco trade, while other colonies exported grain, hides, lumber, and later, rice, indigo, and cotton to European manufacturers, mainly in Britain.
America’s system of free enterprise contrasted sharply with the mercantilist system—a state-controlled economy of cartels and monopolies—that stunted the European economies. State-run consortiums and legal restrictions hindered the formation of European companies, diminished wealth creation, and suppressed economic dynamism, as the economies were designed to funnel as much state revenue as possible through a few favored hands.
In colonial America there was no entrenched, ruling elite that could steer the nation’s economy to their own ends. Americans thus enjoyed unrivaled freedom to innovate and to reap the rewards of their own enterprise. Under these circumstances, the American colonies became the world’s richest nation per capita and the undisputed leader in innovation and social mobility.
PRIVATE PROPERTY: THE LINCHPIN OF A FREE ECONOMY
John Locke proclaimed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and “property,” rather than the “pursuit of happiness.” For Locke, man’s ability to keep the fruits of his own labors—his property—was a matter of justice. The term “property” also referred to private property, or land, which Locke believed should be protected by government from the insecurity of the “state of nature.”
America’s earliest settlers learned the importance of private property the hard way; as historian Daniel Boorstin noted, “America began as a sobering experience. The colonies were a disproving ground for utopias.” 9 Whimsical “planners” of the Virginia Company of London initially required settlers at both Jamestown and Plymouth to agree to work collectively for seven years before they would receive private plots of land. The policy led to starvation in both colonies, which only recovered after settlers received private land titles. The practical lesson was clear: if a man owned his own land and was responsible for his own family, he was far more productive than if he was expected to contribute to a communal account, with no direct reward for working harder, more productively, or more creatively.
This lesson was applicable beyond those two settlements; it held true throughout colonial America and has been confirmed countless times across the world, from the Soviet Union’s famine-inducing collectivization of agriculture to the food shortages, inflation, and blackouts that have plagued Venezuela since property rights became a casualty of Hugo Chavez’s socialist “revolution.”
Secure property rights also promote essential capital investment, which makes available the tools and equipment that make workers more productive. The resulting rise in productivity boosts wages over time and raises a nation’s standard of living. With property rights secure, investors know that the capital they develop and accumulate will not be stolen from them. That encourages more savings and investment, which promotes increasing prosperity.
The patriots at Lexington and Concord were farmers defending their land and their rights against the British invaders. Subsequent generations pushed ever westward into new lands. In 1787 the Founders agreed to incorporate the old North-West Territory—the land between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi—into the new nation. Then in 1803 President Thomas Jefferson nearl
y doubled America’s land mass by purchasing the Louisiana Territory, stretching roughly from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, from Napoleon for $15 million. Thousands of adventurers, frontiersmen, and farmers followed Lewis and Clark into the territory, and eventually the country was settled all the way to the Pacific coast. Property was a tangible asset enabling men of the most modest means to achieve financial independence and secure a direct stake in their own futures and in America’s as well.
It took nearly a century for American historians to realize that the process of exploring, settling, and developing all that territory had fundamentally impacted the character of the American people. In 1893, a young professor from the University of Wisconsin, Frederick Jackson Turner, delivered a short paper on American history at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Turner stated his thesis in a single sentence: “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.”10
He elaborated on the connection between the frontier and the American character:To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good or evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity.11
Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” became one of the most influential explanations of American Exceptionalism ever written, deeply affecting the teaching of history and spawning a popular genre—the Western—that would encompass literature, film, and television. Situating land, work, and property rights at the core of the American character, the thesis explained the unique circumstances and habits that still define our nation today.
THANK HAMILTON
The United States transformed from an agricultural country into the world’s preeminent commercial and industrial power thanks to policies developed by Alexander Hamilton and embraced by George Washington. The two men worked together in a remarkable partnership from the end of the Revolution to the Constitutional Convention and then through Washington’s two terms of office.
Washington and Hamilton had endured eight years of war with the British Empire. They knew that the lack of American industry and financial strength had lengthened the war and made Americans dependent on foreigners for the equipment and finances needed to win freedom. They also knew that national security required a national economy and national finances.
As chronicled in Ron Chernow’s superb biography, Alexander Hamilton understood that a complex, efficient economy has to be underpinned by a specific set of rights: property rights (including protection for intellectual property through patents and copyrights), freedom of contract, and the rule of law (including an independent judiciary for settling disputes). When these rights are secure, producers can focus on areas where they have the greatest comparative advantage.12 According to The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith’s seminal work on free enterprise, such a division of labor is the foundation of modern prosperity.
Hamilton also identified other crucial ingredients for a nation’s economic success: minimum taxation and minimum regulatory barriers (a condition that incentivizes increased production), and sound money tethered to real world values (which provides a stable medium of exchange and a stable medium for savings and investment). Overall, Hamilton understood that nations rise or fall over seemingly mundane issues like the rate of interest required to secure foreign loans, the availability of foreign capital, and implementing the policies that most effectively encourage work. As Daniel Defoe wrote, “It is not the longest sword that conquers, but the longest purse.”
In his Report on Public Credit, Hamilton presented a detailed blueprint of the government’s fiscal machinery, wrapped in a broad political and economic vision. In this renowned study, Hamilton maintained that the government’s debt, largely incurred from fighting the Revolutionary War, was the “price of liberty” and had to be paid off, both for economic reasons and as a matter of simple morality. Hamilton’s advice, of course, has some resonance today, when the United States is burdened by a $14 trillion national debt—a figure the Founders surely would have regarded as not only economically harmful, but immoral.
Later, in his Report on Manufactures, Hamilton laid the policy foundation for the great American industrial boom. Arguing against advocates of the agrarian idyll like Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton claimed America’s focus on agriculture was not a natural by-product of geography and culture, but the result of overt protectionism by European manufacturers who hoped to keep the American economy subservient to their industries. Hamilton cited the colonies’ inability to manufacture essential goods during the Revolution to explain the importance of increasing America’s manufacturing capability. He then correctly predicted that both manufacturers and industrial workers would flock to a country with rich natural resources, low taxes, and the rule of law.
The Constitution’s ratification firmly implanted the rule of law in America, while the government’s assumption of the states’ war debts—a move advocated by Hamilton—increased investor confidence in the new country. But these events and policies merely created the framework for economic success. The actual transformation of America’s agricultural economy into the world’s primary industrial powerhouse was enacted, first and foremost, through the hard work of the American people.
The United States had been essentially bankrupt as the Constitution took effect, but thanks to Hamilton’s foresight and the American work ethic, just two years later George Washington was able to write, “The United States enjoy a scene of prosperity and tranquility under the new government that could hardly have been hoped for.… Our public credit stands on that [high] ground which three years ago it would have been considered as a species of madness to have foretold.”
A SAFE HARBOR FOR INNOVATION
In 2005, Popular Mechanics magazine conducted a survey to determine the world’s top fifty inventions of the last half-century. The experts considered everything from the polio vaccine to ATMs to digital music as they weighed in on which innovations had the biggest impact on the world. When the results were released, thirty-seven of the top fifty—almost 75 percent—were developed by American scientists, American firms, or American universities.13
This is no coincidence.
The rights and freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution have provided the invaluable tools for America to become the most innovative and productive society in history. The government provides the framework, and curious and courageous Americans—sometimes from the least likely places—do the rest.
Recall that it was a pair of bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, the Wright brothers, who experimented on their own for years until they invented the airplane and revolutionized the way we travel. And it was a telegraph operator with a lifelong love of tinkering who became one of history’s most prolific inventors—among other things, Thomas Edison made the first commercially viable light bulb, the first phonograph, and the first major electricity distribution network.
The Founders knew that for the United States to become the creative and technological center of the world, Americans would need the opportunity to innovate without fear of anyone, including government officials, stealing their discovery, idea, or invention. With the Constitution’s property protections, including the explicit protection of intellectual property, these guarantees are secure. The government has no right to confiscate a person’s property without due process, and in fact the government is obligated to protect property against those who would encroach upon it.
At the core of American Exceptionalism is the notion that one does not need to be from a wealthy
background, or possess a fancy degree, or have the support of the government, in order to develop and pursue a great idea. By creating a free-enterprise system that embodies this notion, America has not only cultivated its own great thinkers and innovators, but has attracted the best and brightest immigrants to lend their talents to the American project.
Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born inventor of the telephone, and Nikola Tesla, the Austria-born father of electric power systems, both immigrated to America and eventually became U.S. citizens. Each was drawn by the strong property rights, free markets, and access to capital that only America provided. Later, in the 1930s, some of Europe’s most brilliant minds, including Albert Einstein, fled tyrannical governments and settled in America, where they found personal and academic freedom. More recently, new Americans from East and South Asia have been crucial to the technological innovation in the Silicon Valley since the 1960s, and to this day, tens of thousands of gifted foreigners seek out the limited number of U.S. student and high-skilled visas.
What makes America so unique? Our markets and institutions reward talent and hard work. Our Constitution and rule of law guarantee one’s right to the fruits of their labor. And our government plays a limited but critical role in ensuring that anyone can take risks, knowing their property and innovations will be well protected.
A LOST WAR
For the Founders, work was endowed with moral value. More than a necessity for physical survival, work contributed purpose and meaning to life.14 These values helped Americans to endure countless hardships and sacrifices during the Great Depression and World War II.
After the war, America’s estimated poverty rate fell from 32 percent in 1950, to 22.4 percent in 1959, to 12.1 percent in 1969. But in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson famously announced the War on Poverty. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation reports that from 1965 to 2008, total spending on this “war” reached nearly $16 trillion in 2008 dollars, more than twice the cost of all military conflicts from the American Revolution to today.15 And what did we get in return? Soon after the War on Poverty programs were adopted, the years-long decline in American poverty suddenly stopped.
A Nation Like No Other Page 11