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The Future of the American Frontier
The most intriguing attempt to harness the myth in recent memory was John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, which was the core concept in his acceptance speech as the Democratic Party’s nominee and throughout his 1960 campaign. He recalled the past in the conventional way—the pioneers who settled the American West “were not the captives of their own doubts, nor the prisoners of their own price tags,” he told the convention. “They were determined to make the new world strong and free—an example to the world, to overcome its hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from within and without.” But then he went on with a more interesting twist:
Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. . . . Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink from that new frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric. . . . I believe that the times require imagination and courage and perseverance. I’m asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier.
Kennedy still used the older mythic call as a “race for mastery of the sky . . . , the ocean . . . , the far side of space, and the inside of men’s minds,” but the notion that the frontier was not geographical or spatial, but one of applied knowledge and of human relations, was an innovation and one that has not been surpassed. That Kennedy and his cohort did not live up to this new inflection of the frontier myth scarcely needs noting, but the rhetorical framing of a new kind of frontier, a half century later, might have finally met its moment.
Using the metaphor as a way of galvanizing both the public and our political leaders to adopt new challenges—challenges to be explored and tamed, from which public good can be extracted—may be more plausible given what we now can see about global limits. The need to arrest climate change with sustainable development is just such a challenge, one that must broadly mobilize society. How to reshape our politics to confront this challenge is not a problem with an obvious solution. The frontiers of science or knowledge are hoary notions, but as a counterpoint to the decaying frontier myth, they possess renewed vibrancy—and are especially potent if linked to the new mission as a heroic feat. The hero is the human exponent of the frontier myth, and all heroes embody qualities that speak to the anxieties of the age. Self-sacrifice, an innate sense of purpose, physical or intellectual prowess, and a willingness to confront the dangers of the frontier—all are qualities of the hero.
Meeting the environmental challenge requires more than colossal investments in science and intensive diplomacy; it mandates a shift in the way we think about U.S. goals, our range of action, and our commitment to values beyond self-enrichment. It requires collective, heroic action, the kind that can move a society in times of peril. And it requires a new lens on the world, one that sees in developing countries not bounty but common needs and aspirations. The environmental crisis binds us globally in ways that no previous cataclysm ever has—not war, not epidemics, not other natural disasters. If the oil addiction of the industrial countries is not reversed soon, the resource wars we have suffered already will intensify along with the choking effects on air and oceans. If China and India do not reduce their rate of growth in carbon emissions, the earth’s ecosystem will be dangerously degraded. If Brazilian rainforests continue to be mowed down, we lose precious and possibly irreplaceable sources of oxygen to refresh the atmosphere. If sustainable development cannot be fostered in Mexico and Africa and the Middle East, the migrations to the industrial world will induce intolerable social and economic stress. These are collective problems by dint of their inexorably collective outcomes. And in this, the world now differs radically from the one that was merely a frontier for exploitation.
When we look to the three signals of how the frontier has closed—the warrior ethos, bonanza economics, and environmental limits—it is apparent that all three are equally culpable and equally important to a transformative politics. Fortunately, the dominant myth of the frontier is not the only distinctly American modus vivendi, as leaders as far apart in time as John Winthrop and John Kennedy demonstrate. Our political and cultural leaders today, however, have rarely hinted at the imperative to reconstruct our mental architecture of the world and our place in it. If the world is essentially regarded as a font of anti-American terrorism or rivalry, as a social, political, and physical wilderness to be tamed, then we will be battling in the diminishing space our old habits have forced us into. That frontier is closing. The daunting but necessary task of redefining our horizons is upon us.
Where to start? Perhaps at the beginning. Winthrop’s line from his 1630 sermon, “we shall be as a City upon a Hill,” is frequently intoned to suggest that America is uniquely gifted and providential. Countless politicians have sermonized with this gratifying image and used it, erroneously, to celebrate belligerence, individualism, and aggrandizement. Looking at Winthrop’s whole text presents a different sense of what the meaning of that phrase might be. He implored the Puritans to
do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God, for this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities, we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality, we must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work, our Community as members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
There was more, of course, and not all of it gentle and meek, but it is remarkable how humble and communitarian and ascetic his vision was, a vision reflecting the ethos of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony. More remarkable still is how suited such an ethos could be again. So the answer to the question “What frontier now?” may be to return to the humility of the first frontier.
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