More American Than Baseball

Disclaimer: This column didn’t start out as a liberal polemic, but that’s what it became.

Throughout his 2004 campaign, George Bush sneered “Massachusetts” like it was a four-letter word. Not since the elder George Bush deployed the same thirteen-letter epithet against Michael Dukakis had a state been appropriated as an adjective to connote such out-of-touch, weak-kneed, secularist, elitist, tax-hiking Un-Americanism. Tragically, though maybe not surprisingly, it resonated on both occasions.

It has been charged against us, time and again, that the Commonwealth is grossly out-of-step with American values: home to a tax-and-spend orgy that would make Sweden tremble, the only state in the union where card-carrying members of the homosexual agenda can exchange rings with one hand while axing the traditional family with the other. Our leader? Teddy Kennedy. Our purported crimes? Windsurfing, eating sushi and endorsing the Communist platform.

In short, some of our compatriots—not least of all the president—seek to reduce us to a caricature, a stereotype as ugly and shallow as the toothless Mississippi hillbilly. We’re blasted for being so far from the mainstream that we’re standing on the “Left Bank” with John Kerry, playing accordions and looking French. But this belies the truth.

We invented the stream.

The list of Massachusetts firsts is dizzying: the nation’s first college, published newspaper, published novel, free public school, public park, public library, Thanksgiving, railroad, subway and basketball game, to name a few. And naturally there are the local trailblazers: Paul Revere, Sam and John Adams, John F. Kennedy ’40, etc. But the real essence of this place lies in something less quantifiable—the V-word, if you will.

Massachusetts is the cradle of American Values: liberty, entrepreneurship, equality, patriotism. From the Boston Tea Party to this week’s election, the Bay State has proven itself the reliable defender of American ideals before there was even a formal America. The same democratic impulses that spawned the colonial town meeting live on in a vibrant local government and the spirit of civic-mindedness. The same emphasis on equality and justice that gave us the nation’s first abolitionist newspaper endure in our continuing quest for civil rights. So, after an election in which a plurality of voters touted “values” as their foremost concern, how were our quintessentially American values so demonized and rebuked?

In short, Bush and his cronies all too ably grasped one element of the storied Massachusetts tradition that we’ve since parted with: Puritanical zealotry. For many a follower of Bush, the only values are “moral values,” a.k.a. religious values, a.k.a. conservative Christian religious values. These voters are likely to side with such newly minted senators as Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who believes that “abortionists” should be punished with the death penalty, and Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who insists that single mothers should not be permitted to teach public school. Fanaticism reigns as in a twenty-first century Salem—but I’m pretty sure that even Roger Chillingsworth would have endorsed stem-cell research.

No matter what George Bush tells you, practicing intolerance, turning your back on the poor and ailing, destroying the environment and alienating the global community are not American values. In fact, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would be vomiting all over themselves if they had to watch President Bush’s reelection speech yesterday. I’m personally sick of the conservative monopoly on values; they’re the ones who are desperately out of touch. And if, perchance, I am out-of-touch, then I don’t really want to be in touch.

As utterly defeated as I feel after this election, I’m clearly not going to end on this note. Mercifully, there is one more Massachusettsan and American value that I’ve saved for the end: perseverance. In John Kerry’s graceful and touching concession speech yesterday, he offered us these words of solace: “Don’t lose faith. What you did made a difference…we go on to make a difference another day. I promise you, that time will come, the time will come, the election will come, when your work…will change the world.”

And for a lesson in perseverance, we turn to none other than the Red Sox. Those who would chastise me for juxtaposing the most resounding political blow of our generation with baseball, I say two things: First, sports are a good, if trite, metaphor for life; and second, fandom can teach us a lot about the human spirit. “The time will come” became a Red Sox mantra. Down and out for 86 years, millions of fans spanning generations didn’t stop cheering. Down three games to the Yankees, the Sox triumphed and went on to beat St. Louis, claiming the championship in the most American sport of all.

In politics and life, we need not be relegated to the sidelines. Steadfastly sticking to our values, we can politely flip off anyone who doesn’t like them, learn from the past, and, as my Grandpa says, keep everylastingly at it. That is the Massachusettsan, the American, Way.

Jared M. Seeger ’05 is a government concentrator in Pforzheimer House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.