A Letter to America

David Boren And The Urgency Of Memory

David Boren's short book is cast in the form of a letter to all Americans. Boren is a former Rhodes Scholar, Governor of Oklahoma, and Senator. He resigned his Senate seat to become President of the University of Oklahoma, a position he has held since 1995. While serving as a University President, Boren teaches an introductory class in American government to freshmen. The book is simply and eloquently written and, for this reader, comes from the heart.

Boren's letter conveys a sense of urgency. He finds the United States mired in a host of problems, including the lack of a sense of direction and purpose and pervasive cynicism about the political process. Boren finds that the position of the United States in the world is on the decline. Boren's goal is to revitalize the promise of America. His basic programme can be seen in comments he makes about the United States policy beginning with the Marshall Plan following WW II where " generosity,vision, political courage, and bipartisanship came together to help America lead the world and ultimately to end the Cold War without a third world war." (pp.16-17)

In short chapters of his letter Boren considers foreign policy, excessive partisanship in the halls of Congress and in the Executive Branch, the corruption resulting from exponentially increasing expenditures on political campaigning financed by special interest groups, domestic issues such as deficit spending, health care, and education, and the increased polarization in the United States between the wealthy and the poor, to the detriment of the middle class. In each of these issues, Boren concludes that the "generosity, vision, political courage, and bipartisanship" that characterized America of a different era are sadly lacking. Boren diagnoses what he believes are the sources of the problems and offers suggestions for their resolution. As is to be expected in a short account, Boren is more impressive in identifying problems than in proposing detailed solutions. His goal is to help his readers see the problems and work through for themselves to answers.

The single theme that pervades this book is the need for improving education at all levels of the American educational system and of all subjects, both scientific and humanistic. Boren recognizes that a simple glut of information does not necessarily lead to knowledge and that knowledge itself needs to be expanded and deepened to become wisdom. Boren points out that young Americans in particular know little of the history of our country and of its political institutions. This lack of knowledge consists of an ignorance of particular facts (such as that the United States fought Germany in WW II or that George Washington was the General at Yorktown) as well as knowledge of the Constitution and of the roles of Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary in the United States government and of the nature of the Federal system. With this lack of knowledge comes a lack of understanding of the nature of our country and of the meaning and character of the American experiment. Whatever the merits may be of Boren's specific policy proposals, I think he is surely correct that Americans need to be better educated and the secondary school and university level in their understanding of American history and the American experience.

In the opening and concluding sections of his letter, Boren discusses a lecture given in 2002 by Bruce Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Cole delivered a lecture at New York University titled "The Urgency of Memory" in which he stressed the importance of Americans returning to humanistic studies to understand themselves and their place in the world following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Boren quotes the following passage from Cole's address. (p.15)

"A nation that does not know why it exists or what it stands for cannot be expected to long endure. We must recover from the amnesia that shrouds our history in darkness, our principles in confusion, and our future in uncertainty. We cannot expect that a nation which has lost its memory will keep its vision. We cannot hope that forgetting our past will enhance our focus for the future."

Boren's letter can be read as a commentary on these words of Cole. By learning to understand and appreciate our nation, to recognize its achievements and its failures and to find meaning in the American experience, Americans can identify and surmount the problems that beset our beloved country.

Robin Friedman