"This is America," said the father whose small son, his skull crushed, was fighting for life in an Oklahoma City hospital. "We shouldn't have to run scared. We shouldn't be afraid to take a 2- or 3-year-old to the day care center."
Spoken in the somber aftermath of the Federal Building bombing April 19, 1995, the father's words resonate beyond that single act of evil and capture a larger national mood. In recent years, running scared has become a typical response to life in the United States.
Throughout this century, peace and prosperity have been the principal and enduring objectives of the nation. Yet today, with the United States unchallenged as the only superpower in the post-Cold War world and with the economy statistically measuring strong, fear and worry haunt Americans as never before. Doubts crystallize into questions about who we are as people and where we might be going in the future.
Think of our time as an Age of Insecurity: So many traditional patterns have been broken that we nervously wonder what lurks around the corner. A forward-looking people now keeps glancing over its shoulder.
The most striking fact about our insecurity is its virulence. No aspect of life is immune, no person unaffected. After the Oklahoma City bombing and a succession of maddening assaults, the White House closed off Pennsylvania Avenue to all vehicles, symbolically becoming much less open -- but more secure.
Fear of crime and violence lies at the heart of our personal insecurity. By the year 2000, it's estimated we'll be spending over $200 billion annually on private security measures, five times the amount paid in 1980. Since 1960, the American population has grown by 43 percent, but the number of violent crimes (murders, rapes, assaults) has increased by more than 550 percent.
According to government estimates, 83 percent of Americans will be victims of violent crime at least once. Over half of all homicides are now committed by strangers. The random nature of these acts, exemplified by the phenomena of drive-by-shootings and mail-bomb explosions, contributes to a generalized sense of danger, especially in our cities.
During the severe heat wave last summer, many elderly people living in urban areas died from heat-related causes because they were afraid to open their windows or to walk outside for help.
Tragically, young people between the ages of 12 and 15 run the greatest risks of being victims of violence, according to a 1995 Justice Department study. In Chicago, to take one example, 67 children were murdered in 1994, three more than the previous year when the Chicago Tribune devoted space on page one to every killing of a person under the age of 15. Finding guns in schools is depressingly commonplace nowadays in small towns and metropolises alike.
Along with personal insecurity, there's a growing sense of social insecurity that comes from both the changing nature of our family structure and from the great influx of legal and illegal immigrants. The most recent Census Bureau statistics show that half the children in the United States live outside the traditional nuclear family of a married couple residing with their biological offspring.
Divorce and out-of-wedlock births are factors, with the rate of illegitimacy particularly alarming. In 1960, 5 percent of births occurred outside of marriage. By the end of the century, the number likely will jump to 40 percent. Today 70 percent of prison and reform-school inmates come from fatherless homes, and that level is expected to rise dramatically. Senator and scholar Daniel Patrick Moynihan has noted that we're "defining deviancy down" at a time of "volcanic change in family structure, for which there is no comparable experience in human history."
Demographically, too, America is undergoing profound change. Approximately 11 million immigrants arrived during the 1980s, the most ever, with people of Hispanic and Asian heritage leading the way. As University of California professor Ronald Takaki aptly observes, "The new face of America has a darker hue." In 1950, 89.5 percent of the population was classified as "white." By the turn of the century, the percentage will be around 70. The controversies surrounding multiculturalism and diversity that have roiled the nation in recent years revolve, in part, around these demographic shifts, which challenge the traditional patterns of the country's make-up.
Cultural insecurity is another dimension of the larger condition of our age. Schools and popular communications are principal carriers of culture, and we can all point to examples of excellence in both. Yet, with stunning frequency, we hear horror stories about our schools. Are drugs and alcohol that prevalent? Are students planning their own funerals instead of their future lives? Is academic achievement possible in settings so lacking in basic educational, or even human, needs?
It doesn't take an expert in media analysis to see that segments of the communications industry are hell-bent on seeking a level of audience engagement well below the lowest human common denominator. Messages of all kinds -- from newspapers, magazines, radio and television shows, audio and videotapes, CDs, computer networks -- effortlessly arrive in our homes, and some do little more than contribute to the coarsening of our culture. It's also next to impossible to avoid those messages. The loudest applause President Bill Clinton received during his 1995 State of the Union speech came when he denounced "the incessant, repetitive mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all the time." Other political figures, notably former Vice President Dan Quayle and Senator Bob Dole, have made similar statements to much public approval.
Despite the public's cheers supporting criticism of the media in general and Hollywood in particular, political insecurity pervades America. Since 1990, citizen anger and cynicism have fueled our politics, with desire for change a dominant concern. The results of the 1992 presidential and 1994 mid-term elections were resounding votes to shift direction, to have new people grapple with persistent problems. The electorate's discontent is so strong that we see volatility rather than stability. Democrats benefited in 1992; the Republicans in 1994.
To make matters worse for those in public life, confidence in our national government has fallen dramatically during the past three decades. In 1964, according to the Gallup Organization, 75 percent of the people trusted Washington "to do what is right all or most of the time." In 1994, the number had sunk to 19 percent. The duplicity, if not downright lying, that took place in the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair profoundly affected the nation's psyche. Our widespread disillusionment has lead to, among other things, the growth of militantly anti-government groups across the country.
Of even more central concern to millions of Americans is a nagging sense of economic insecurity. Since 1973 the median family income has remained static in real terms, a marked contrast to the period between 1947 and 1973 when median family income actually doubled. For the past 15 years, real family income has declined. "Downsizing" and "corporate reconstructing" have become common business practices in recent years, producing not only greater profits but nervous worrying about employment possibilities, health care coverage and pension benefits.
More than in any other Western country, the gulf between rich and poor is widening in the United States. However, the lives and expectations of people in the middle class have undergone the most pronounced change. The rise in technology in all phases of work and the decline in high-wage manufacturing jobs have created an "anxious class." Currently, though, there are more unemployed white-collar workers than blue-collar ones. Gone are the days of career-long devotion to one employer, with a gold watch and a happy retirement the reward of a worker's continued service.
The economic insecurity so many now feel is all the more troubling because it runs directly counter to traditional ways of thinking about the country's promise of opportunity. The fabled "American dream" -- secure employment, upward mobility, home ownership, greater prosperity for our children -- now seems less achievable, more remote, even romantic.
All these insecurities -- personal, social, cultural, political and economic -- exist at varying levels of intensity among us, but they also converge to yield a general attitude about the state of the country. Anyone listening to America today hears a persistent grumbling.
People are anxious about tomorrow because it seems so different from yesterday. Problems fester without being resolved. The simple rhythms of life snag on unforeseen complications. There's a feeling of betrayal from the past, with its national spirit of optimism. Internal turmoil breeds everything from fear about safety at a shopping mall to paranoia that malevolent forces are just waiting to attack.
Curiously, in surveys measuring public opinion, a striking difference between how people assess what's happening in the country and how they view their own situations exists. Between the fall of 1991 and the spring of 1995, the Gallup Organization on 26 occasions asked the question, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" At no time did the number of those "satisfied" go above 39 percent, and the average was 28.6 percent. The "dissatisfied" reached 84 percent once and averaged 68.3 percent.
A 1994 Times Mirror survey attempted to measure "satisfaction with how things are going in country, community and personal life." Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with the nation's course, corroborating the Gallup polls -- but 68 percent expressed community satisfaction, and 83 percent personal satisfaction.
What creates such divergence between the national and the personal? Some of our sense of insecurity is propelled by the media. Conflict and controversy, rather than contentment, draw audiences. Journalists by nature are as attracted to change as are moths to light, and we keep being shocked by the new. Fads and outrages quickly come and go, but the media dutifully report them. This fixed spotlight on change clearly has a cumulative impact on how we perceive the country.
Still, it's not fair to deposit too much blame on the media. The realities of our times, with all the consequential changes that surround us, are primarily responsible. We repeatedly hear phrases with the word new in them: the new global economy, the new communications, the new morality, the new demographics. The ground we walk keeps shifting under us. Security that comes from stability, knowing life's grooves, is less possible.
Besides dealing with the pattern-breaking present, Americans are experiencing the consequences and aftershocks of three previous decades. The 1960s, in particular, unleashed forces of such power and influence that they continue to have meaning to our culture and society.
The civil rights revolution and, later, the women's movement sought to open doors previously closed. The goal of equal access to education, employment, housing, voting and other aspects of American life animated both causes, profoundly changing the country. The rise of the counterculture and explosion of avant-garde sources of entertainment occurred simultaneously, challenging traditional ways of thinking and acting. What happened was more than a youthful rebellious fling. The wide-ranging efforts of political and governmental reform, which took place following the upheaval of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and the Watergate scandal, transformed our politics and created a vastly different electoral process.
None but the most unreflective reactionary could fail to see the value of much that was achieved in the '60s. We saw sincere efforts to right wrongs, to expand opportunity, to open up a closed social system and to enhance democratic participation. In very real ways, many of the actions of this period helped America move closer to the nation celebrated in the ideals of the Founding Father's statements and the authors of civic books.
Unfortunately, what began in the 1960s with worthwhile intentions has changed markedly and produced results that contribute to our Age of Insecurity. We've gone well beyond the original goals of equality into plans that often contradict earlier objectives. This includes:~
* Instead of integration, we now hear calls for separation and group allegiance. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and like-minded speakers pack auditoriums across the country to rail against the white majority. At certain schools, African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American students are demanding dormitories of their own.
* Instead of the counterculture's desire for an Age of Aquarius, it now seems Anything Goes, especially in the different forms of popular culture produced for younger Americans. Viewing MTV for a few minutes or listening to some examples of "gansta" rap reveals how different the 1990s are from the 1960s. "Just Do It" is more than a shoe company's slogan; the suggestion of irresponsibility in those three words speaks volumes about our time.
* Instead of opening smoke-filled rooms and providing greater citizen access, we now have a chaotic nominating system for presidential candidates that might have been designed by cartoonist Rube Goldberg in a moment of imaginative lunacy. The bonds between campaigning and governing have never been weaker, and the new system that requires millions of dollars of special interest money makes many a worthy White House aspirant take a pass. A flawed process is bound to yield flawed products. Recent history not only confirms this but contributes to the decline in political confidence.
Some of what happens around us does follow established, historical U.S. patterns. Going to extremes is an American affliction, the consequences of carrying some of our freedoms too far. All you have to do is consider how the West was really won or how the temperance movement ultimately led to the establishment of Prohibition. More recently, merchants of obscenity hide behind the virtues of the First Amendment and, in certain circumstances, proponents of affirmative action make a case for what more closely resembles reverse discrimination.
The impulse to excess is rooted in the American soil and far from a new phenomenon. But this nation's health requires the constant search for broader consensus about the common good and careful avoidance of extremes. It's a matter of finding the right balance between freedom and equality, between rights and responsibilities, between prosperity and justice, between diversity and solidarity.
Achieving a greater sense of equilibrium -- and security --will be anything but easy because of the tangled, sticky web of personal, social, cultural, political, and economic factors. But many of the problems feeding this insecurity have moral dimensions that all of us can do something about. As one social thinker remarked, "The great wave of moral deregulation began in the mid-1960s." This "moral deregulation" is the darkest legacy of the 1960s, and its cost is the moral deficit we're experiencing. Until individuals and institutions devote themselves to dealing with this deficit, we probably will see little -- or, indeed, none -- of this kind of change.
Our Age of Insecurity provokes a primary question: Are we seeing the first stages of America's decline? Publication of Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in 1987 triggered a continuing debate between "declinists" and "revivalists" -- those who think conditions in the United States reveal inner decay beyond repair and others who believe the nation can right itself by returning to the basic principles that shaped American life for over 200 years.
It's possible that the "declinists" are right, that our slide won't stop and we'll go the way of other once-dominant civilizations. However, given the newness of many of our problems, this thinking seems premature -- and out of character with what's happened when the country faced such crises as the Depression and the Second World War.
In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, several commentators drew defining-moment comparisons between that violent act of infamy and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, which propelled America into a fight for survival in World War II. Ending our Age of Insecurity will take a collective, comprehensive effort similar to what the country mounted a half-century ago.
At that time, though, our enemies were definite and easily identifiable. Today our adversaries are internal, and they change depending on one's perspective. Some people, for instance, might accuse politicians, the government or special interests, others the media, still others such specific groups or population segments as the rich, the poor, new immigrants, or extremists with allegiance to a cause. The battleground is a murky, depressing gray, with Americans against Americans in what often seems uncivil conflict.
And how does our domestic discontent strike outside observers? Martin Woollacott, in the British newspaper The Guardian, wrote, "Europeans, bombarded with the O.J. Simpson trial, killings after chat shows [on television], the Waco siege, the lyrics of Nine Inch Nails, or the Oklahoma bombing, are beginning to see America, not as a powerful society with serious problems and some bizarre corners and bad moments -- it has always been that -- but as a deranged and dangerous place."
Whether the United States continues to be perceived as "a deranged and dangerous place" will test each of us, and what we do will largely determine America's future.