Several of my Facebook friends have shared PBS’s Mark Shields’s inspiring accout of the spontaneous and uniquely American acts of heroism that occurred during the recent Tucson shootings.
“This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend,” Shields observed. “Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African-American President.”
While this may strike some of my readers as postively untory, the account invariably reminded me of the Dreyfus affair, which grew out of the bitter recriminative spirit that welled up in French hearts following France’s disastrous defeat by Prussia in 1871.
The affair pitted Antidreyfusards, who viewed France as essentially Gaullic and Catholic, against the more secular Dreyfusards, who believed French identity stemmed from the ideals of the 1789 Revolution.
The thought occurred to me: Despite a few notable struggles throughout out history, we Americans have been comparatively immune from such wrenching divisions – not surprising, considering that we Americans have essentially been Dreyfusards from the beginning of our history. Our identity was founded on Enlightenment ideals rather than on the old blood-and-soil affinities that have underpinned European nationalisms.
The acts of heroism in Tucson transcendng ethnic and religious identity serves as a timely and inspiring reminder of this enduring fact.
Musings of an American Red Tory 