America was settled and founded by rugged individuals who used their own skills and common sense to settle a new land. They often took risks, and then accepted the responsibility for their own actions.
About 250 years ago, my German ancestors decided that their opportunities in Germany were quite limited, so they migrated to Russia, in search of prosperity. Then, those opportunities also slowly disappeared, and some 130 years ago, my great-great grandfather and my great-grandfather came to America, in the great migration that included millions of people from Europe. Each one of those rugged individualists sold everything that they had, gathered their family, and walked up a ramp onto an unfamiliar ship, heading to a new land. They had never even seen this new for themselves. They had just heard stories about this new land of opportunity and adventure, and they decided that it had to be better than their dismal lives in Europe.
Can you imagine such an adventure? What a rush of adrenalin they must have experienced when, after a long and difficult journey at sea, they passed through the harbor in New York City, gazing at the Statue of Liberty on their way to Ellis Island. But I also cannot imagine the massive weight of responsibility they must have felt. They didn’t know where they would settle, or what the land or the weather would be like. They didn’t know whether or not they would be able to survive and provide adequately for their families. They must have second-guessed their decision a million times.
However, they made it. They just worked and worked, from daylight until dark, day-after-day, struggling to survive. They did indeed survive, and they prospered, at least in comparison to their earlier years in Europe. They faced immense challenges, overcame them, and grew stronger for it.
Now where have all of our rugged individualist gone. Instead of seeking adventure and opportunity, most of us have become complacent. We’ve taken advantage of the struggles of our ancestors, and had a degree of materialism handed to us that they couldn’t have imagined in their wildest dreams. Now we still work day-after-day, but we don’t do it to survive. We do it so we can have more stuff. Yes, most of our rugged individualism is gone, and we’re a weaker nation because of it.