Rustling up some Frontier Spirit in the old midwest

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

From The Wall Street Journal’s Op-Ed page: America Needs Its Frontier Spirit. Daniel Henninger spells it out. And quite nicely, I might add. An excerpt:

The greatest danger in the current economic crisis is that the United States will lose its historic appetite for risk. The mood now is that risk-taking got us into this mess. Risk, though, is the quintessential American trait that built the nation — from the Battle of Bunker Hill to the rise of the microchip. If we let risk give way to a new ethos of commercial reserve and regulatory restriction, the upward arc of the U.S. ascendancy will flatten. Maybe it already has.

By “we” I mean the policy makers in Washington who will write the new rules of finance, our stunned bankers and businessmen, and the average Joes of Main Street who with reason have lost confidence. If all lose faith at once in the American idea of risk, refinding it when the recession ends may prove difficult.

This is the moment for Americans to rediscover the “frontier thesis” of Frederick Jackson Turner. In a seminal paper delivered in 1893 to the American Historical Association, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Turner argued that the U.S. found its identity as it pushed away from the Eastern seaboard and crossed a series of frontier “fall lines”: the Allegheny Mountains, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the plains, the Rocky Mountains and California.

Every American absorbs the frontier experience from reading biographies of great Americans or from movies. Frederick Turner, however, made it clear that with this effort to transform the wilderness the Americans broke decisively with what he called, believe it or not, “old Europe.” “Here is a new product,” Turner wrote, “that is American.”

“From the conditions of frontier life,” Turner believed, “came [American] intellectual traits of profound importance . . . coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil.” These, he said, are “the traits of the frontier.”

That last paragraph sings to me. I’m reading this in Dayton Ohio, Land of the Next Frontier- you heard it here first. There aren’t a lot of us left in Dayton, so things are becoming wild and woolly and it’s gonna get more so in the next few years. It’s a bit surreal to be living here right now, and at the same time it’s strangely exciting as if the entire past has been erased and only the future is ahead. It’s like traveling down a road and you turn around for a look back and the road behind you has vanished, but in front of you lies everything you ever wanted. Scary, exhilarating, promising, frightening all at the same time, and not necessarily in that order. What does the future hold? Who knows? Whatever we want it to hold, right? Which is, from my place, a damn fine place to be. If I lived in a more economically stable city, the future might simply hold more of the same. I really hate more of the same. Everything in me says change is good and I think Dayton is where it’s at because we stagnated for quite awhile trying to avoid change.

Read this again: “intellectual traits of profound importance . . . coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil.” These, he said, are “the traits of the frontier.” ”

What’s next for us? How does someone survive here? I only see one way to make it through alive; in everything we do- life, love, work, real estate- from here on out, we, Dayton, I, my family and friends, we must embrace the Frontier Spirit and forge ahead, take chances, take risks, and have huge successes, or make mistakes, fuck it all up and try it again. I’m looking down the barrel of that gun, kids, but I’m always game for an adventure.

Read the entire article here.