Does it mean anything anymore to be an “American?”

PBS recently aired a documentary about the building of Hoover Dam. The project was conceived and executed for a host of reasons, the most prominent being that the American West needed water and that, as the nation was in the grips of the Depression, Americans needed work. The dam project put a few thousand to work on the site and a few thousand more around the country in support capacities.

At first news of the project, families – men, women, children – packed up what little they had and headed off into the great unknown – the deserts of Nevada. Back then Las Vegas was a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere. These families had no guarantee of work, had no idea how they would survive, yet went anyway and set up tents or lived in their car – in the searing desert heat. Some lived that way for close to a year, not knowing when or if hiring for the dam project would begin.

When they were finally put to work, the pay was a whopping $1 a day. Even in the early thirties, that was next to nothing. But the attitude clearly was: It’s better than nothing. Even though the labor was back-breaking and the work was life-threatening, these Americans stepped up and did what they had to do for their families.

It wasn’t just the unskilled or day laborers that worked on the dam – there were professional men, university graduates and former well-to-do people – all down on their luck during some of America’s darkest days, and again, doing what they felt they had to in order to survive.

Now, you would be hard-pressed to call the Hoover Dam project a “hand-out”, especially in light of the incredible hand-outs we’ve seen from Washington recently. Time was, when the American economy went bust, people got creative. The question was, “how can we improve our country and at the same time give our citizens a sense of self-worth and the feeling that they are part of our future?” Say what you will about FDR, but the man had a plan. Who’s got the plan now?

And these Americans who built the Hoover Dam didn’t just show up for work, they worked with a fever to complete the project on time. They worked 7 days a week with only two holidays each year (which were optional and without pay) – Christmas and the 4th of July.  They worked in temperatures that exceeded 120 degrees. They worked in tunnels filled with toxic fumes. They risked their lives everyday blasting through solid rock and dangling from precarious perches to get the job done.

They not only created a quality product but they did it with style. The Hoover Dam features detailing rarely found in a utilitarian structure. The dam not only provides a vital function to millions of people in the western states, it is a true monument to American achievement. The dam they said could not be build stands today in homage to the American we once were.

Could such a project be undertaken by Americans of today? An excellent question and one not easily answered. I think that somewhere along the line we lost our “get the job done” mentality and traded it for a “what’s in it for me” attitude. The things that made us uniquely “American” have been tossed aside in the name of self-interest and frankly, a spoiled society. Our current economic condition, our bloated government, our backwards merit system, corporations that reward mediocrity with million dollar bonuses – and then ask the tax payers to pay for their mistakes, an education system that is so poorly managed, a soaring national debt, equally soaring personal debt, political correctness that is strangling our spirit; this is just a bit of the evidence that we’ve gotten off track.

True, we have come a long way in the last 100 years. We enjoy more equality among the races and the sexes. We’ve contributed to great advancements in science and technology. We’re still more of a free country than most. We have cable TV, the Internet, endless ways to entertain ourselves. But, at the end of the day, where are we really? Does it mean anything anymore to be an “American?”