Is America still the home of the brave?

Americans have sadly become a people beset by fear, rendering dubious the phrase “home of the brave” in the national anthem.

It is not that we are no longer capable of individual acts of courage. We see plenty of bravery along swollen levees of the Mississippi River, in flood-
ravaged Vermont, at bedsides in hospices, and among soldiers in Afghanistan.

But collectively, we seem to have become a people addicted to fear, whether it’s about our economy, our children on the way to school, or the weather.

When hurricane Irene recently stalked up the East Coast, I watched friends here in the Berkshires of Massachusetts glue themselves to The Weather Channel. They quaked and planned escape routes from a storm that was still more than 500 miles away and that ultimately missed most of them.

Being prepared is one thing. My wife and I lost power for 2-1/2 days, and we tied down docks and boats to prepare. But the incessant hand-wringing of residents, the breathless news reports and their dire predictions, and the overreaction of some officials (close New York City’s subways before a drop of rain has fallen?), generated a hurricane of fear. Yes, I know, hurricane Katrina. But still.

Recent polls show public attitudes in the trenches. Consumer confidence is the lowest since April 2009. A Gallup poll finds the number of Americans worried about losing their job has also returned to 2009 levels, with 3 in 10 fretting over that possibility.

But hold on. Yes, the economy is stagnant and it is traumatic to lose your job. But that is a regular occurrence in many careers, such as construction and trading stocks.

This is not the Depression or the Dust Bowl

Today is nothing like the Great Depression, when unemployment reached 25 percent. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s displaced hundreds of thousands of people from the Plains states. During those years, many American men – some of them my friends – literally lived in boxcars and hobo camps.

Many of them eventually went on to have fine careers, and that can happen to today’s jobless. Even now, certain careers need workers, including health care, manufacturing engineering, trucking, business analysis, and – not surprising – helping businesses optimize the reach of their websites.

America’s fears are nothing if not fluid. Two years ago, the angst was over a threatened US swine flu pandemic that never materialized. Ten years ago, after 9/11, people worried most about Muslim terrorists in their midst.

It is undeniable that the attacks on New York and Washington created a huge sense of vulnerability. But in retrospect, it was ludicrous for a nation of nearly 300 million, with the world’s largest economy and unrivaled armed forces, to have cowered in fear of a band of tatterdemalions living in caves.

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