Great America Series! "American Know-How"

I thought John McCain had hit upon a pretty good idea the other day: Offering a prize of $300 Million for someone to create a better battery. . . then I remembered that this was the guy offering to pay $50 per hour for lettuce pickers a couple years ago. I don't think he ever came across with the cash on that deal so I didn't even bother to go out to my garage and attempt anything.

The premise seemed good - it made me think that at least one contender for the presidency recognized that Americans are problem SOLVERS. But we don't need taxpayer funded prizes to incentivize solution-producers... that's what our glorious free market system does. It's called "profit" and it is the built-in, God-given reward for risk, hard work, blood, sweat and tears!

And that's the point of this post - to celebrate and remember "American know-how" - that national tendency toward fixing things.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I hope to produce a recurring series I'll call Great America. In it, I will examine single words or phrases that have characterized this nation through the centuries. Characteristics that are sadly languishing in neglect these days. This is my first installment.

Good ole American know-how is one of those neglected characteristics.

In one of his books on the heroic "citizen-soldiers" of WWII, Stephen Ambrose pointed out that one thing that kept U.S. troops moving was their ingenuity. A soldier who back home had often spent Saturday afternoons under the hood of his car - would think nothing of ducking under the hood of a troubled tank (if tanks have "hoods") and get it running again. Their Axis army counterparts might bog down as they waited for experts to be called in or just abandon the tank altogether.

There exists an innate desire in Americans to do-it themselves. Something wells up inside and we say "I can do this!" or at least we have to try. It stems from our sense of self-reliance which is a Great America Series topic for another day.

In the past when faced with challenges, Americans didn't wait for someone else to bail them out. In fact in the very early days, there wasn't anyone to bail them out; so they pulled together and did what needed to be done to get the problem solved.

So American know-how is born of adversity.

Thomas Edison, an icon of American know-how, said "I haven't failed once. I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work". In G. Glenwood Clark's, 1950 biography of Edison ("Thomas Alva Edison", Berkley Publishing Corp. New York, NY), he describes one of the inventor's numerous demonstrations of American know-how: Edison took a job with the Western Union office in Boston. Shortly after arriving he learned that the office was overrun with roaches. Edison pulled out his "roach exterminator", a couple of strips of tin foil pasted to the wall and attached to a battery, and soon the first victim was zapped!

There was a problem and he believed he could come up with a solution so he just did it. Over a century later others applied their own "know-how", improved his device and marketed his bug-zapper.

In doing a little internet research for this topic, I came across a comment posted on soldierant.net (I know nothing about this site - it just popped up on Google). It was about modern day soldiers trying to find a way to deal with IED's in the War on Terror. Someone had a toy radio-controlled car sent over. When troops saw a suspicious object, they'd just send the car to bump it. If it moved easily that indicated it was light and therefore not explosive - if it was heavy, they called in help.

Ben Franklin may be the father of American Know-How. The man was always wondering, figuring, thinking and apparently enjoying himself all the while. He came up with ideas for streetscapes and city designs, lightning rods to prevent house fires; designed a better street lamp and with his 14 Points he even tried to improve himself - he was a true Renaissance man!

So how come it's "American" know-how - why not "planet" know-how or "multicultural" know-how?

Though I truly believe in what Rush Limbaugh refers to as American Exceptionalism, I do not believe American "know-how" stemmed from some greater intelligence that we possessed. We weren't American "know-it-alls"; no, it emerged because of our system. In America there was LIBERTY to seek answers, the FREEDOM to fail and the OPPORTUNITY to try again. This was possible because our system of government and our economic structure were all bent toward staying out of the way. Sometimes that meant that Americans didn't have as many safeguards, they weren't as protected. There was no one standing over your shoulder to be sure you didn't harm yourself or some endangered species.

Americans had "know-how" because they were free to TRY. They were free to fail and try again and again. In America today it seems that all the powers that be are always trying to protect us from something. Whether it be radon, nuclear holocaust, greenhouse gases, CO2 emission, bicycle crashes, second hand smoke, chlorofluorocarbons, too much free speech in politics, mono sodium-glutamate, or peanuts they are always trying to save us - and built into every protection is a reduction in freedom. With every diminished liberty - we see a decrease in that precious commodity, know-how.

Everyone can probably remember someone in your childhood that exemplified this anomaly. Remember, that pathetic, over-protected child who - like Henry Fussy in "Charlotte's Web" - was forced to stay indoors and couldn't risk a head cold or a skinned knee?

Is that our plight? To become a nation of Henry Fussy's? Perhaps not. Perhaps liberty will come back into vogue.

Once we trumpeted American know-how, in John F. Kennedy's Rice University Speech (the lead- in You Tube video) in 1962 - he talked about how our scientific knowledge was growing at a remarkable pace, he talked about the advances of the 20th century and then he laid out a challenge: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and to do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard!"

He promoted the advances - bragged about them and then established a new challenge. He called upon a nation of problem-solvers to jump in there and meet that challenge.

National pride has its place. And that brings me to the last point.

In back of all our advances throughout the centuries; underneath every example of good ole' American know-how, there was a belief that our place, our benefits, even our abilities came - not from within - but from above.

There was a national recognition that God was our source.

He provided the means for us to accomplish great things. And because our founders recognized God's gift of liberty - they established a system of government that would provide opportunities for men and women to discover, to create, to improve, to innovate... to fix things.

Good ole American know how is God's endowment to us. Let's not fling it away too easily, but rather, let's cherish it.

scene from Apollo 13 illustrating American Know-How