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The American Revolution was something else again. It was free of that special form of impatience-oversimplified ideology. Never had such forbearance and such a talent for political compromise been demanded of a body politic as the power-wary, pragmatic Founding Fathers required of the citizens of the United States of America. The U.S. Constitution is the great document of patience-with-a-purpose. It has inevitably helped mold the national character of the Americans who serve it-and whom it serves.
Those who cut their roots in Europe, and those in America who pulled up stakes to push West, were not merely restless and dissatisfied. In a new kind of environment, for which nothing had prepared them, they staked their lives on a future that might bear fruit only for their children. The chronicles tell of countless men and women who were far from impetuous and headlong, farther still from resigned, as they pushed their creaking wagon trains over mountains and across blazing deserts-forced back by Indians, or sickness, or starvation, but gathering strength again to return and press on.
Turning the pioneers' trading posts into towns, and the towns into cities, worked the same strain deeper into the American character. Fast-buck operators flourished, the rapid turnover and the quick profit were the dreams of many a businessman. But the more typical pattern for 19th century business and industry was the narrowed eye with the long view, the reinvested profit, the McGuffey and Horatio Alger mottoes on the mind:
Go Slow and Sure, and prosper then you must With Fame and Fortune, while you Try and Trust.
Americans no longer live in a McGuffey world. The patterns of patience and impatience are apt to be paradoxical. A businessman may want to rush to California in five hours and yet wait patiently for a delayed jet takeoff. A scientist may bolt instant coffee at a hurried breakfast and then spend a day of slow, painstaking research in his laboratory. Americans love speed and power on the highway, but they are the most disciplined drivers in the world. While the French, Italian or German driver burns out his batteries with his horn and uses his car as an instrument of vengeance ("In Germany," says one psychoanalyst, "anger is a status symbol"), the American knows that he must drive as part of a group. Although Americans endure queues, bad service, inept repairmen, and surly sales help with remarkable stoicism, French Philosopher Jacques Maritain once suggested that they are impatient with life itself. Yet almost everyone has to learn patience in a complex modern society characterized by the growing interdependence between men and the growing reliance on brittle machines.
Restrained Power