Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
August/September 2002 | Volume 53, Issue 4
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
August/September 2002 | Volume 53, Issue 4
Remember September 11? Or rather, remember how it was supposed to change us all, and for the better? Among all the predictions was one that held that it would lead to “the end of irony,” the sort of earnest prognostication that is bound to seem ironic in retrospect. Yet an even more civic-minded call came from Robert D. Putnam, who let us know that this was our chance to get back to the spirit of World War II.
Dr. Putnam is the Harvard professor who blazed his way up the bestseller lists in 1995 with Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Citing the decline in participation in everything from political activism and labor unions to bridge clubs and bowling leagues, Putnam claimed that America was experiencing an alarming loss of “social capital” and “generalized reciprocity—the practice of helping others with no expectation of gain.” We were letting the very ligaments of our society ossify, abandoning our traditions as a vibrant, participatory, community-based democracy, and becoming a nation of disaffected and distrustful loners.
Meticulously researched, perceptive, and filled with telling anecdotes, Putnam’s book struck a chord in Americans all along the political spectrum. Some, however, argued that his conclusions were overly dire, that fewer people were bowling in leagues, for instance, because more of them were bowling with their families. Yet Putnam returned with an updated edition in 2000 that confirmed most of the trends he had previously noted. Then came September 11 and what seemed like an unexpected opportunity in the midst of adversity.
Writing in The New York Times, just over a month after the terrorist attack, Putnam found a nation “achingly familiar” to the America that had been stunned by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He went on to depict the vast government-backed grass-roots effort that “taught ‘the greatest generation’ an enduring lesson in civic involvement”—an effort that included everything from the Civil Defense Corps to the Red Cross, from victory gardens to Boy Scouts collecting scrap and selling war stamps.
“All Americans felt they had to do their share, thereby enhancing each American’s sense that her commitment and contribution mattered,” he wrote. “As one said later in an oral history of the home front: ‘You just felt that the stranger sitting next to you in a restaurant, or someplace, felt the same way you did about the basic issues.’”
Dr. Putnam is no doubt well-meaning, but his characterization of the home front in World War II is also an object lesson in just how careful one has to be in making the future over in the image of the past. The war effort at home was undoubtedly one of the proudest episodes—and possibly the most important episode—in our history, perhaps even more vital than the great sacrifices made by our men at the front. It was U.S. production that sustained not only our own forces but those of all our allies and