Speeches
“Go Ahead”
Address to the Class of 2008, Chowan University, Murfreesboro, North Carolina
May 10, 2008
James P. Cain, U.S. Ambassador to Denmark
It is nice to be home. Here is the place where my wife Helen was born, the place where daughters Cameron and Laura love to spend holidays, and the place that nurtured my enduring connection to Eastern North Carolina.
It’s also the place that gave us a connection to Denmark. You see, when President Bush asked us to come to Denmark, it was a bit of a surprise, because we had no connection with Denmark, except that in the fall of 1977 a young lady named Lene Kerr came from Denmark to Chowan College (as it was known then) to study, and she lived with Helen’s family. The Revelles developed a lifelong friendship with Lene and her parents, and now Lene and her husband and daughters are our close friends in Copenhagen. So Chowan has played a unique role in our Danish connection.
But before I talk about Chowan, and the world it has prepared you for, let me tell you a little about the kingdom of Denmark.
For an American, Denmark is a great place to be an ambassador. Who wouldn’t love a country with the oldest flag in the world, the longest-serving royal family in history, and the oldest amusement park on earth; where the average work week is 35 hours, and where, according to a recent survey, people are the happiest of any in the world? I think I have discovered the secret of their happiness, because in Denmark, the legal age for drinking is 15! And according to the Wine Institute, Danes also consume the most California red wine per capita of any country in the world. It’s a great place to live!
Many of you already know what a great place Denmark is, because you have come to visit us. In fact, we have had over 20,000 guests at the Residence in the past two and a half years, 250 of whom stayed with us overnight an average of three nights. Of course, the Danes are great allies as well. Two statistics demonstrate this: the Danes, on a per capita basis, have the highest number of troops committed to foreign engagements of any country on earth –Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, fighting side by side with us, not with caveats and exceptions, but fighting and dying. Secondly, on a per capita basis, Danes are the highest contributors of foreign development assistance of any country in the world. They are courageous and they are generous. So it is a great place to be posted, and Helen and the girls and I have found the last 30 months to be the experience of a lifetime.
Of course, there is one thing I did not expect. I did not expect that my tenure would be so quickly interrupted with Denmark’s worst international crisis since WWII, when soon after we arrived a local newspaper somewhat cavalierly chose to print eleven cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. The resulting hailstorm in the Muslim World –embassies torched, flags burned, the prime minister hung in effigy, riots in 27 countries, and 109 deaths from those riots, was a crisis beyond imagination for this small serene country. And we were right in the middle of it.
The reaction in America was interesting: when Americans saw flags being burned, embassies attacked and political leaders hung in effigy, their reaction was “hey, that country must be a friend of ours!” And they are right. Denmark is a friend. Danes were shocked by a poll that came out soon after the cartoon crisis asking a thousand people on the streets of Cairo “Which country do you hate most?” For the first time EVER, America didn’t win! In fact, we were Number 3 – behind Israel and Denmark! So while we were dancing in the streets in New York, Copenhagen realized that they indeed had become the “Little Satan”.
But, we didn’t lose our #1 ranking on the hate meter for long, as soon the world righted itself and again we regained the #1 spot.
When the President asked me to serve in Denmark, I promised him I would do “everything in my power to make sure that our relationship with Denmark was stronger when I leave than it was when I got here”. An easy promise to make ; but I had no idea how difficult the promise would be in the face of opposition to the war in Iraq, the way we fight the war against terror, the way America gets blamed for everything from global warming to poor eating habits.
So I decided to get out of Copenhagen, and get on my bicycle for a 2000-mile bike tour around Denmark, to get in touch with the ordinary and extraordinary people of Denmark, to learn from them, and to let them learn what America is really like. I call it my “ReDiscovery Tour”, trying to rediscover that unique spirit that first made America and Denmark allies over 250 years ago. I think that an ambassador’s job first and foremost must be to “Sell America”, and to do this we must get out of the nation’s capital, and get in touch directly with the people of the country in which we serve. The ReDiscovery Tour has given me plenty of opportunity to listen to concerns and complaints about America, and it has taught me about European perceptions and misperceptions about our country and our foreign policy.
But being on the ReDiscovery Tour has taught me something else. You see, I have guest riders who ride along with me, and I speak to countless audiences along the way, and I ask them questions to probe their true feelings toward America. For example, I ask “When I say the word ‘America’ what does it mean to you?” I have learned something profound in this process, and I hear it everywhere, from people of all ages. It is one clue to what most Europeans secretly love and admire about America. And what I want you to remember as you go forth into this globalized, sometimes “anti-American”, world.
It is a feeling perhaps best summed up by the conversation I had with the student leaders of Aarhus University when my tour of Denmark was starting. Leaders the same age as you. When I asked these four young people to describe for me what America meant to them, they conferred for a moment and then proudly said “land of opportunity!” Why is that? I said. They said: “Because in America you can dream anything you want to dream, and you can be anything they want to be. And if you fail, you can pick up and start again.”
It reminded me that sometimes it takes a visitor to understand the uniqueness of our homeland. Like Marquis de Lafayette, who 200 years ago returned from fighting for our independence, and touring towns like Murfreesboro, to report to Europe on the unique character of this New World. Or another Frenchman, Alexis de Toqueville, who traveled America seven years after Lafayette visited Murfreesboro and described our “rugged individualism” as the essence of our national character. And the spirit that led an Irish immigrant named William Murfree to establish a trading post for exports and imports on this land a century before Lafayette’s triumphal tour, and de Toqueville immortal observations.
At the same time de Toqueville was traveling America in search of our heart, another European, this one from England, was also touring America. His name was Frederick Merrimont. He wrote “the real motto of America is … Go Ahead”. I particularly like that one. “Go ahead." It is the spirit captured by the current day Nike slogan: “Just Do it”. The 1837 quote from Frederick Merrimont appears on the wall in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. It hangs above the portrait of Andrew Jackson. It could just as well hang above the portrait of Thomas Jefferson, of Davey Crockett, of Teddy Roosevelt, or Booker T. Washington or Louisa May Alcott or countless other Americans who have lived and enshrined the “Go Ahead” spirit.
Americans share a history of seeking to improve our lot, Always challenging the boundaries, employing an entrepreneurial zeal to change things for the better.
I was reminded of the “Go Ahead” spirit that typifies America on Day Four of Rediscovery Bike Tour, a day when Danish Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen and his wife Eliane rode with me, when, leaving the Old Grocery Store in Forslev, headed to Roskilde, we literally stumbled upon, unplanned and unscheduled, one of the most unique cultural connections between America and Denmark that I have seen. We turned a rural corner and happened upon a store with a sign "Texas Western" on it. If the American flags flying from the roof hadn't caught my attention, then the cowboy in the window, and the fake horse out front surely did. We slammed on the brakes, brought the caravan to a screeching halt, and dashed inside. Inside was every thing related to cowboys and the Wild West you can imagine: cowboy shirts, boots, buckles, hoop skirts, lassos, hats. It turned out this is Europe’s largest country and western, square dance and line-dance supply store! And there was no one inside but us!
Storeowner Doris Olsen, who was in the back and had not witnessed our arrival, practically had a heart attack when she came out and realized who this excited group of English-speaking visitors was. Not speaking much English, She quickly called her husband Jørgen up from the house, who soon arrived with great enthusiasm, refusing to allow me to take a picture with him until he had a chance to change into “something better." Out he came in his fire-engine red, authentic Roy Rogers cowboy uniform, complete with fringe, black hat, boots, spurs, a holster and a gun! ‘Howdy partners!” he said swaggeringly in his best Danish/Texas/English! I thought Rene and Alex, the PET bodyguards, were going to jump him when he pulled out his six-shooter, went to the window, and pulled the trigger to prove to me it was real!
Jorgen said “This is what I love about America. Everyone wants to be a cowboy!”
Pressing ever westward, we live to “Go Ahead”.
It’s that deep-seated yearning for innovation, for entrepreneurship, for embracing change, for taking risk, and celebrating those who do take risks, that is in our blood. Some call this “American exceptionalism.” My friends at Aarhus University call it the “American dream.”
In America we inherited the pioneering spirit from our forefathers. We were built by people who were pursuing a dream. We must remember, as David Brooks recently wrote: “We in America are the descendants of those who left Europe, those who took a risk and left to start something new.” Our current European detractors are descendants of those who stayed behind.
This difference was made stark to me when I visited with Keld Kirk Kristensen, the third-generation chairman of the Lego corporation (another Danish creation). Keld Kirk said to me, “I am reminded of the uniqueness of your country when I visit a Lego trade show.” You see, Lego has these trade shows around the globe every year. These are not for kids showing off toys, but for adults who are showcasing their latest amazing creations using Lego bricks. Robots, lifesize models, architectural prototypes. Keld Kirk said “For example, I was in Berlin recently for a trade show, and there were about 2000 people there. But when I arrived, they treated me as nothing special. Just another customer. Just another guest. But when I went to America recently, for a show in Washington, when I walked in, I was treated like a celebrity. Paparazzi everywhere, everyone wanting their picture taken with me. Everyone wanting my autograph. Everyone wanting to touch me. When I am in America, I know what the Beatles must have felt like. In America, you celebrate your heroes.” In America, we celebrate success. In America, we celebrate those who “Go Ahead.”
Many Europeans seem to understand this uniqueness about America. I see it throughout Europe; and I even saw it in the hungry eyes of the Europeans who helped take our Carolina Hurricanes hockey team from last place one year, to the Stanley Cup Championship the next.
Those who watch us from far shores, and those who take risks to come here understand this “Go Ahead” spirit about America. It is why, according to researchers at Duke and Berkeley, between 1995 and 2005 immigrants founded or co-founded 25 percent of all US high tech firms, and in 2006 accounted for 24 percent of international patent applications in the US, and in 2005, accounted for 7 percent more commercial activity than native-born Americans. Those of us who are six, seven, or eight generations descended from the Irish or the Scots, or the Italians who first arrived on these shores, must not neglect this spirit.
In continuing my visit with the university students from Aarhus I asked them, “if America is the land of opportunity, then what is Europe?” “This is the land of security” they said. "Where we don’t have to worry about our future because things are taken care of for us.”
As I mentioned at the outset, a recent poll said that Danes were the happiest people on earth. But you wouldn’t know it because people in the streets aren’t smiling. Danes will tell you it is because they have learned to lower their expectations; to be satisfied with less. It’s a poll that asks about happiness, but what it really is asking about is contentment.
As Karl Schramm of the Kaufmann Foundation notes, “Europeans seem content to have traded comfort and security for competitiveness.” Americans work an average of 315 hours more per year than Europeans, that’s almost eight weeks more per year. We are much more mobile than Europeans. You will change jobs three times in the first ten years of your career, compared with Europeans who will change once. And you are much more individualistic. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that individual success is within your own control, versus less than 30 percent of Europeans.
But demographic statistics may be the most telling. In 2013, the average American will be 38 years old; the average European will be 52. Our fertility rates have risen since the 1980s, whereas Europe is facing a demographic crisis unheard of since the Middle Ages. And finally, America is more devout and we look at religion differently. Sixty percent of Americans attend church regularly, versus 4 percent in most of Europe. Ninety-four percent of Americans believe in God, vs. about one-third of Europeans. In our daughter Cameron’s “Theory of Knowledge” class, the teacher recently asked for a show of hands of how many of the 30 students believed in God. Three hands were raised. Two Americans and one Latin American.
What do these statistics on demographic growth and religion tell us about our different attitudes toward faith in the future? What do they tell us about optimism? What do they tell us about hope? They tell us that Europe and America are very different. And they tell us that the emerging generation in America, your generation, needs to understand and embrace this “Go Ahead” Spirit that makes America unique, in order to keep the American dream alive.
Condolezza Rice recently touched on this subject in a remarkable speech one year ago in New York. She called it our “uniquely American realism."
"American realism is an approach to the world that arises not only from the realities of global politics but from the nature of America’s character: From the fact that we are all united as a people not by a narrow nationalism of blood and soil, but by universal ideals of human freedom and human rights. We believe that our principles are the greatest source of our power. For these reasons, America has always been, and will always be, not a status quo power, but a revolutionary power- a nation with New World eyes, that looks at change not as a threat to be feared, but as an opportunity to be seized.”
She captured the “Go Ahead” Spirit at its essence.
You are the guardians of this “Go Ahead” legacy. “The torch” as John F. Kennedy said, “has been passed to a new generation," your generation. The task is now yours to carry on the dream. You will be tempted in the coming years to adopt the European preference for security and contentment. But do not let the zeal for contentment diminish the flame. Do not be afraid to compete. Don’t be afraid to embrace change. Do not be afraid to take risk.
Our European friends have the impression that America is still the land of opportunity, where you can be anything you want to be, and dream anything you want to dream. Where you can go from being an Irish immigrant or a refugee from Vietnam, to being an entrepreneur and a business owner; where you can go from graduating in the middle of your class at Chowan University, to developing revolutionary software, or developing the next generation of biofuel, or curing diabetes; where you can go from being a prisoner of war, or an embattled former first lady, or the grandson of a Kenyan farmer to being elected president of the United States.
The great American educator Horace Mann once said “Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity.” Europeans assume all Americans feel this way; that all Americans dare to dream of winning a victory for humanity.
I think Europeans are right about America.
I look forward to watching in the years to come, as you don the mantle of the legacy that made America exceptional.
I look forward to watching as you prove my friends at Aarhus University were right.
I look forward to watching as you “Go ahead”.