[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 26 (Wednesday, March 3, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2102-S2103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     COMMEMORATING DANIEL BOORSTIN

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Over the weekend, the United States of America lost 
one of its great teachers of what it means to be an American. Daniel 
Boorstin died at the age of 89. He served as Librarian of Congress and 
director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Science 
and Technology. Daniel Boorstin's books about the American experience 
earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1974. He believed America's success came 
largely because we have been free from the ``virus of ideology,'' free 
to be flexible and responsive, ``free to take clues from the 
delightful, unexplored and uncongested world around us.'' Free from 
ideology, being an American became its own ideology.
  Daniel Boorstin celebrated Americans for always trying the new. He 
believed we have been at our best when we have been ``on the verge,'' 
encountering new territory--whether it was creating new schools, new 
crops, new planting techniques, new towns, a new form of the English 
language, new technologies, new cars and trains, or John Winthrop's new 
City on the Hill.
  He observed during these encounters with new circumstances, we have 
been more aware of our Americanness, that our appetite for the new has 
been whetted, and that we have leaned on one another for support, often 
organizing new forms of communities to deal with new circumstances. 
Boorstin believed America works community by community. He argued that 
the prototype early American was not the solitary trailblazer but a 
wagon train community.

  Despite his erudition and his Pulitzer, Dr. Boorstin was not 
especially popular with professional historians. Perhaps it was because 
he was such a booster, as have been most Americans. Perhaps it was 
because he contented himself with being an ``amateur'' historian, not 
shackled by the ruts along which professionals often trudge. Or, 
perhaps it was because he was a member of a diminishing band of public 
figures--the late Senator Pat Moynihan and American Federation of 
Teachers President Albert Shanker were two others--who believed 
passionately in American exceptionalism. A growing number of history 
professionals today reject this idea of exceptionalism. To them, our 
country is fortunate, rich and large, but not more exceptional than 
many other countries. These professionals prefer social studies to U.S. 
history. They take snapshots of our national experience instead of 
teaching the steady drumbeat of a work in progress toward grand goals. 
In their enthusiasm for overlooked victims, they themselves overlook 
heroes.
  Because of their growing influence we now find American history 
courses watered down, the great controversies of race and religion 
``sensitized'' from textbooks. Civics is often dropped entirely from 
the curriculum. As one result, our high school seniors score worse on 
U.S. history tests than on any other subject.
  Daniel Boorstin's writings have reminded us of what is truly 
exceptional about America, warts and all. He emphasized that our 
greatest accomplishment is that, more than any other country, we have 
united people from everywhere into a single nation, united by beliefs 
in a few principles rather than by race, creed, and color. He taught 
that we may be proud of where we came from, but should be prouder to be 
Americans.
  He left us one other very special insight. In an essay written in 
1962, Dr. Boorstin foresaw that television would create a world in 
which we would have a hard time telling the difference between heroes--
those worth paying attention to because we might learn from their 
nobility--and celebrities who are ``famous primarily for being 
famous.'' He invented the term pseudo event, which most of us will 
recognize as today's photo opportunity.
  My favorite of Daniel's Boorstin's books was not his Pulitzer winner. 
It was The Discoverers, a stream of stories about men and women in 
history who challenged dogma and created a better life for mankind.

[[Page S2103]]

  As we are poised on yet another verge in our national experience, we 
would do well to remember Dr. Boorstin's advice about what has served 
us well before: be more aware of our Americanness, whet our appetites 
for the new, and form new communities so that we might rely better on 
one another as we deal with changing circumstances.

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