Running Header: American Values

American Values



American Values

Introduction

This paper aims to discuss the six traditional basic American values--individual freedom, equality of opportunity, material wealth, self-reliance, competition, and hard work so as to go deeper into the traditional culture of America. In this paper, the six traditional basic American values are briefly introduced.

Discussion

Traditional American Values and Beliefs

In the United States, the diversity of cultural, religious, ethnic, cultural, and racial groups is greater than in any other nation. That diversity is also called pluralism and it is one of the country's strengths. Accepting diversity was the only practical choice, even if some people were not enthusiastic about that. In spite of diversity, people share a common set of values that make them American, give them their identity. There are six basic values that have become traditional American values. Chance of individual freedom, equality of opportunity and material wealth, where as, respectively, the prices are self-reliance competition and hard work

History background

The United States has long been known as a nation of immigrants because many of its people descend from settlers who came from all over the world to make their homes in the new land then populated by Native American tribes. The first immigrants in American history came from England and the Netherlands, some running away from religious and political persecution, and some coming as adventurers from the Old World (Europe) to seek a better life. The opportunities they actually had when they arrived nurtured a set of values, which formed the main traditional basic American values.

The traditional American value system

Individual freedom and self-reliance

Several years after Jameston, an Englishman, established the first colony in Virginia in 1607, the puritans of England came to the North America continent for the purpose of escaping from the controls and persecution by the kings, priests, governments, noblemen, aristocrats and churches, in the European societies. They came to American to seek for freedom, getting free from those religious and political restraints that existed in the European societies. They believed that they were the chosen people, favored and blessed by God. They would like to build up “a city on the hill” in order to set a good example to let the rest of people all around the world to follow. In such “city” they can have their own thoughts, religions, governments and ways of life. Therefore, after the British colonial settlers declared their independence from England in 1776 and were actually free from the power of the kings, they wrote in the Constitution for their new nation in 1789 that church and state should be separated so as to prevent the emerge of a government-supported church and maintain their freedom. Consequently, the government that established according to the Constitution greatly influenced the forming of the value of individual freedom.

However, every coin has two sides. There is a price to be paid for this individual freedom: self-reliance. In the very beginning of the independence of America, the American government was a loose confederation. Every state had it own government and ...