On Founding Myths: Their Purpose and What's Happening to Ours

Did you remember the Alamo today?

I always keep in mind how I can deliver value to my subscribers with each email I write, and if making sure you remember the Alamo isn’t value, I don’t know what is.

There’s a reason that the Texas Revolutionaries were absolutely insistent that the Alamo remain in their memory, and it was because founding myths matter. They knew this instinctively, and I imagine that we do also, but let’s explain why before we perform a wellness check on ours.

First of all, myth does not strictly mean “fictional.” Webster defines myth as:

So all myths implicitly suppose to be true historical events, but some of them actually are, and these are the best ones. Christ’s life in this sense is the greatest of all myths, because it is completely true and creates a comprehensive world view.

All decent nations have founding myths for this reason, not only that they may know how they became a nation, but what sort of nation they are. It gives them an identity, a way to understand their place in the world, a “world view of a people.” Their people.

Our true founding myth

I don’t need to tell you the story, you know it, but just consider what the American Revolution tells us about who we are. It tells us we are enemies of tyranny, we win against all odds, and we will even craft a new form of government to secure the rights of our people. It’s not just a great story, it’s a glorious identity. It gives us a powerful sense of what this nation is, both to its people and to the rest of the world.

The ethic of this story is even greater. The ethic of most nation’s identity is: We’re the good guys, and anyone in our way is the bad guys. That’s not bad, but ours is better: Defenders of freedom are the good guys, and tyrants are the bad guys. This in itself is revolutionary.

Truly, it may be the greatest birth myth of any nation.

The myth supplanting our true founding

Our true foundation myth is still there, but it has been evolving for some decades now into something else. Its brilliant light is becoming dimmer as other stories about our nation become more sacred in its place. This can only spell trouble for us, because it’s a threat to our identity, for reasons we just discussed.