THE MYTH ABOUT MYTHS

Too often people brush myths aside as silly, childish, made-up. Not so fast! There are trivial myths, but then there are towering myths. You better know the difference.

Under trivial come urban myths: Ghosts haunt Broadway theatres...Florida is the elephant graveyard for elders ...Buffalo is the snow capitol of the nation...the Chicago Cubs operate under a curse. [Well, those last two aren't all that far wrong].

Then the political myths: Democrats are tax-and-spend...Republicans are for the rich...there are no good politicians. [All right, so these myths may have something going for them!]

But it's the big national myths that really count. Because these are not simply fictions, rather they are sweeping collective beliefs which have over time created their own truth and their own tenacity. They actually help make a nation who it is. Three in particular have wrapped themselves around our nation's heart like a first-time love:

* American Exceptionalism ~ From the day the Puritans first landed they spoke of their new world experiment as a biblical "city on the hill." This bravado was still being expressed 300 years later, only Ronald Reagan added the adjective "shining." From our exceptional victory over the Redcoats to our exceptional Constitution to Lincoln's exceptional definition of America at Gettysburg to FDR's exceptional Four Freedoms, Americans have thought of themselves as a little different, a little better, than the rest of the world from where they left to come here

* The American West ~ With the first coastal settlements, there was always a "place out west" where struggling Americans back east could dream of. A place for second chances. Generally called the frontier, it kept moving westward until 1890 when the US Census reported no longer any contiguous line distinguishing populated and un-populated America. And yet the myth lived on even as late as Kennedy's vision of a "new frontier." An America in which there are forever second-chances, as typified by the old frontier's favorite game of draw poker

* The American Dream ~ This myth amalgamated out of the other two to speak to our hearts. Mythically speaking, anyone here can, and probably will, catch the brass ring on the merry-go-round-of-life, Good job, good marriage, good family, good living. Tens of millions of people from around the globe have continued to pour into our ports seeking -- and often finding -- just such a dream. But the dreamers who get it often grow selfish about sharing it. And so America has and continues its angry suspicion of anyone who's "different" and who "hasn't earned it."

Most myths help make us who we are. The trick is to pick the right myths...