The North American Frontier Contributed Greatly To Todays Essays

The North American frontier contributed greatly to today's American culture. For nearly 150 years before independence, the Appalachian mountain range had been the American frontier, separating civilization from wilderness. When North America gained independence and became the United States, however, people began to move more freely across the frontiers, into the unknown. The land belonged to them now, and they were free to explore it however deeply they chose claiming at will what land they saw. One can explain American development as the existence of a large area of free land constantly receding, and American settlement advancing westward. The difference in American institutions from those of any other nation is that American institutions have a way of adapting themselves to the growing, changing nation for which they were imposed. In addition, American development has shown itself to be not only an advance along a single frontier, but a cycle of returning to primitive conditions along a constantly moving frontier line, then settling and civilizing those areas. The American frontier is also unlike that of any other country in that most other countries have developed in a limited area of which they knew the boundaries, meeting and conquering other developing nations around them. But in the case of North America, the frontier was where savagery and civilization met, and nobody knew what lay beyond it. The settlers of North America had no idea that the continent they had begun settling was so enormously vast; they simply took nature as it came. The pioneers' necessity to cope with natural barriers and survive in near anarchy, in essence being self-sufficient, has greatly affected the American culture of today. One of the areas affected by the frontier experience was politics. People on the frontier had to deal with whatever life brought them and make the best of it. They learned how to be very individualized, pushing their way through whatever barriers nature presented. This individuality has led Americans to develop a government that facilitates individualism. We, the Americans, are usually suspicious, untrusting, and paranoid of the government because we like to be independent, individually solving whatever problems arise in our path to the goal. This mentality is shown in the nation's protests to the government's increasing tyranny and intervention in our personal lives; however, a changing, growing nation requires changes in government. We believe in individualism, and we apply this belief to all aspects of our lives. In the so-called "Wild West", government does not pay as close attention to people's actions, and this was where the vast majority of the nation's reforms we know today originated. For example, initiative, the right of the citizens to initiate a new law into the legislature; referendum, the citizens' right to directly vote a law into action instead of passing it through the legislature; recall, the citizens' to vote a corrupt legislator out of office by way of petition; and term limits were all reforms born in the West. The reason for the government's low involvement in Westerners' daily lives is that for centuries, even to this day, many parts of the West have still been developing their society, civilization, and state governments. In the East, where we have always been on the civilized side of the frontier, people tend more to accept the government's rules, mentally coming to the conclusion that there is nothing they can do about it. But in the West new ideas for reform are constantly being born. Of course, there must be a compromise between a totalitarian government and complete anarchy; too much government restricts freedom while too little government does not provide the convenient government services we may take for granted, and allows society to get far too out of hand. The United States of America is a diverse but tolerant social mixing pot. Unlike most other nations, America is a safe haven for many, many races and religions. People of a particular race or ethnic group usually live in clusters, minimally interfering with outsiders; taking this into mind, however, many immigrants are still amazed by the high level of tolerance America holds. Our tolerance comes from the fact that so many ethnic groups arrived here during the settlement, and that the black African slaves intermingled with the white community enough to earn that tolerance. Furthermore, in the West many different types of people can settle without upsetting one another because of the vast empty space out west to separate them. In addition to our toleration of race and religion, America gives more privileges to its women than most other countries. This anomaly results from the fact that during settlement the women were required to