TOM WOLFE SPECIFIES THE DATE THE AMERICAN IDEA WAS BORN.

TOM WOLFE SPECIFIES THE DATE THE AMERICAN IDEA WAS BORN. In The Atlantic for November, a number of thinkers have short essays on The American Idea. Tom Wolfe gives the moment that the American idea was born: at about five p.m. on December 2, 1803. At that time, the British Ambassador Thomas Jefferson confronted the British ambassador with a White House dinner at which there were no assigned seats. The seats were available on a first-come, first-served basis. The table was round so there was no ranking of guests at the table. The procedure was referred to as a “pell-mell.” (I had never heard of the phrase, but Judith Martin (Miss Manners) discusses it in the same issue, although she believes it marked a low point in American manners). Wolfe identifies the disbelief in aristocracy as the American idea and says that even today in Europe ordinary citizens “still feel the presence of ‘that certain class,’ that indefinable but nevertheless eternal status stratum forever destined to be their superiors.”