By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

[The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Tucker's book, Spirits of America: On the Semiquincentennial.]

Of all the chapters in Eric Sloane's book, his fifth chapter on pioneering is the most melancholy. He reflects on the hardships of life in the 18th and 19th centuries, the strange and spectacular ways people unrooted themselves to travel for months on end to find new homes in uncharted land and make new homes for themselves, leaving all comforts behind.

They had adventure, but we do not, certainly not in our push-button, app-driven lives of endless electronics, software, and now AI, which tells us everything to think so that we don't have to. We see adventure on screens but don't participate in it. We watch it but don't create it. We admire it from afar but work hard to keep it at bay so that it never really touches us.

I often think about my great-great-great-grandfather, son of a Massachusetts Congregationalist minister, who at the age of 18 in 1830 happened upon a flyer advertising freedom and adventure in Texas. For whatever reason, he left. I don't know why. It seems crazy because he had every privilege. He seemed to want something else, perhaps to make it on his own.

He made a stop in New Orleans and met with an uncle who gave him tools, horses, and a covered wagon, which he took to East Texas and started farming. He didn't like it and sold it all and made it to Southwest Texas to learn blacksmithing as an apprentice. He later set up his own shop.

He participated in the war for independence from Mexico and then enjoyed a brief period as a Texas Ranger in the Republic before it became a state. Having married, he had a son who found himself embroiled in the Civil War, not fighting Yankees but going West to settle more lands. He was a medic because he had tools, not because he had medical skills.

Strange times.

No need to tell the whole story, which is quite dramatic, but if you have ever been to the Big Bend, you know the terrain. There seems to be no water. It is scary and threatening. It is hot, dusty, and dry, seemingly gentle on the beautiful surface but angry just beneath. Why did he not just turn around and go home?

It's hard to say, but this much is clear: that generation was made of sterner stuff. And there were many thousands just like him, spreading out from New England in all directions. They cleared land. They planted crops. They figured out the water situation. They felled trees and built homes. They started businesses. They struggled daily to survive and work their way toward the ability to thrive.

That experience is still visible in our culture, but the rationale is gone.

Do you know the wonderful books Little House on the Prairie? I hope so. They tell the story but don't neglect Farmer Boy and the books by the author's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. What a writer and what a visionary!

The subject matter should be understood by every American kid and owned by every American family. Our pioneer history shaped this country and its love of freedom and its passion for the new and the possible.

We are no longer pioneers. You could say that we still invent things. We still start businesses and embark on innovations. But we do not venture into wholly unchartered territory and plant our own flag to make a new life for ourselves.

Elon Musk tries to revive all this with his talk about colonizing Mars. I admit that this just does not inspire me. First, it is not going to happen. Second, why would we want it to happen? Third, this just sounds like a big lame excuse for abandoning the job we have to do right here. It seems odd to me to say "Make America Great Again," but if we fail, we can all move to Mars.

Just a few choice quotes from Sloane on this whole subject.

"Adventure is not outside a man, but within."

"Without adventure, civilization is automatically in the process of decay."

"Each scientific advance makes life simpler but duller, without adventure."

There is trut...