The Wordy Shipmates

20th-century politicians fixated on and distorted John Winthrop’s surviving writing. Ronald Reagan, who served as California’s governor and then became US president in 1980, made sure that during his two terms in office, “Winthrop’s city on a hill became the national metaphor” (59). Regan regularly invoked the seemingly benign image to talk about his vision for the country, but Vowell juxtaposes the rhetoric with the reality of Regan’s presidency: high unemployment rates, a homelessness crisis, and the growing AIDS epidemic (60; 65).

In response, politicians rebuking Reagan quoted Winthrop’s statement that a community had to “rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together” (63), but Reagan’s Winthrop sound bite won out as Americans reelected Reagan in a landslide. Vowell concludes that “In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues” (63). People easily feed into the hopeful and self-aggrandizing vision of a city on a hill but do not want to sign up for a communal struggle.

Even at Regan’s funeral, speakers invoked the “city on a hill” metaphor and linked Winthrop’s hopeful message to Reagan’s presidency. Vowell contrasts mourners quoting “A Model of Christian Charity” with news of Americans torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, Iraq.