As we celebrate the birth of the American republic, it's a good moment to remember that the American spirit is quintessentially the amateur spirit. Not the amateur spirit as you probably think of it, because the popular understanding of "amateur" and "amateurism" has evolved a lot during the last 226 years, and especially during the last 100 or so. Evolved for the worse.

Back in the day, "amateur" was a positive, even noble descriptor. The Latin root for "amateur" is amator -- "lover." An amateur pursuit was something you did for love as opposed to money, something you did passionately, not because you had to. The creators of America in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries weren't professional explorers, or hunters, or builders. The pioneers, all but a very few, were total amateurs -- and reckless, foolhardy amateurs at that.

Thomas Jefferson was an amateur writer and philosopher when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, and an amateur architect when he designed Monticello, one of the splendid American buildings of the 18th century. Benjamin Franklin's profession was printing and publishing, but he made his reputation as amateur inventor, an amateur musician, then as an amateur diplomat and finally as an amateur politician writing the Constitution. In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville praised America for its scarcity of "public careers" -- that is, our lack of professional politicians. Back then, half the Congressional incumbents left office every two years. Ours was a government of amateurs.

And back in those glory days, an 1828 Webster's dictionary defined an amateur as, "A person attached to a particular pursuit, as to music or painting; one who has a taste for the arts."

Nowadays, of course, an "amateur" with a taste for the arts means a dabbler or an incompetent. This is today's American Heritage Dictionary definition: "Noun: One lacking professional skill or ease in a certain area, as in art. Adjective: Not professional; unskillful."

Today, credentials are required, and paid professionalism rules. The only realm of American life where true amateurism is considered unequivocally preferable to professionalism is sex. Which is too bad. "The amateur," wrote the cultural historian Daniel Boorstin in 1989, "is not afraid to do something for the first time. An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in." In other words, all of us can -- and every artist must -- try to keep his or her innocent, terrified amateur excitement burning.

Which is why I, for instance, as a rank radio amateur, agreed three years ago to help try to invent a radio show. This one.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.

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