From Liberty to Libertarianism to Anarchy

I am as flabbergasted as anyone about the decision by the U. S. Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Accompanied as it is by the probable death of any U. S. health care reform, the U. S. Senate victory by the Republicans in Massachusetts, and what appears to be the expulsion of the Obama administration to the political wilderness, everyone should be alarmed about the future that lies before us. Because I assume this blog is read by my Canadian friends primarily, I want to emphasize that the current of events in the U. S. is important to Canadians as well. As a student of U. S. Constitutional History, I can assure everyone that this is decision with monumental implications.

The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United reversed precedent set and expanded and repeated since 1907 regarding the prohibition of corporations involving themselves in financing campaigns for or against political candidates. It is impossible to conclude anything other than that ideology alone drove the majority of the court. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion implies that it is too difficult in modern times, with a huge variety of ways of speaking and technologies to convey that speech, to discriminate among speakers. And, in a kind of wave of the hand, tossing aside lightly the enormous weight of precedent, Kennedy essentially comes down on the side of a fully libertarian vision of First Amendment rights. Remember, this is a country and a court that has and does limit speech in all sorts of ways if they think that speech inimical to the peaceful maintenance of the state, and often if they merely think that speech is radical. And, they have often restricted, by one means or another, not only who can be heard but who can speak as well.

Justice Stevens -- in a dissent made enormously long (90pgs.) because he had to repeat all of the weight of precedent, stare decisis, and old arguments -- put the real argument against this new ruling by the Court by emphasizing that the Court is giving corporations new stature under the idea of protecting speech for individuals. As he said,

“The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.

In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”

In the 19^th century, corporations were given the standing of “persons” for legal purposes and for certain limited rights (e. g., the right to sue and be sued), but not because anyone seriously thought that a corporation was a person in body or mind. The corporation is a fiction, and it constitutes only a fictive “person” for legal convenience.

Stevens also attacks the effects of this decision. Although assumed effects have less argumentative weight in constitutional law than fundamental principles and precedent, in this case the evidence of what is going to happen is overwhelming. Corporations will have it in their power, through clever and careful manipulation and the means to control most public speech (aside from the internet and private correspondence), and to decide the outcome of elections – no matter how vigilant the electorate may be. “One cannot shout fire in a crowded theatre and cause a panic,” so said Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., but the majority of the current court is quite willing to let a corporation openly, or at arms–length or behind layers of third and fourth party front-organizations, spend millions of dollars to destroy any candidate they wish through powerful devices of propaganda expertly and precisely employed. Public lives will be ruined. Private lives will be ruined. An electoral panic for against candidates will ensue. Only the wealthy friends of corporations need apply for high public office. The greater part of the American democracy will shun politics even more than they do now. The consequences may be catastrophic.

The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision, however, is just part of a larger mudslide, a larger erosion around the very foundations of American society. This slide has its origins in leftist lifestyles as much as rightist politics. “Do your own thing” liberalism married to private profit-motive laissez-faire capitalism has produced a powerful libertarian offspring. That offspring is now well out of hand. Thomas Frank’s observations on Bill Moyer’s Journal last week (Jan. 15) are chilling in the context of the Citizens United case. I thought Frank a bit extravagant in his argument that the Right wants to destroy government altogether by crippling its authority and by placing advocates of radical libertarian principles into office (in short, sycophants or toadies who will destroy government). After this court decision, I am not so certain that he overstates things by much. Ironically, I do believe that the Right wants a powerful central state insofar as the military is concerned – a military that can force other countries to abandon their own free will.

Even more problematical is the heightened unreality about many things that has come to inhabit the minds of many people. The “birthers” are unwilling to believe birth records; Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are willing to bend facts to suit their larger “truths”; Canadians are told that they do not like the health care system they have despite the fact that all evidence is to the contrary. It gets worse. While Neil Postman may have been correct a few years ago in claiming that we were, as stated in his book title, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he has drastically undershot the mark. We have not just abandon thought and reflection through our attachment to instruments like television, we have become unable to discern truth from fiction. The two have begun to merge seamlessly, and as truth and fiction merge, we get the most outrageous claims about what is and what should be. Now we live two lives, our mundane existence (if we are indeed attached to that existence at all) and the life of our avatar. We are more than one step beyond the existentialist denial of “essences.” We now think we can shape and re-shape ourselves into many different persons. In the process, we are becoming “no person.” “No person” is quite willing to be shaped by the visual media into whatever is available, and “No Person” does not want anyone – family, society, or government – to spoil their delusion. “No Person” is quite eligible for the manipulations of corporate America in the political arena.

In our household (and I do mean that others in our family have arrived at their own independent opinions on American affairs), we used to sigh at what we saw as wrong-headed policies, grit our teeth at the election of bobble-heads, and shout at the TV over stupid decision-making. I cannot speak for others but I am now getting a little frightened, perhaps not for me, but for the future, for my family and my friends who must contend with this world for another half century or more.

Two Good Public Things During My Adult Life

As I sit here on the last day of my 67^th year, I remind myself of two exceptional, revolutionary things that have happened during my adult life. Both have made a difference in my life, and both have made a difference in almost everyone’s life in the world.

1. The Beginning of the End of Patriarchy

Patriarchy is not dead. As a practice, it thrives in all areas of public life – government, employment, education, health, and religion. The idea of patriarchy as the appropriate way to organize power in everything from the family to society, however, has suffered many defeats over the last 60 years. It will not recover from these defeats, and it cannot reassert its former hegemony.

You might think that I would have mentioned the Civil Rights Movement as the one of the greatest changes for good in my adult life but I believe that that movement was well on its way to victory as the prevailing idea in educated society before 1960. With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day just having just passed, I would like to say – as both a U. S. citizen and as an American historian – that I believe King to be the greatest figure in American History. I say this because I believe that his philosophical and religious approach to civil rights won the victory for equal civil rights and propelled forward the movement for women’s rights and even the rights of the poor. The Civil Rights Movement was, therefore, antecedent to, and necessary for the women’s rights movement and the youth movement, both of which together provided the earliest assaults on patriarchy.

When we think of patriarchy, some of us probably think of fathers who governed their families, men who were usually, though not always, benevolent despots. Robert Young’s portrayal of the head of his household in “Father Knows Best” is the iconic symbol of that soft-patriarchy. Fortunately, my brother and my sister and I, growing up in a very equalitarian home in which the civil equality of Blacks and indeed of all people was assumed without question, did not experience any discomfort from patriarchy since our father never claimed that special status for himself. Almost all of the modern families I know today reveal few traces of patriarchy.

It is more likely, nowadays, to associate patriarchy with male domination and the suppression of women. With the rise of feminism in the 1960s, males of all types were identified as the impediment to progress, and the subsequent history of the women’s movement since then needs no repeating. Women still have less power, still have to outperform men, are still paid less than men, and so on, but equality is only a matter of time; progress toward the equality of men and women will not stop. Women now receive nearly equal education to men, and the recent economic downturn in the U. S. has resulted, ironically, in more men unsuccessfully seeking employment than women unsuccessfully seeking employment. That anomaly is only slightly the result of women receiving less pay for the same work.

It is often forgotten that the end of patriarchy has also benefited men as well. I will use myself as an example. When I went to graduate school, I was told that I would doing so, and told where I was going to go to school, by the head of the history department at Western Michigan. I do not begrudge this since I did, of course, have the choice of going to graduate school or not (although he seemed to make it clear that his decision was close to an order). When I got to graduate school at Wayne State, it did not take long to realize that the head of the department was a demi-god. He was in fact the perennial “head” of the department, and I do not believe he relinquished that post until he died. Older, more senior faculty members (all but one was a man) controlled all of the sources of power that were not monopolized by the head of the department. Junior faculty kow-towed or risked being driven out. Graduate students were even more subservient. Faculty did not collaborate with their students on research. Historical conferences were places where the “big men” of their fields gave papers, and commented on other people’s papers. Today, even undergraduates are often invited to join in a professor’s research project, and to publish papers. Conference presentations and commentaries are now almost exclusively the domain of young people who have new ideas about their subjects. Women are approaching equal status in grad schools. Older faculty members are now respected, if at all, for their experience, but for little else. Heads are now chairs -- persons who serve limited terms, and have limited powers.

Patriarchy is not just about male domination of women; it is about the domination of everyone by older males. Yet, even mullahs in remote regions of Afghanistan or Pakistan are now faced with recalcitrant young women who want to learn. Increasingly, they must accommodate these young women. So, the legitimacy of patriarchy has diminished as the idea of fundamental human equality has risen.

2. The Internet

The importance of the internet in changing nearly everything needs no repetition either. It is a lovely irony that an instrument designed to aid the military has become an instrument to undermine those who hold power in autocratic status as a consequence of their militaries. And, as democracy fades in the halls of governments almost everywhere, it is a happy fact that the internet enhances democratic feelings and ideas among ordinary people almost everywhere.

It only seems like yesterday that a colleague and I attended a conference in Toronto about the relationship of computers to the humanities. At the conference, we were treated to a presentation by a man who explained how a system was in place -- a system that would rapidly expand, he noted -- that allowed a person to send a message to someone else through a computer linked to an “internet” in which bundles of messages were sent at the speed of light to remote servers that distributed these messages to individuals. This was in 1980. It was like telling folks in the 16^th century about jet aircraft.

In 1994, while on a research trip to Massachusetts, June and I were joined by our oldest son, Nathaniel. During a long drive home from an expedition to the ocean, we began to talk about the internet. June and I were speculating on the possible need for governance of the internet for moral purposes, etc. Nat was outraged. For two hours, he tried to convince us of the error of our ideas. Censorship as a means of attacking a few bad things failed to offset the openness of the internet, Nat argued, and its primal democratic nature and its liberating potential should not be impeded. I say today: Nathaniel – you were absolutely right and we were absolutely wrong. The recent conflict over Google’s threatened removal from China again heightens the remarkable importance that the internet holds for the entire world. Beyond that, the recent move by Google to digitize as much of the world’s literature as possible – whatever any of may think about the legal and moral problems inherent therein -- makes the internet the most revolutionary instrument in the history of humankind.

Because the internet now refers to so many things – ideas, information, communication, commerce, religion, and politics – it may have lost some of its singular stature over time, but it still remains those bundles of information shooting off in all directions, accessible to an increasing number of people world-wide. For that I am thankful.

Hey, Pat Robertson: History Matters More, and You Don't Know Any

Because this is a blog dedicated to history mattering more than many other ways of knowing, it is impossible to let Pat Robertson's idiotic analysis of Haiti pass. As you all know by now, Robertson claimed that Haitians had long ago made a pact with the devil, and were incurring, I guess, "God's" wrath.

It must be said on the face of things that not only is Robertson's logic non-existent, his distortion of his own theological beliefs is problematic as well. Does he mean to say that Haitians made a collective pact with the devil? Does he mean to say that such a pact would automatically be handed down from earlier Haitians to their progeny? Is this some new theological idea about the sin's of the fathers being bestowed on the sons? If he believes in the autonomy of the individual believer (or non-believer), as he purportedly does, how can he talk of collective pacts with the devil? If he believes in the capacity of individual redemption, how can he believe in an historical curse handed down. In fact, Robertson is denying God's redemptive power, which is a heresy in any Christian religious theology that I know.

But that is not the point here. Robertson's history is absolutely crazy. For a full reprise of what he is vaguely and erroneously talking about (please see the Christian Science Monitor article on Haiti for Jan. 14, 2010). First, he suggests that Haitians (meaning Black Haitians) signed a pact with the devil to get out from under the control of "Napoleon III". Oops, Pat, old boy, you are wrongly confusing historical eras and talking about the mid-19th c., not the late 18th and early 19th c. The fact is that the Haitians first took the principles of the French Revolution -- liberté, fraternité, and equalité -- seriously in 1791. By 1794, the radical French Revolution (which, if Robertson knew any history, he would also condemn as the work of those in league with the devil) resulted in the freeing of Haiti's massive slave population. Napoleon attempted to re-enslave them in 1802, which led to the famous revolution under Toussaint L'Ouverture against France. Napoleon -- unlike certain American "leaders" from LBJ through "W" through Obama in regard to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan -- knew when and where to fight and knew that victory in Haiti against this Black uprising would be too costly and too difficult (if even possible). Instead, he cut his loses, turned instead toward Europe, and sold Louisiana (the most substantial chunk of the U. S. ever acquired by treaty) to the fledgling and vulnerable U. S. for $15 million. As the Haitian ambassador to the U. S. has pointed out recently, much of U. S. territory and much of the U. S. opportunity to thrive as an "Empire of Liberty" was because of the Haitian revolution. And, what about "freedom loving" Haitians, who had destroyed the bonds of slavery more than 50 years before the Americans were able to so? Well, naturally, being Black and poor, the rest of the world turned their back on allowing Haiti to become a functioning society. Haiti had always depended on trade, and after their successful revolution they were shut out. If finger pointing is to take place, the so-called developed world of the U.S. and Europe can point their fingers back at themselves.

In short, the Americans are, in an indirect way at least, profoundly beholden to Haiti. Haiti's profound poverty, now made unimaginably worse, is the responsibility of all of us. Unfortunately, more people will hear Pat Robertson's cruel and moronic comments and say -- uh, huh, that most be true -- than will hear the real historical story. I have seen few attempts by the media to review Haiti's real history, and as I watch the devastation on television, no one contextualizes Haiti's plight in historical terms -- the only terms that can possibly inform us about why things are as they are, and why we are all responsible in terms of building Haiti to a society and state.

A New Year. A New Decade? How About a New Century??

We can all agree that we have just entered a new year – even if January 1 is as arbitrary as any other date as a marker for the year. Purists will insist that 2011 is the beginning of the New Decade, but why quibble about that either. It is irritating, however, to have people declare that ten years ago we entered a new century, and that this new century of ours is markedly different from the previous one. In fact, despite the drama of 9/11, we in North America are living in the old century. The twentieth century, as I see it, began with the Great War in 1914. More than any previous century, it has been marked by totalities, including total war, i. e., wars that recruit the hearts and minds and bodies and lives of whole populations. It has been a century in which the victory of large-scale capitalism has been made complete. The laissez-faire capitalism of the 1920s -- despite being rescued and temporarily modified in the Great Depression – was to be repeated in the rise of the super-corporation in the 1950s, and then pushed to the rarified heights of near religion with the neo-liberal capitalist victories from 1980 to the present. After 1914, matters ranging from war to cold war to medicine to business also resulted in the near total victory of science over all others ways of resolving and knowing. In the backlash against the modernity of warfare and science and consumerism after 1914, we also saw a new kind of religious reaction (I cannot in good faith call it conservatism), beginning with the publication and widespread circulation of the “The Fundamentals” in the early part of the 20^th century followed by frequent religious revivals culminating in the new giants of religion in the likes of Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, and John Hagee.

Unable to break, or even modify, the effects and cycle of the perfect storms created by these elemental features of the 20^th century, we have increasingly come to be their victims. We have come to live in a world where ideologies and other loose systems of thought and behavior have long ago expanded beyond their original essence and their public utility. These systems and behaviors have become distentions – overwhelming, often grotesque, sometimes even caricatures of some decent value or morality that they once represented. I was fortunate enough to have taken a course in philosophy of history from Bill Bossenbrook, a distinguished professor who first alerted me to the nature of distentions. A recent article by Tony Judt – “What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?” – in the New York Review of Books, Vol. LVI, No. 20, has further prodded me to address the business of distentions and the seemingly perpetual century we seem unable to escape. I will not repeat Judt’s argument, although I have long held some of his opinions. I differ with him here in the elements upon which I want to focus. He halls out the usual suspects: capitalism, socialism, communism, etc. I am going to identify a different set of “isms” to highlight how I think “distentions” have distorted and made pathological our quest for social democracy and social justice.

In order to drive home the matter of distention, here are four “isms” that are not (yet) part of our ordinary vocabulary, and why I think they keep us mired in an inappropriate past and an unworkable present.

1. “Economism” – As Judt points out, “economism” does not simply mean narrow economic determinism, although it encompasses that, too. Economism for Judt is “the invocation of economics in all discussions of public affairs.” It is, in short, a kind of economic totalitarianism. Decades ago, June started saying, “When did we stop talking about the needs of society and start talking about the needs of only the economy?” I don’t know. I do know that in many western countries we have shoved the idea of society to the background (at best) and elevated the supposed health of the economy to the very forefront of all public (and, for that matter, private) considerations. We have become servants of an economy that is much more ineffable and fictitious than those mere members of society who must slavishly tend and feed it. Among the worst consequences has been the near total victory of the idea of the trickle-down theory of economic well-being for everyone who is not a part of the financial “industry” or big business. What is so astounding is that trickle-down economic prosperity has been shown to be false in every single historical case where it has been broadly applied. We who live in North America live in societies “of the economy, for the economy, and by the economy.”

2. “Religionism” – The ameliorative effects of religion -- which make us more empathetic creatures and generally expand our humanness – are lost in the distentions of religionism. As Marx observed long ago (in his best philosophical work), religion can cause alienation – alienation from the societies we inhabit on earth as well as alienation from ourselves as full human beings. Some modern evangelical movements have, by their vigorous adherence to certitudes, created further social alienation. A siege mentality in which exclusive groups of the “saved” or the “righteous” need no longer care about the mundane, earthly lives of their fellow human beings, is not a healthy thing for a planet of 6 billion people. Yet we have large masses of people who have turned their backs to temporal society, expending their time trying to calculate the exact date of the rapture.

3. “Familyism” – Yes, I was also surprised to find this word had a meaning (to at least some people). As I understand it, some attach it to a movement associated with Senator Patrick Moynihan – his ideas on poverty, I assume -- that elevate the importance of the family and the maintenance of its strength above other social factors. This is all good in that healthy families lead to a healthy society. But we have, in the last thirty years at least, made family the be-all-and-end-all of life. Whether Margaret Thatcher actually said that “there is no such thing as society; there are only individuals and families,” is perhaps less important than the fact that many have acted on this precept. “We’re all right, Jack” is the saying that comes to my mind, not just in the realm of those who have succeeded economically but with those living in what they think are secure families. Like those entrapped in “religionism,” “familyism” includes a few, and exclues many. Or, in other words, the “family isn’t everything, it is the only thing” (to paraphrase Vince Lombardi’s famous words about winning in football). Even those with close friends and neighbours are more wont to erect the barricades of family than seek more broadly-based social reform. The world has grown to condemn ethnocentrism, but familyism is just ethnocentrism with a smaller circumference. Ironically, while modern science has done much to eradicate racist and ethnocentric arguments, it has inadvertently, through the promotion of ideas like “selfish genes” and the biological necessity of parents protecting their offspring before all else, promoted not only the primacy of the family but the family’s right to prior claims in all societal areas.

4. “Sciencism” – “Sciencism,” despite being antipathetic to “religionism,” is its mirror image. Sciencism is simply the belief that science will, given enough time, answer all questions and resolve all matters. There are many more adherents to this naïve belief than some may realize. Almost no form of public activity can claim authenticity without passing scientific standards. Science is the gate keeper and its near total victory can be seen in almost any modern university one wishes to inspect. Post-modernist resistance has been isolated and restricted to a few English departments and unemployed poets. Even the disciplines of History and Philosophy now claim that they are completely scientific. When I suggest to my friends that poetry might be a source of enlightenment and truth, I am given a look of condescension and amusement. The arts and literature, after all, are decorative. When I further suggest that devotees of “sciencism” would do well to reflect on irony, I am told that science will unravel all ironies as well.

It should come as no surprise to anyone, therefore, that the long 20^th century has been, and remains into the 21^st century, a totalitarian one. It did not end with Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. It hardly needed, or needs, villains of this type to carry it forward. We will all quietly acquiesce in one totalitarian belief or another. Of course, there have been strenuous movements aside from post-modernism that have tried to offer alternatives. Those who retreated to the land and formed small, self-sufficient communities were not as crazy as we thought in the 1960s. Those who have tried to enhance small-scale capitalism among industrious women in Bangladesh or Africa have resurrected the idea of capitalism as a social benefit just as Adam Smith envisioned it. Missionaries and Humanists who try to encourage the dignity of all human beings, have had an ameliorative effect worldwide. But until we break the iron grip of the “isms” I describe above – not destroy those parts of them that are good and valuable but the totalitarian qualities they flaunt – we will not move on to another “historical” century or a better world.

Vulnerability

We are all vulnerable. We think it a curse. It leads to doubt and fear and error. It makes us weak and susceptible to all manner of bad choices and tragedies. A recent replay on Bill Moyers’ Journal, regarding Lyndon Johnson’s private telephone conversations during the period leading toward the Vietnam tragedy, reminded me of the enormous implications of one man’s vulnerabilities. In his phone conversations, LBJ affirmed what every anti-war protestor knew: that the Vietnam conflict was a war of national liberation; that further involvement in this war would create a quagmire from which it would be hard to escape; that the war was not winnable. So, why did LBJ persist? Because, as he admitted privately in several phone calls, he would look weak if he did not prosecute the war, and worse, to his mind, he would be pilloried by the Republicans for this perceived weakness. We all know where his vulnerabilities led us, and who and how many paid the price. In the end, LBJ had to withdraw from the run for the presidency in 1968; he had been defeated. If he had resisted his vulnerabilities and pulled out of Vietnam, he might have lost the election, but at least his historical honor would have been preserved.

Tiger Woods’ recent display of human vulnerability is not to be found in his libido as much as in his bad judgement of character (i.e., his own character and that of his co-respondents); the tawdry leaps into bed with every cocktail waitress and wannabe actress within sight (Maureen Dowd in the NY Times cautions that men should avoid liaisons with young women who have 8 x 10 glossies to hand out); and, his far too easy (or non-existent?) conception about what constitutes virtue and fidelity. More than this, as a young man who demanded the privilege of privacy, who accepted the image of integrity necessary to represent a wide range of commercial products, and who claimed superiority to his other colleagues in a game which demands individual honesty on the course, he failed to live up to the persona he had consciously created around himself. Raised by doting parents, he learned the value of keeping everything within the family -- tight to his chest -- and with tenaciously pursuing one’s own success, and that success alone. Now, he is facing the hardest contest of his entire life, one that none of us ever completely wins – admitting and exposing one’s biggest weaknesses and vulnerabilities to others.

President Barack Obama has his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which we are not yet able to portray exactly. “Hope” now seems remote; “audacity” has given way to “timidity”; “Yes We Can” is now “maybe we can’t.” Rhetoric and reality are drifting farther apart in “America-the-political,” and the President seems to have no more immunity from this drift than any average politician.

On the other hand, if we were not vulnerable, we would be monsters. In a culture like ours, with its emphasis on autonomy, individuality, and personal agency, invulnerability would be an invitation to Thomas Hobbes’s “war of all against all.” Madeleine L’Engle (an American writer for young adults who believed in universal salvation) said: “When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.” Vulnerability is what allows us to love one another. Marriages, partnerships, relationships, and friendships necessarily include identifying and accepting the vulnerabilities of those near us, and exposing the vulnerabilities we have to those we love. This is not easy. Most of us believe that we must pursue friendships without showing weakness. As Walter Anderson (an American painter with a lifelong struggle with mental illness) said, “We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.” Vulnerability equals humility, a humility that oddly leads in turn to human solidarity.

No season reminds me of our vulnerability as much as Christmas. For some, simple and pure Christian joy may push fears and doubts aside. For many, however, the holiday season raises expectations of happiness and community that are false, expectations that can never be fulfilled. It can easily become a season of failure and depression, as studies and statistics readily demonstrate.

If emotional vulnerability reigns among so many of us around the winter solstice, the poignancy of material vulnerability – of persons and sometime whole societies having poor or no housing, of having little food and inadequate clothing, of receiving no education, and possessing no vision of a personal future – is exponentially greater. The Copenhagen summit on climate change illustrated just how central and profound world poverty is in the discussion of any topic. We would all be well served to remember this, and do something about this material poverty not only in the holiday season but all year long as well. We would be best served to recognize, address, and mitigate insofar as possible those personal, public, and political vulnerabilities – the primary vulnerabilities of feelings and emotions, of compromised thoughts and actions -- which now hinder hope for both the world’s material and non-material future.

Beyond Hope?

Recent events in U. S. politics and governance leave me feeling too defeated to write or speak or rant. So, I’ll let Henry Adams do it for me. Adams is writing about the period from the Gilded Age into the 1890s.

Henry Adams (1838-1918)

“We are here plunged in politics funnier than words can express. Very great issues are involved . . . . But the amusing thing is that no one talks about real interests. By common consent they agree to let these alone. We are afraid to discuss them. Instead of this the press is engaged in a most amusing dispute whether Mr. Cleveland had an illegitimate child and did or did not live with more than one mistress.” [just substitute Tiger Woods for Grover Cleveland]

“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” [The Republican Right]

“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.” [All of the current Congress]

“Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central powerhouses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces.” [lobbyists for corporations]

“The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.” [all television network news, including PBS]

“It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.” [Barack Obama?]

Reform in America is now a cause with such a remote chance of success as to make it unworthy of further discussion or consideration. We must drive for reforms elsewhere in the world, and hope that the best Americans will eventually be able to join necessary world-wide causes.

American Exceptionalism: History and Reality Denied

Ignoring American claims of “exceptionalism” is as impossible as ignoring the U. S. as a whole. Exceptionalism, nationalism, and identity are welded together in the American psyche to form a shield that seems impervious to the facts of comparative history or the conclusions of rational discourse or even the mere use of close observation.*

A recent opinion page by Thomas L. Friedman in the NY Times resurrects some of the distended delusions that can follow from the over-deployment of the exceptionalist claim. In “Advice from Grandma” (Nov. 11, 2009), Friedman, to his great credit, concludes with an excellent prescription regarding citizenship and politics in order that the U. S. avoid a “suboptimal” future in the new competitive world economy. (I have offered a similar prescription at various times in my blog page). But, before offering this prescription, Friedman adds to some of the old canards about American exceptionalism. He begins by noting disapprovingly that some would claim that while the 19^th century was “owned” by Great Britain and the 20^th century was “owned” by the U. S., the 21^st century is to be owned by China. Unwilling to concede the last part of this equation, Friedman goes on to argue contrarily that the U. S. will still maintain dominance as a great world economic power through the special genius of American “imagination.” Citing the Apple iPod as an example, Friedman proceeds to argue that America “is still the world’s greatest dream machine.” This is American exceptionalism a la Friedman today.

So, there we have it, the latest in a long line of characteristics that presumably make the U. S. not only “exceptional” but perhaps even outside the normal constraints of history as well. In 1629, it was the John Winthrop’s claim of “a city upon a hill” for all to see (and admire) that established the first exceptionalist claim; that lasted less than a century. In the late 18^th century it was the American Revolution, which was deemed exceptional in that, unlike the French Revolution, it led to “republican virtue.” In the early 19^th century, with “republican virtue” all but invisible, it was Jacksonian democracy and individualism; and then it was American expansionism and “manifest destiny” or, in other words, the ability of the U. S. to steal lands formally belonging to Mexico. In the latter half of the 19^th century, Americans claimed they were exceptional in their brand of industrial expansion, and in their invention of the modern corporation. And, they crowed, the American “dream machine” was emblemized by the inventions of Thomas Edison -- who promised a major, life-changing, invention every few months of so, followed closely by the mass production genius of Henry Ford. In the late 20^th century, the continental empire of vast resources combined with “democratization” of “lesser” people, who had fallen under American military or economic suzerainty, that marked the rewards of American exceptionalism. By the mid-20^th century we were all watching a fifteen-minute show on television named “Industry on Parade”; the industry was all American, all of the time, and endless in its promise of growth and prosperity (a laughable visual image today). By the late 20^th century, we were told that American exceptionalism could be found in its ultra-advanced economy, which wedded finance, industry, service industries and technology in a way the rest of the world could only envy. By the end of the 20^th century, this exceptionalism had been pared back to claims of technological and educational superiority. Then came the tech stock collapse and the realization that Asians and Indians and “even” the Irish had developed far better educational and mathematical skills than Americans could match.

So, what is left? What is left are still vague claims of superiorities of American character. As hard as this is to believe, American exceptionalism remains as a substitute for history and historical understanding in the mind of even well-educated Americans (e.g., Friedman’s “imagination” claim). But the experience we have garnered from globalization and world trade is that all cultures have about the same abilities – given the chance for a level playing field – to succeed. If you want to see “imagination” at work, just watch any group of poor people around the world, who through their vast capacities for invention find ways to raise food, provide shelter to their families, and sometimes even to advance the education of their children.

Globalization is here to stay, and with it new ideas about law and rights and the protection of all of the world’s citizens in fundamental ways – health care, decent shelter, clean water, good food, education, security, and employment – must be addressed and instituted. Exceptionalism is the last bastion of the 19^th century nation-state. It is the moral equivalent of claims about racial superiority and inferiority. And, we can only avoid global ecological and environmental disasters if we abandon exceptionalisms of all types. If the world community can make any progress on these fronts, we will have all made ourselves more exceptional than any people who ever lived in the past.

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* I have addressed this issue academically in, “ ‘And We Burned Down the White House, Too’: American History, Canadian Undergraduates, and Nationalism,” The History Teacher 37, no. 3 (May 2004); and, re-published, in part, as “American History, Canadian Undergraduates, and Nationalism” in Carl Guarneri and James Davis, eds., Teaching American History in a Global Context (2008).