If there's one lesson of the last election, it's that Americans are okay with exceptionalism. As developed nations go, we're certainly among the most fiscally conservative, the least trusting of international institutions, and we're definitely the winner of the "spends most on its military" award.
None of which is inherently problematic. I think there's a huge gulf in the view of the world between the US and Europe; even many people in the blue states recognize that the United States cannot abandon realpolitik and fail to see war as a threat to its security in the same way that Europe has (thanks largely to an unsung but immense US military presence). I especially don't have a problem with the world's only superpower deciding that it needs to spend a lot on defense, and that its defense requires a robust economy and scepticism in its participation in international institutions.
But I do have a problem with what I perceive as a new American exceptionalism: an increasingly poor human rights record. We speak proudly about how freedom won the Cold War. Of how our founding fathers fled Britain in favor of religious freedom. Now, Britain (though, let's face it, doesn't Blair's "special relationship" sound a bit gay to you?) has not only legalized civil unions but is actively recruiting homosexuals into its military. Canada and Europe recognize homosexuals as people--why can't we? Do I really have to move to a socialist country just to get married?
We seem to have abandoned altogether the discourses of freedom for ones of security. As I've written before, the value of open borders has been eliminated for fear of terrorism, as we make it more difficult for foreigners to legitimately enter our country every day. We're increasinly becoming a pariah amongs developed nations in our drug policy, our policy towards homosexuals, and other matters of human rights. What room is there for abandonment the Geneva Convention, secret military tribunals, and widespread use of torture in the "land of the free"? And though Europe, too, has not been immune to the language of security with respect to immigration, Europe never claimed it valued individuals over the prevailing state interest.
My grandparents--six kids in tow--weren't drawn to Europe in search of opportunity and an escape from racial discrimination in the post-colonial world; they looked for those things in the United States. There was a time when, in relation to other countries, the US really did live up to that hopeful phrase in our national anthem. With little in the area of sound logic, we seem to have assumed that one aspect of our exceptionalism--a robust defense as the lone superpower--justifies abandonment of our original exceptionalism as the land of the free. Shame.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The New American Exceptionalism
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4 comments:
One of the big draws about America was its exceptional degree of religious freedom, which has in turn led to America being exceptionally religious among first world nations.
The first half of the issues you complain of would be better attributed to that trait, I think, than to a new discourse of national security.
yes, I've considered that.
the thing is, that despite the fact that the US as a whole is more faithful than other countries, the Church doesn't have a strong a role in politics as it does in, say, Spain or Italy. yet in those countries, large steps forward have been made on issues of social conservatism.
it's not so much that I blame the discourses of security for all of these changes. I think it's the comfort with exceptionalism--arising from the fact that we're one of the few developing nations that still actively dialogue in this discourse, and that we're the most fiscally conservative of developed nations--that we somehow think justifies our exceptionalism in this area as well.
oh look. a rare occurrance as of late: someone agrees with me, at least in part:
"The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security."
Fiscally conservative? No way! The United States is racking up the debt big time. Our current spending and refusal to tax have led to tremendous debt and slow economic growth. Even Greece, which cooked its books, is in better shape on the debt and borrowing front.
The United States is still exceptional.
We do offer more economic opportunities in that it is MUCH easier to set up a business in the United States than almost anywhere else. In the rest of the world, you run into guilds, regulations and corruption, even more than we have.
Since we have no history of religious persecution, Americans are less likely to associate religion with massacres, exile, torture and fields of blood. This is not to say that the religious wouldn't be glad to have massacres, exiles, torture and fields of blood here, but so far they've been kept at bay.
We are also an empire. There is a reason Clinton liked Marcus Aurelius, for he too was running a mature empire. Empires cost a lot of money to run, and a lot of that money goes to the military. The trick is to keep your empire in the black. The Soviets went into the red in the mid-70s, and their days were numbered. Clinton ran in the black, Bush is running us in the red. We'll see if we are at the end of the age of empires.
As for the current paranoia, we've been through it before. There was the expulsion of the Tories, the Alien Sedition acts, Lincoln suspending habeus corpus, Jim Crow, the McCarthy persecutions, the Japanese internment and now our current horrors. We are less exceptional on this front than we like to think.
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