National holidays like the Fourth of July always leave me feeling a little bit uncomfortable, like being the only single friend tagging along on Married Couples’ Night Out, or being invited to goggle and goo-goo at the pink, squishy newborn whom everyone else thinks is just the cutest thing to blink but has just spit up down the front of my shirt. Yes, I suppose, setting everything else aside, I can accept and even respect those folks who speak of love of country as something deeper, or higher, than blind support for everything the government does. But I have to be honest — I don’t get it.
My Nation-State, ‘Tis of Thee?
I am not sure, for instance, what a country actually is. The nation-state as a political entity has largely been defined as that peculiar hybrid of state and nation, of sovereign territorial unit and cultural/ethnic group. When we speak of the “state,” we mean the government and its military, exercising control over a given region, enforcing its borders and regulating the activities within them. On the other hand, appeals to the “nation” evoke the idea of a shared culture and heritage, a common tradition made up of familiar historical icons and social symbols. The nation-state, in today’s political language, is that entity that exists where state and nation happen to coincide in the same geographic location.
The concept of the nation-state can become problematic, however. Take Israel. (Please.) With aspirations to create a thriving nation-state, a Jewish democracy in the heart of the Middle East, the Israeli government has resorted to methods of oppression and occupation against the native population, Palestinians who had already been living in the region for generations when the State of Israel was first established (sixty-two years and two months ago, as of next week). Jews of the Diaspora, immigrating primarily from Europe and the former Soviet Union, hardly share a sense of cultural or ethnic continuity with the native Arab population, and this presents a major obstacle to “nation-state”-hood. The Israeli government’s solution, in an effort towards security as a sovereign power and solidarity with the West in its cultural self-identity, is to push out or exterminate those unwilling or unable to participate in their pre-determinedly “Jewish” democracy.
This story should sound familiar, for it parallels our own. The birth of our “nation” as a cultural/ethnic entity did not so much occur with the war for independence from Great Britain, which established the sovereignty of the United States as a geopolitical unit with its own government and military (i.e. the birth of our “state”) but did not signal any great rift of cultural identity. Rather, it had already begun years before with the gradual colonial occupation of the “new world” and the extermination of its indigenous peoples, the Native Americans. Indeed, this process of birthing a national identity was so gradual that in many ways it did not reach its full completion until almost a century later, after the Civil War and its aftermath firmly established the federal government as preeminent political body of a united politico-cultural unit. (Indeed, this linguistic analysis of plural versus singular usage of the term “United States” notes that it was not until 1902 that a House of Representatives committee ruled that “the United States” should be treated as singular rather than plural — in other words, our self-identity as a singular nation was formally recognized and established by the national government only a decade or so before the start of the first World War.)
The Settlers’ State — Mother of Exiles
The irony of this generations-long establishment of our sense of “nationhood” to compliment our formal political “statehood” is that, at the same time, ideals such as freedom and diversity were also slowly expanding — often painfully and against the explicit efforts of the government — resulting in an increasingly pluralistic society. The famous sonnet displayed within the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty — with its lines, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — could reasonably be understood as a call of welcome primarily to the poor and wretched of Europe, then suffering under the economic and environmental pressures of the industrial revolution. (Oddly, the alternative title for Lady Liberty provided by the sonnet, “Mother of Exiles,” never caught on.) Only in recent decades has this call come to be appreciated as far broader in its implications and meaning, embracing those of Asian, African and Latin-American ethnicities as well (while many still retain an ambivalent attitude towards people of Arabian or Middle Eastern descent). Yet with the widening embrace of diversity comes the increasing tension between ethnic-cultural integrity, on the one hand, and assimilation into a shared sense of American identity, on the other. In other words, as the real and actual diversity of the United States continues to deepen, and if it is to remain authentic, the sense of the U.S. as a “nation-state” — a geopolitical unit that rests on a shared cultural foundation — finds itself on increasingly shaky ground.
Now this suggestion — that the United States as a singular nation is in a culturally unstable place — might sound quite radical, but in many ways it has echoes in conversations throughout the Pagan community. Not a few folks challenge the notion that “Paganism” can be fairly described as a singular movement or community at all, but may better be understood as a loose collection or network of archetypal types of religions, plural. In this particular debate I come down, albeit in laissez-faire fashion, in favor of using the word “Paganism” broadly and inclusively, primarily because I see at the heart of “Pagan identity” the invocation of (as I put it in a recent post): “the contemporary Western (counter)cultural (new religious) movement(s) centered on or drawing inspiration from an archetypal conception of ancient (and/or pre-Christian) native(/cultic/indigenous) Indo-European religious tradition(s).” But this only forces us to ask what is the archetype at the heart of “American identity” around which the concept of the U.S. as a nation-state coheres?
This American identity, as we most often see it portrayed and invoked today, can be characterized most strongly by the small-town/suburban, post-war-prosperity atmosphere of the 1950s — that decade when American wealth and power went unchallenged in the wake of World War Two’s devastation in Europe, and many U.S. citizens enjoyed both a sense of national-identity solidified by world war, and the prosperity and economic freedom that an expanding global, capitalist free market could bring. This decade saw the diversity of European nations united in the citizenry of the United States, integrated into a powerful community with a unique self-identity; no longer a community of exiles making a break from old European ways, but now seen as the culmination and pinnacle of Western civilization, inheriting and surpassing the legacy of Great Britain and, before it, ancient Rome. The decade also saw the blossoming of the consumerist cultural model, conceived by economists of the time as necessary for securing continued prosperity, a model that largely defines our understanding of “liberty” today (with its diversity of products suited to myriad demographics and subcultures, and the freedom provided by purchasing power).
Of course, this national self-identity, this “American Dream,” was in some ways always and only an illusion, an imagined archetype which politicians and other political leaders would recall with nostalgia, or invoke with gusto, as the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements and the Cold War against communism in the following decades once again challenged the notion of shared American identity or nationhood, especially for those belonging to unpopular political groups, racial minorities, or the female half of the species. Even today, there are folks within the U.S. who spout xenophobic rhetoric in defense of this dream of idyllic national integrity and pride, and would see not a beacon of welcoming freedom but a wall of concrete and barbed wire along the U.S.-Mexico border. (Canada — we cool….. for now.) These same people, who often speak the loudest in praise of American identity and national pride, would re-imagine the “state” itself as rooted in a Christian ethos. Though established firmly as a secular state, they are not far wrong in declaring the U.S. to be a “Christian nation,” insofar as the shared cultural foundation has until only recently been generally taken for granted as primarily Christian in tradition and heritage. Certainly, this shared culture can change and, some argue, is in the process of changing. But such change will fundamentally alter what we mean by the “nation-state” of the United States of America.
How Do I Love Thee? …No, Seriously, How?
Which brings me back to this question — what exactly is a country? Is it the government and political institutions of the sovereign state? The shared cultural heritage that serves as a foundation for the nation? Is it this precarious overlap, the nation-state, which saw its culmination post-WWII and is now, arguably and perhaps thankfully, in slow decline and/or gradual redefinition?
Depending on how we answer this question, the meaning of the phrase “love of country” could change drastically. Yet it seems to me there is an intentional ambiguity, even obfuscation, in how this word is used. People who talk about “loving their country” often freely mix references to government (praising liberal democracy, when it’s functioning well, anyway), historical legends, capitalist economics, cultural figures raised to semi-deified status, military triumphs, citizens’ revolts, individual rights, the beauty and fecundity of the landscape, and the people and places of their local communities. Rarely do they make coherent sense of this jumble of images and ideas, playing instead on the emotions and sentimental heart-swellings these symbols provoke. We are meant to feel pride, and gratitude, and love…. but for what precisely is left ill-defined.
With good reason. Because when it comes right down to it, “country” is an abstract, whether we identify it with the nation, the state, or a confluence of the two. Without the generous peppering of beautiful landscape imagery — amber waves of grain, purple mountains, shining seas — and the recalled faces of neighbors and loved ones who embody that sense of “community” for us in immediate and personal ways, there is very little there to grasp onto and pin the sentiment of national pride and love. (It is likewise difficult to maintain a pride-filled love of one’s government — or worship its historical and current political leaders as demi-gods — while maintaining the kind of distanced, dispassionate analytical mind necessary to engage rationally and critically with its processes and policies. Sentiment or reason, when brought head-to-head one or the other is bound to falter. Which is why it worries me a little that so many Pagans have picked up the trope this year of celebrating Columbia, named for Christopher Columbus, as a goddess of liberty.)
Holidays such as the Fourth of July serve as a kind of secular ritual for a civil religion, in which the visceral and embodied celebrations of the day — the parades, barbecues and fireworks, all couched in terms of broader politico-symbolic significance — serve to link the abstracts of “country” and “nation” to real, concrete experiences and memories. Without such national holidays, we might discover that it is not our “country” at all that we love, but the countryside itself, the land that gives us sustenance, the neighbors who warm our hearts, the ideals of justice and freedom that we see embodied quite powerfully in each other and ourselves without the need for the PATRIOT Act or the War on Terror to defend them. By participating enthusiastically in such ritualistic, state-sponsored holy days, we allow our experiences and memories of what is real and present to be usurped in the service of abstractions that can then be manipulated and played upon by those with their own agendas. We identify with the transcendent abstract, and our lip-service to diversity and difference is all too often lost in the rising tide of images, symbols and ritual acts all designed to evoke a very particular conception of national identity, one that recreates the idealized 1950s small-town feel and, even further back, the heroism and war of the Revolution itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good party. I will gladly hang out around the barbecue grill (veggie dogs and shish kabob, of course) or dance around the yard with sparklers and the fireflies on a warm summer night. I will happily come to dinner with you and your wife, or coo over your baby when it’s not being kind of gross. But don’t harbor any hopes of me playing along with some abstract ideal of Married Life or congratulate you on how your fertile lions have “really demonstrated the value of teamwork.” And don’t expect me to credit “my country” for the gorgeous scent of clover on the evening breeze or the belly-laughs shared with good friends over a beer. Because when it comes to stuff like that…. I just don’t get it.
This American identity, as we most often see it portrayed and invoked today, can be characterized most strongly by the small-town/suburban, post-war-prosperity atmosphere of the 1950s during the last presidential election a friend said to me “it annoys me that to find the voice of a ‘true American’ the media always go to the Midwest to interview farmers. That leaves a significant portion of the American public out.” The gentleman who said this is a white male in his 60s born and raised in suburban Connecticut who has lived in suburban Massachusetts for the last four decades. I realized he was onto something. When the media want to represent “Americans” they head to the Midwest as if those of us on either coast don’t fit the stereotype of “American.”
You definitely have a point there, Witchstead. The midwest farmer is another very prevalent archetype, though I think it is one primarily of individual American identity. The archetype of the “American community” – that is, American identity in a collective sense – is still very “small town,” it seems to me, though this small town can certainly be midwestern as well as north-eastern (and rural as well as suburban). The epitome of July 4 celebrations always seem to attempt to evoke this kind of feel anyway, from what I’ve observed, in the same way that folks put up evergreen Christmas trees and sing about snow even down in Florida or out in California, trying to embody the ideal New England/Dickens Christmas atmosphere.
Not to mention, our conception of what a farm and farmer actually look like is several decades out of date. These days “farms” can consist of miles and miles of monoculture fields harvested by monstrous machines, with the farmer, or “agribusinessman,” acting primarily as private contractor for various corporate monopolies on, e.g., corn and soy. Our conception of what a “real farmer” looks and acts like still harkens back to about the same era, the 1950s and early 1960s, just as the numbers of agricultural workers were beginning to drop off (many farmers moving to urban areas in search of work, and bringing romanticized, nostalgic stories of “life back home on the farm” with them) but new pesticides, irrigation systems and various other machinery were just being introduced to change the face of agriculture.
“It is [...] difficult to maintain a pride-filled love of one’s government [...] while maintaining the kind of distanced, dispassionate analytical mind necessary to engage rationally and critically with its processes and policies. Sentiment or reason, when brought head-to-head one or the other is bound to falter.”
This is not universally true. Of course it is true for some, I daresay those for whom collision of sentiment and reason is always difficult, in particular. But there exists in others a cast of mind which is painfully aware of the shortcomings of one’s society and at the same time determined to address same in a manner that draws upon that society’s best impulses and principles as expressed historically in places like the Bill of Rights. It is to this nexus of creative tension that one may turn to understand critical love of country despite the vexations enumerated in your rather perceptive essay.
I would further suggest that the actual sense animating love of country is triune, encompassing state, culture and land. That third element tends to get the soft pedal these days because it is so easily corrupted into ethnocentrism, valorizing the people who first (to modern memory) lived on the land. But I daresay it’s in the emotional mix.
Finally I would like to get into your identification of the Pagan identity with Indo-European background. Does that mean the accused witches of Africa are not our sisters and brothers? But that is probably outside the intent of your post.
Baruch, I agree with what you’ve said.
I use the word “sentiment” here not to mean the intuitive/nonrational/emotional aspect of our relationship with the other (nor the aspect of love which enables us to care deeply for transient or imperfect beings without compromising our honesty or insight into those imperfections), but in the sense of “sentimentality,” as in “excessive tenderness or nostalgia,” precisely the kind of anti-intellectual emotional hijacking characterized by, for instance, government propaganda and television advertising. It is, I think, the place where “pride” and “love,” in their shallowest senses, collude to keep each other shallow and self-congratulating. That is what I meant by “sentiment.”
As for the role of land – yes! Originally I had titled this post “Love of Country, Love of Land” and had intended to get more into that point. As it was, the post got far too long and out of control before I had a chance (and I had already written something on a similar theme back on Memorial Day). So my treatment of the role of “land” in this post was rather rushed and messy. Still, as you can probably tell, I feel much deeper loyalty to the land itself than to the abstracted notion of country or government to which it can give rise. Still, a very interesting point to consider.
…when it comes right down to it, “country” is an abstract, whether we identify it with the nation, the state, or a confluence of the two.
and
…it is not our “country” at all that we love, but the countryside itself, the land that gives us sustenance, the neighbors who warm our hearts, the ideals of justice and freedom that we see embodied quite powerfully in each other and ourselves…
But don’t you see? That’s all a part of it. A country is a living system – the land, people, ideals and institutions are all constituent parts of the system, and inextricably interrelated. We create our “transcendent abstract” every day, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not… and I believe that, at its best, this increasingly popular Religio Americana could become a powerful spiritual and magical tool for consciously shaping the future growth of America in the direction and service of Her highest ideals rather than the narrowly defined self-interest of one small part of the system.
To achieve this, though, we have to opt in.
“To achieve this, though, we have to opt in.”
And this is, perhaps, what bothers me. Because what I see going on during most of these national(ist) holidays (and more generally during everyday talk of what constitutes “patriotism” and American identity) is precisely not a conscious shaping, through creative ritual, of community identity and its future. As I noted, we play along with a very specific conception of American community identity defined decades or even centuries ago, rather than utilizing such holidays to challenge or subvert these traditional conceptions. I for one am not sure such holidays as July 4 can be used to willfully challenge or change the direction of the country – they function on far too large a scale and, to my knowledge, they have never effectively been used for anything other than the further solidification of the already existing stereotype of “Americana.”
Precisely because ritual is so powerful and so important in shaping the patterns of energy and expectations, before we begin to talk about “opting in” perhaps we all need to take a moment to “opt out” of the mishmash of patriotism we have all been swimming in since childhood. For several years, living alone in a new city, I had no real reason to participate in community holidays and events… and after that period of time, I began to notice that, from the outside, they often looked odd, even a bit disturbing. I found very few reasons to “opt in” to these types of rituals, which themselves often center around loud and wasteful displays of excess (from gas-guzzling float parades, to the millions of pounds of meat thrown on the grill every year, to the fireworks explicitly meant to evoke images of glorified war and the violence of bombs).
The fact that we view the participation in these supposedly “harmless” rituals as what distinguishes the tolerably liberal (who might protest war, for instance, but still invoke Old Glory for the cause) from the truly radical (who think the cause should be able to stand on its own feet without being draped in the colors of nationalism) belies the idea that we can enjoy our July 4 celebrations without any second thoughts or misgivings.
To clarify a bit – when I say “opt in”, I’m not just talking about the holiday, although that’s part of it; I’m speaking of the larger picture, of fully accepting the fact that we are Americans, for better and for worse. This culture, this history – both the good AND the bad – belongs to all of us, is a part of our collective inheritance… and we have to decide what we do with it. Do I advocate teaching our whole history, warts and all? Of course – my wife and I do just that with our homeschooling, and try to use the failures as well as the successes as a springboard for discussions of moral and ethical decision making. However, while we (America) have certainly failed much of the time to live up to our stated ideals, we *are* unusual in the community of nations in that we *have* explicitly stated ideals, and our people actually have an expectation that as a nation we should live up to them.
Humans respond powerfully to symbol and metaphor, perhaps more strongly than to fact and reasoned argument. Given that innate responsiveness, I see it as only logical to use the symbols to which we are already conditioned to respond emotionally (and positively!) – Liberty, Columbia, the Eagle, the Flag – to appeal to our higher aspirations and recall us, as individuals and as a nation, to the continuing effort to manifest our national ideals. (For me, the jury is still out on whether these are more than symbols, although I lean more and more towards believing that they are.)
However, in order to be able to mount such an appeal to others, and expect a positive response, it must be genuine – which means that I must first fully and consciously embrace my American-ness, and work out what our history and symbols mean to me, and how they can recall *me* to my better self, before I can expect to do the work effectively in either the apparent world or the spiritual realms. This is what I mean by “opting in”.
I think I have to side with Ali on this one, Erik. You say we have to accept our identity as Americans, but I think the “American identity” is an illusion. (Of course, I’m a pretty zen guy, so I think a LOT of stuff is an illusion, but hear me out.
)
Above you say that the country is a living system composed of land, people, ideals, and institutions. I’m going to suggest to you that this living system doesn’t actually exist; so we cannot opt in, even if that were a good idea.
The land: the territory ruled by the US government includes a huge variety of different ecosystems, land spirits, and bioregions, each with its own distinct history, feel, and destiny, each as large as, or bigger than, whole nations in Europe. Do you, in North Carolina, really share the “same land” as someone in Seattle, Juneau, or Guam? What about the areas that the US government administers elsewhere, like Iraq, Afghanistan, or the military bases in Germany and Japan? …And if all these places really are the “same land”, what does “same” mean anymore?
The people: to say that the people administered by the US government are “one people” is ridiculous. From the farmers of New England to the Indians on the southwestern reservations, from the cosmopolitan libertarians of the New York stock exchange to the urban youth of Chicago, the US administers dozens of separate peoples, with different cultures, different histories, and different languages. Yes, there is mobility from one “sub”culture to another, but it’s much more difficult for an urban youth of Chicago to become President than it is to change your citizenship from American to Canadian.
The ideals: if you mean things like “free speech”, yes, it’d be hard to find an American who didn’t at least claim to believe in free speech, although there’s a huge amount of disagreement on the boundary cases. (Does Wikileaks count as free speech? Good luck finding some shared ideals on THAT one.) But it’s not just Americans who like free speech, it’s in the universal declaration of human rights; and we didn’t even come up with the idea — it’s a British ideal originally.
The institutions: other than the US government itself, what are you referring to? Our multinational corporations? Our legal system, which is based on England’s? …I can’t think of anything else.
None of this is to say that living systems composed of these elements are impossible. In fact, I’d love to participate in one! But the US is not one, has not ever been one, and I’d even argue that a system of that sort can’t be much bigger than a state, or even a city. On nation-sized scales, what you have is the illusion of unity imposed on a kaleidoscope of climates, cultures, and communities.
Jeff,
Admittedly the “natural systems” theology is speculative (as all theology is, really) – but even if I’m wrong about that aspect, we’re still dealing with, at minimum, consensus reality – and people do act based on that perceived reality, and those actions do have real-world consequences.
The point you both keep bringing up, regarding whether our ideals originated here, is actually irrelevant. The important thing is that we have a broad-based (not universal, I’m sure, but broad-based nonetheless) general agreement that we should be living up to them, even though we don’t all agree on what that looks like. In fact, I would argue that everyone freely and vigorously pursuing their own vision of living up to our ideals is itself an example of our ideals in action!
Therefore, I still maintain that, as a de facto participant in this consensus reality, I have an obligation to work towards guiding it to the best possible future – standing on the sidelines because I don’t always like where we’ve been or where we are now is not an option. And maybe – just maybe – if we keep working, eventually we can actually become that shining city on the hill that too many people already think we are… but we’ll never get there just by tearing down, we also have to build up.
And that is what the Religio Americana means to me – using our existing “civil religion” to bolster our ideals and imbuing them with the power of the Sacred so that we can someday say, not that we’re right because we’re America, but that we’re America because we’re right.
Erik, I’m in the middle of drafting a response to your comments, which has turned out to be incredibly lengthy! I’ll be publishing it as a new post later today – I hope you’ll come back to read and respond.
Oh, definitely! I always enjoy your writing, even on the relatively rare occasions when we disagree.
Erik – the reply is up, and it’s waaaaaay too long, for which I apologize! It can be found here.
Jeff, one additional thought – it sounds as if you are saying that just because all of the peoples and land areas in America are not homogeneous, that somehow they can’t be part of the same system. Is a mixed-hardwood forest not really a “forest”, then, but just a bunch of trees? (To say nothing of the mixture of hardwoods, softwoods and conifers that we have around here!)
Any system as large as is being discussed here is obviously a complex meta-system, composed of many smaller sub-systems, some of which themselves are also complex. This holds true in the original examples that made me first start thinking about this sort of theology, as well – see the discussion of Demeter in part 4 of my natural systems theology series, and you’ll see that the two examples are almost identical.
Erik, I certainly agree that the subsystems I mentioned are components of larger systems, and that these systems are in turn part of larger ones, all the way up to the Earth / Moon / Sun system at the very least. What I was trying to say, though, is that “America” is not actually one of those systems. The various cultures, bioregions, etc. that are circumscribed by the US government do not make a natural cohesive whole; they differ too much from each other, and overlap too much with areas outside US jurisdiction. For example, the “Cascades” region of the Pacific Northwest is a very large social unit and bioregion that extends from northern California up through a large part of southern British Columbia. Does Seattle have more in common with Vancouver or Miami? The American / Canadian border is *completely arbitrary*. Similarly with the southern border — the southern half of Arizona and New Mexico only belongs to the US because a railroad baron named Gasden wanted the area for his business. What does that have to do with shared culture, ideals, or bioregions?
If you were to draw boundaries around the bioregions of North America, there would be no hint of the actual US borders (except along the coasts, of course). The same is true if you draw boundaries around the cultural regions of North America. (Remember that the cultural differences between different ethnic and socioeconomic groups of, say, Chicago are much greater than the cultural differences between the rich elite of New York and Tokyo!)
Comparing America to a forest, even a complex mixed-wood forest, fails, because America is not a natural grouping.
To me, it is about the -idea- of America, that is, the concept that ‘all men are created equal’, that equality and freedom are things worth cherishing and working towards, that regardless of ones background, family, or status, that all are equal under the law (ideally, anyways). I understand that we have a long way to go to get to true equality, true egalitarianism, but the social advances that have been made in the past two hundred years, hells, even in the last twenty years, are worth being proud of. Yes, there will always be injustice, and yes, there will always be oppression – but working against those things, working towards freedom and justice for all people, is a noble and worthy goal.
It seems to me that what you have just described is not the “idea of America” but, in fact, simply the idea of equality and social justice.
By attempting to make these things synonymous with America, all we do is obscure the fact that equality and justice are most certainly not uniquely or only “American” qualities, but things that all people in all places can appreciate and work towards. The United States lagged behind almost all European countries in abolishing slavery, for instance, and yet we still teach schoolchildren that this is one of the primary examples of America’s commitment to equality. Finland and New Zealand were several decades ahead of the United States in granting women suffrage, and yet we do not speak of these countries as beacons of equality and justice. Further, the system of apartheid in South Africa was modeled after the United States in the early 20th century, and currently the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate and total prison population (1 in every 30 adults) of any nation in the world.
Equality, social justice and freedom are worthy goals to work towards. Cultivating and propagating the mythology of American greatness on these issues robs us of the many lessons and positive examples worldwide that we might learn from to truly and effectively work towards realizing them.
I would add only one modifier to your indictment here. Slavery was abolished by other countries that were, in fact, empires in which tropical colonies, which could support slavery economically, were ruled from temperate-zone motherlands, which could not. When the “national” decision to abolish slavery was made, it was in fact a temperate motherland dictating policy to tropical colonies.
In the United State the temperate and (somewhat) tropical zones were on equal footing. This is what led to the Civil War. When the South was reduced to a colony of the North, slavery was promptly abolished. We lagged only on the calendar.
How many countries do you think would have been representative constitutional democracies if not for the successes of America?
Additionally, I was going to post something akin to Erik’s response above, but he has already stated those points more eloquently that I could.
Arguably most of the democracies were inspired by Britain (which of course has a much older democracy than we do) and France (which was inspired by America, but was on its way there anyway). Most of the ideas enshrined in our Constitution are watered-down versions of Locke and other non-American thinkers. Even today, when America “spreads democracy around the world” (as in Japan, Iraq, etc.) our progeny generally seem to pick a parliamentary system rather than the American model. Certainly the ideals of the United States have inspired many, but it’s not the only one by a long shot.
The US uses first past the post while the rest of the democracies uses proportional representation. I’ve always found it ironic the US imposes democracy on other nations but doesn’t institute the same type of democracy in the nation it overpowers, rapes, and pillages through brute military force. Instead, the US institutes proportional representation.
If I remember right, there are only two countries that still use first past the post: the US and a small African nation.
Ha! Excellent point, Witchstead! I would also add that the democracies the U.S. “helps to create” (i.e. imposes on other states) through the use of economic pressure, military support and sometimes assassination of foreign leaders have a much higher failure rate, often reverting back to the pre-democratic political situation in a matter of decades. Meanwhile those that have had the least U.S. political and economic interference and have come to democracy on their own, through the internal processes of the native population, have much greater staying power.
Even today there are often unexpected states that surpass the U.S. in their commitment to freedom and equal rights, like Ecuador which granted constitutional rights and protections to nature and the earth itself as a right-bearing entity back in 2008 (the U.S. responded by cutting climate change funds to both Ecuador and Bolivia, which sponsored a climate summit earlier in 2010).
Ali wrote:
Meanwhile those that have had the least U.S. political and economic interference and have come to democracy on their own, through the internal processes of the native population, have much greater staying power.
Thats a bit of a red herring, though, isn’t it? Of course a system devised or applied by a native population will succeed far better than one imposed.
I’m not sure why this is a “red herring” (or perhaps you are using that phrase in a way I’m not aware of?).
Your argument is that the U.S. is a pillar of freedom and democracy and has a hand in spreading it across the world through influence and example, correct? And yet evidence shows that the places where democracy thrives best is precisely those places where the U.S. has not had a major influence (this is especially true in Latin America). That seems directly relevant to the argument, and belies the idea that the U.S. is in actual fact living up to the ideals it claims to uphold.
Again, a modifier. The United States occupied Japan and part of Germany after the war and promoted democracy in both places, which took hold and now earns and deserves as much world respect as our version. We have done this right, but under prior circumstances that have not repeated themselves for our efforts since.