Anti-American Americans

I think I see another motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted the attitude of M. Romain Rolland -- the fear that they would fall into national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the right. It may be asserted that these writers would have warmly taken up the cause of France, if France had not been their own country. Whereas Barrès said, "I always maintain my country is right even if it is in the wrong," these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say: "I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right." There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice.

Julian Benda, La Trahison des Clercs [1927, The Treason of the Intellectuals, 1928, translated by Richard Aldington, 2007, Transaction Publishers, pp.187-188]

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing "God Bless America." No, no, no; not God bless America! God damn America! It's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating its citizens as less than human!

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright [boldface added]

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Senator Barack Obama, March 18, 2008 [boldface added]

...for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.

Michelle Obama, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Monday, February 18, 2008

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country...

Michelle Obama, Madison, Wisconsin, Monday, February 18, 2008

[T]here's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country.

Bill Clinton, 1995

You state up front that your starting point is, quote, "No nonsense Marxism," unquote; but you dispel all the negative images we have been programmed to conjure up with just the mention of that word socialism or Marxism... in this land, the land of the greed and the home of the brave -- excuse me -- the land of the greed and home of the slave....

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, September 17, 2009, anniversary celebration of the Socialist magazine Monthly Review [note]

John 3:20: For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

There is a curious feature about American politics. A substantial body of political opinion, evident in the media, academia, and popular culture, simply despises America -- its history, its principles, and its institutions -- and sees no value in the Great Republic unless it profoundly changes its character and assumes a form quite different from that of the past. In 2008, examples of this attitude emerged in relation to the political campaign of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. None of them was more blunt and striking than the statement of the pastor, for 20 years, of Obama's own church. In a sermon that was taped and available for sale at the church, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright could be seen simply saying, multiple times, "Not God bless America! God damn America!" The aftermath of this becoming public was instructive in its own right. Defenders of Wright protested that he didn't really mean it that way, that the quote was taken out of context (though anyone can watch the unedited sermon). Or, of course, anyone complaining about Wright was simply a racist.

Senator Obama first expressed concern, as though these kinds of statements from Wright were not familiar to him, and then, as Wright unapologetically defended himself in television appearances, Obama denounced him and resigned from his church. However, it was undeniable that Obama's political career had begun associating with Wright and many others of similarly radical and anti-American stripe in the Chicago area. Also, as in this case, it is characteristic of much Anti-Americanism in politics that, while it is freely expressed in private or partisan venues, it shuns the full light of public exposure and, when thus exposed, dissimulates, denies, or qualifies extreme statements. When Senator Obama's wife, Michelle, made statements asserting that she had never before been proud of her country, reponses that were attempts at misdirection were also common. Although Michelle was campaigning for Barack and making political statements, the claim was (from Barack himself) that she was above politics and properly immune from criticism. Thus, in both controversies, the initial response was to avoid the substance of the matter and to claim that the story itself was dishonest or inappropriate.

But why should Americans be anti-American? The problem is ideological. Mexicans are proud of Mexico just because it is Mexico -- regardless of crime, poverty, corruption, tyranny, etc. Mexicans or Mexican-Americans wave Mexican flags at sporting events or in political demonstrations. Many Americans, however, are squeamish about even flying, let alone waving, the American flag -- patriotism, as Dr. Johnson said, and we are often told, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The difference between Mexico and the United States is that Mexican identity has a geographical, cultural, and historical foundation, while the United States was founded entirely on the basis of certain principles and ideals, with a history believed to embody those things. The principles and ideals were the accomplishment of the Enlightenment, which especially in political terms, as recognized and advocated by Voltaire to his French readers, went back to John Locke and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 -- other Enlightenment tendencies, as with Jean Jacques Rouseau, involved other ideals more in tune with later collectivism, statism, and totaliarianism. In the 19th century the priniciples of Locke and the American Revolution would become Classical Liberalism -- for limited, secular government, private property, and the dignity and liberty of the individual. Part of the problem, then, with the founding of America was the degree to which people would judge the country by its success, in their estimation, in living up to its ideals. All the worse if popular political ideals were to change, while American institutions remained largely those of Classical Liberal form. In a very significant way this is what happened. Limited government and individualism lost favor by the beginning of the 20th century. What appeared to be progressive ideology in the 20th century was largely for absolutist, collectivist, and statist government, following the ideology of people like Hegel, who influenced the 19th century development of European governments and politics. This was bad enough, and the success of America certainly could not be favorably judged in terms of ideals alien to the spirit of her founding and development; but there would be something worse. Even the successes of America could be judged as inadequate in terms of her own ideals, with the bitter irony of a kind of Catch 22.

When it comes to the nature of ideals of the American Revolution, however, part of the problem is very old. We find Greek philosophy in origin and development associated with commercial culture and democracy. The ultimate exemplar of this was the city of Athens, which was wealthy from trade, the principal democracy in the Ancient World, and a wellspring of much of what we think of as Classcial Greek civilization, from the theater, to history, architecture, art, and philosophy. Nevertheless, the attitude of probably the greatest philosopher produced by Athens, Plato, was hostile to almost all the cultural, economical, and political characteristics of the place. He didn't like democracy, didn't like commercial culture, didn't like the foreign influences and residents who flowed through the city, and, expressed in a memorable addendum to the Republic, didn't even like the unfettered artistic expression that so immortalized the place -- an artistic expression of which his own vivid writings were a part. Instead, Plato admired Sparta, a place without literature, art, history, or philosophy, a place that would have vanished from human memory if Athenians had not begun writing about it. In a very real sense, Anti-Americanism is part of this ancient conflict between Athens and Sparta; but of course there must be reasons for that conflict, Plato's reasons, in the first place. Indeed. Even now, it is often instructive to see Anti-American attitudes expressed through criticisms of Athens.

Both Athens and America are critized over slavery -- as we see referenced by Barack Obama above as "this nation's original sin." While criticism of Athens about slavery is a little silly, since no ancient state ever abolished slavery, and so is of the form, "somehow, they should have known better," America is more vulnerable, since the ideal of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" is evidently immediately contradicted by the continuation of slavery. But we may well ask how, by introducing a contrary principle, slavery was America's sin. Was slavery invented in America? No. Slavery had always existed everywhere. The slave trade in West Africa had not even been started by Europeans, but by Arabs. Instead of slaves being exported north across the Sahara, as they had been for centuries, Europeans bought them from the south and exported them across the Atlantic.

Be it known to you, that the Traffic in Slaves is a matter on which all Sects and Nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam, on whom be the Peace of God, up to this day -- and we are not aware of its being prohibited by the Laws of any Sect, and no one need ask this question [i.e. whether the trade in slaves be lawful], the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day. 'Abd ar-Rah.mân ibn Hishâm, Sultân of Morocco (1822-1859), to British Vice Consul Henry John Murray, 1842

Was slavery widely recognized as a wrong at the time of the American revolution? No. As we see in the statement of the Sultan of Morocco in 1842, it had not been prohibited by the "Laws of any Sect." Slavery was legal under Roman Law, Islamic Law, and, in general, in the Bible. The idea that slavery was wrong originated in the Enlightenment ideology of the American Revolution itself, with about half of the American colonies abolishing slavery during that era, and the Constitution anticipated the abolition of the slave trade in 1808. Support for slavery, of course, continued, not the least among African rulers who sold slaves, but also among slave owners who mostly had history, religion, custom, and law on their side. Did America just never do anything about slavery as time went on? No. The controversy, argued with fury and recrimination, dominated the early years of American politics, resulting in a terrible Civil War in which more than 600,000 Americans died -- in contrast to the sum of about 400,000 African slaves that had been imported into the 13 American colonies in the first place.

In essence, then, how can slavery be the "original sin" of a country that not only conceived the ideal that slavery was wrong but then, at monumental cost in lives and fortune, got rid of it? There is a serious perversity to such a charge, as though the evil of slavery had always been evident and recognized, or as though America (or the Constitution in particular) had invented or revived the institution, with stubborn complacency in the face of universal protest. Nothing of the sort was the case. And if it took America 20 years to abolish the slave trade and 74 years to abolish slavery, in the face of deep and violent opposition, how is it the fault of America for pressing against this opposition and finally, at great cost, overcoming it? This makes no sense [note]. Similarly, when Southern opposition substituted Segregation for slavery, and little could be done about that politically until the 1950's, when those institutions were finally destroyed, why would that be America's fault? Were racial and ethnic minorities just loved and protected everywhere else on earth? Hardly. Instead, the accusation of American hypocrisy in this regard looks motivated by a predisposition to condemn America on any pretext. This is especially evident in regard to Islam, under which slavery and the slave trade were only abolished under European influence, pressure, and, very often, military force (i.e. "Imperialism"). Indeed, one often finds apologetics for slavery in Islam, that it was more humane and, well, hardly even slavery at all. This wouldn't have passed muster with the Kings of Mali, who continually complained to their Islamic brethren north of the Sahara that slavers repeatedly captured the black Muslim inhabitants of Mali, despite prohibitions of enslaving Muslims in Islamic Law.

The readiness to condemn America even for its accomplishments, as though the principles of the Declaration of Independence were immediately discredited just because they were new and faced resistance, is mainly ideological in origin. The real problem does not come with the fulfillment of the ideals, but with what the ideals were in the first place. A "somehow, they should have known better" view of American history that is fully ahistorical and anachronistic is not a genuine independent conviction but is simply used in the service of ideals that are alien and hostile to the original form of the American project. As a rhetorical device, it condemns America both for things that it excuses in others and for failing to live up to ideals that are not respected anyway. Part of this I have discussed elsewhere as the problem in Ethics of Moralistic Relativism. There I quote Paul Hollander in The Survival of the Adversary Culture:

Paul Craig Roberts characterizes the resulting attitudes [of Western and American intellectuals] as a "fusion of moral scepticism with the demand for moral perfection..." He also points out that the high, moralistic demands on the part of intellectuals are almost invariably directed at their own society, rarely at those opposed to it.... In other words, the intellectuals discussed alternate between moral absolutism and moral relativism. [The Survival of the Adversary Culture, Transaction Publishers, 1991, p. 156]

It is certainly a painful irony when people who otherwise deny the objective or binding existence of moral principles, often with a nihilistic nod to Friedrich Nietzsche, nevertheless rise in furious moral indignation at the shortcomings of American history and government. We may suspect, however, that this sort of incoherence and confusion, deliberately or not, masks something else. In the background there may actually be a rather complete system of morality and ideology that is either deliberately concealed or is naively assumed to be so self-evident that, obvious to all, it need not be discussed. It often seems to be a matter of both. Thus, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and Lillian Hellman said, "The Motherland has been attacked!" this was not because she believed in a Nietzschean transvaluation of all values, but because she was a Communist. Yet much of the effort of the Communist Party in the United States in the 40's, 50's, and later was spent on denying that Communists were Communists, or that the Party was, in fact, a paid and controlled agent of the Soviet Union. Thus, while in Marxist ideology what one is -- a class enemy -- counts for more than what one believes, the approach of the Party was to argue that Communists were being attacked simply for what they believed, not for what they were (Communists) and what they were doing (spying and subversion). Thus, America could be faulted for violating its own individualistic principles, when those principles were not honored by the Communists anyway, and when the real complaint was criminal and treasonous activities, not speech (when people like Hellman, to confuse and dissimulate, never openly confessed what they believed anyway).

This whole strategy continues in American politics today, where the "race, class, gender" development of Marxist ideology, as "post-modernism" or "critical theory," dominates American academics and intellectuals, where political correctness, ideological uniformity, and unconstitutional "speech codes" stifle or penalize dissent in education, and where any exposure, response, or complaint about any of this is immediately demonized as fascist, racist, or "classist" attacks on academic freedom or freedom of speech -- again from people who, in the appropriate private, protected, and friendly contexts, reject freedom of speech, and whose acolytes faithfully protest, intimidate, threaten, or physically assault opposition speech on campuses (free of sanction by compliant or sympathetic administrations).

If we look at anti-Americanism from its modern Marxist perspective and at the opposition to Athens by someone like Plato, they end up with something very significant in common:  the desire on the part of people who are essentially thinkers, talkers, and plotters to control other people. The essential problem of politics for Plato is just that the wrong people are in charge. It should be, well, people like Plato -- the knowers, the wise, the philosophers. The intellectuals, as the wise and the good, want to rule and they know that they will do a better job, regardless of the desires of the ignorant masses. This is often called "democracy"; but we should not be surprised to learn that supposed democratic "reforms," like "campaign finance reform," only serve to protect established politicians and political parties, often criminally sanction grass roots efforts by ordinary citizens, who are bewildered or uninformed about the complexity of election laws, and are then aided and abetted by a press and media comfortably dominated by ideological friends. The alternative media, like popular Conservative talk radio, are then attacked as illegitimate or unfair. Rush Limbaugh, but not the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, gets called "the most dangerous man in America."

Yet it is the likes of Wright who, by a constant pressure through education, opinion, and entertainment, still give the Soviet Union a chance to win the Cold War and turn America into a Soviet-style state. Limbaugh, as a Conservative, merely fights to maintain traditional American cultural values and the traditional principles of American government. As a Conservative, he is bound to be embarrassed when traditional cultural values are simply undermined by freedom (as with pornography and sexual mores), but his support of that freedom on the political side, as when he parts ways with Culture Warriors seeking censorship, puts him at odds, not with Gay Pride parades, but with people on the Left who, as noted, are aiming and active in attacking and suppressing free speech.

The essence of anti-American politics may perhaps be found with demonstators at the University of California at Berkeley not long ago. They were literally burning books while carrying signs that said, "fight Fascist censorship." It is a tribute to their own poor education that they could stage a book burning without realizing what this would look like, and what it would remind people of with any knowledge of history. But they need not have worried. No one put the images on the evening news, and one had to go to the alterantive media to know that it had happened at all.

In great measure, however, it is too late. Anti-American principles have already infected government at all levels. The New Deal was a mortal blow to the Constitution, and most Americans are not even aware why. Most Republicans would not even agree with this -- ever since Dwight Eisenhower announced that his Administration would not challenge the basic changes effected by Franklin Roosevelt. While the Goldwater wing of the party did seem ready to challenge them, the ultimate Goldwater President, Ronald Reagan, nevertheless did not, and continued to praise Roosevelt, as have subsequent Republicans leaders like Newt Gingrich. Republican Presidents after Reagan, i.e. the Bushes, have retreated further to the fatally compromising Eisenhower position. By their own definitions, however, the Founders of this Nation, with the possible exception of Alexander Hamilton, would all regard the present, New Deal modified Federal Government as an active system of tyranny. In American political culture, the conventional wisdom is that only the most extreme lunatic fringe crackpot would assert any such thing; and Democrat leaders, like Bill Clinton, are pleased to claim the identity of the present form of government with all that has ever been good about the United States. Thus, in a famous statement, Clinton asserted that, "[T]here's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."

But is hating a government that has burst all Constitutional boundaries and has extended its cold probing hand even into details about how much water a toilet can flush the same as being anti-American and hating the country? It is hard to know if Clinton himself even believes this. There is a fringe on the Right that has considered the country ruined ever since Abraham Lincoln, if not earlier (i.e. since the Constitution itself, which the Anti-Federalists suspected of all the evils that have in fact transpired). Yet in one respect the choice is clear. The Socialist temptation continues, and the overwhelming bulk of anti-American sentiment in academia and elsewhere is strongly fueled and founded in Marxism, as much or more so as even in the days of the Soviet Union. Anti-Americanism is anti-Capitalism in all opinion that regards itself as "progressive." That is why the New Deal continues to be so harmful, since it embodies the judgment that free markets fail and government knows best. Instead, as the Founders knew well, government largess handed out for political favor is the essence of corruption. This has now made the entire Federal Government one vast mechanism of rent seeking and vote buying. As "reforms" have attempted to make the government more democratic, all the classic evils of democracy, with demagogues promising free goods (such as the looming, and in fact continuing, socialization of medicine), again as well understood by the Founders, have emerged triumphant. It may just be too late. The Fabian anti-American Americans are getting their way on a broad front, hoping to transform the United States into France, if not another Soviet Union.

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