Living the Dream?

Thinking about the nature of "American Exceptionalism"


I'm not letting this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day go by without another mention of the state of the Dream, if you will. Particularly given how much we've heard and will hear about this concept from presidential candidates, I think it's time for some real reckoning about the nature of the "exceptionalism" we love to talk about. Chalk it up to my philo-classical phase, but if we're going to spill so much ink and anger over what this is and what it means, we might at least try to understand the true nature of it. Without further ado, a list of unconventional and uncomfortable thoughts on the matter:

Exceptional is not immutable: Or, exceptional beginnings do not guarantee exceptionality for ever and always. Yes, America had a storybook beginning. After more than 200 years of polishing, it's really storybook now, but even still the Revolution and the Constitution are still kinda cool. We don't genuinely do not see history littered with such events. But time catches up to all things -- just as it would be preposterous to think that Michael Jordan could still dominate the NBA today at his age simply because he was a pretty exceptional ballplayer once, it is that much more absurd to think that a good start guarantees America success today. It's this fundamentalist attitude of Constitution-waving Tea Party "patriots" that makes them unable to govern today. News flash to those in tri-cornered hats: the country has moved on. (Since it's MLK day, I'll mention here that we no longer have such peculiar institutions as slavery, Indian wars or non-suffrage of women.) Trying to turn back the clock on 200 years of genuine progress would actually remove much of the "exceptionalism" that we think of today and gives rise to the magical/wishful historical "truthiness" that assumes the Founders were greatly pained by slavery and/or it was some kind of ennobling institution. They weren't and it wasn't. One of the best shots ever taken at our white-washed historical imagination of our Constitution comes from Thurgood Marshall, speaking to commemorate that document's bicentennial:

I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.

A "frozen chosen" interpretation of American exceptionalism is one of the greatest dangers to both the country and whatever "exceptionalism" we may enjoy. Please take a few moments of your holiday to read the rest of Chief Justice Marshall's dose of reality here.

Exceptional is as exceptional does: Try to think seriously about how this country is perceived by the rest of the world for a moment. We're still digging our way out from under a couple of wars fought on largely-fraudulent premises, everyone's still cleaning up the mess we helped make with the financial crisis, the tenth anniversary of the Guantanamo detention camp just passed last week, and we're lagging behind most or all of our friends and competitors on many of the societal indicators we pride ourselves on as integral to the American dream. Oh, and has anyone taken a look at the (non)functioning of our current and potential representatives in this city? The rest of the world is not going to tally all that up in the "con" column, then put down 1776 and 1787 in the "pro" column and come out pro-America. That's gross over-simplification, but no one ever accused popular opinion of hewing too closely to nuanced interpretation of fact or long historical perspective.

Currently, there are a number of ways in which we are indeed exceptional amongst developed countries: we have the least-developed national health service. We have less social mobility than anyone else (in other words, your success in this here classless society depends more directly upon your father's than it does in any of those hopelessly European-socialist countries or Canada). Team America still hasn't ruled out some of the nastier bits of national-global security like torture, detention and rendition. Our educational system, as most presidential candidates will tell you, frankly sucks -- unless of course your great-granddaddy pulled you up by your bootstraps into the American aristocracy meritocracy. Oh, and we're exceptionally cavalier with the environment and economy, phenomena fueled in large part by our exceptional insistence on our own facts and superstitions in the face of the decided liberal bias of science and fact.

An exceptional foreign policy these days might actually include some honest apology (!!) for wrongs committed, the closure of the Gitmo detention camp and perhaps return of the base to Cuba (maybe lift the Soviet-era travel embargo while we're at it), and a wee bit more willingness to co-operate with other countries and long-shot liberal institutions like the UN. At home, we might consider a sensible immigration policy, put a little money into public education, reform the tax code, buy vote in a government that works, see if we can't get Dr. King's dream going in a societal that is integrated rather than "post-racial" (racism that's not PC to talk about) and make gasoline $10 a gallon by 2015 (and rising). Faced with the exceptional growth of the Chinese economy, such policies might give us an exceptional leg up on that future we're so desperate to win with tired old policies.

Exceptional is not infallible: The American experiment has accomplished some great things. But we've also stepped in it more often than we like to tell ourselves, and we'd do well to remember that. Our treatments of Indians and black slaves border on genocidal; we've lost a few wars that we don't count because we have yet to fight an actual war in the perpetual-war era that has obtained since the abolition of the Department of War, water-boarding and Abu Ghraib really didn't look that good on our resume, and there's the whole Depression 2.0 thing. I've probably neglected a peccadillo or two. Again -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- I genuinely think America has on balance been good for the world and I would absolutely take our hegemony over that of China or another "development-sans-democracy" country. But we should think about the power vested in us by fate or chance and use it wisely and in (re)cognizance of our misuses of same.

Exceptionalism is path-dependent, too: We got a pretty good start in the world (with an assist from those funny-talking socialist Frenchmen), but we've also got lucky over and over again. I can't say this enough, either: our exceptionalism inheres not in our founding, but in the decisions made over the past 200-plus years by Americans great and small. If we don't choose to be exceptional, we won't be. The Founders themselves referenced "Providence" often. From a semantic viewpoint, I'd submit that that word choice might reflect a world-view more inclusive of good fortune than the Jesus-fest that has established a de facto "religious test for office" in politics today. Running for office because Jesus told you to is anathema to the kind of private reverence that says, "Thank Providence we won that Revolution and got a chance to put our ideas to work in the world. Let's make the most of this..." The former lives in dialectic with the id of our famous individuality that too quickly assumes that we as persons and as a nation are special, always have been, and always will be. It's that kind of thinking that blames poor people for poverty, assumes that our society is still mobile, and thinks that Mitt Romney started from the same point as a black girl born to a single teenage mother in poverty. We interact with the world as we interact with other drivers as we ply the roads of America alone behind the wheels of our SUV's: lost in our own heads and convinced of our righteousness. Ensconced in a Suburban, it's easy to miss feedback that maybe we're not the only person on the entire highway who knows how to drive; equally unassailable in our hegemony, we miss feedback that we are neither the only democracy nor the only one that knows how to do it on the face of the planet.

Exceptionalism has to be re-imagined and re-iterated: From age to age and generation to generation, we're only as exceptional as we choose to be. No matter how great our head-start, we're going to get caught if we stand still (or go backwards). We are neither guaranteed exceptionalism by the past nor entitled to a perpetual patent on it. Yes, the one and only Constitution of the United States of America (R) was developed on these shores. But two years later, the French had a little fuss and brought republicanism to the western Continent and the rest is history. Today, constitutions from the Democratic People's Republic of North Kleptofascistan to the UN evoke our own. To the extent that that has created a more peaceful, progressive and democratic world, that is a genuine, positive-sum Good Thing. It also stands as acceptable proof of our exceptionalism: we developed the model of governance that has come to predominate the aspirations and increasingly the politics of much of the world over the last two centuries. Even the arch-conservative Salafists in Egypt -- you know, them with the Sharia -- are competing for votes in a brand-new constitutional, bicameral government. Go figure.

All of that is to say that, while we had a good idea a while back, we must not forget either that it has only turned out to be worthy of emulation through the luck that has smiled upon us and good decisions of leaders past and present or that we must approach our somewhat exceptional history as positive-sum stewards rather than as zero-sum patent-holders. That's why we don't "spike the football" when we kill Osama. That's why we have rules of engagement. That's why we can't piss on dead Taliban in a war that we're fighting for the very ideas we place at the heart of our "exceptionalist" tropes. (After WMD and Osama disappeared 10 years ago, what did we have left for justification but ye olde "Freedom Agenda?" We're now reaping the whirlwind sowed by fighting for our ideals rather than from them -- it turns out ideals are not well-armored against insurgency.)

As we enter the age of soft power and influence-based politics, it has become imperative to clean our own house. Barring an act of monumental stupidity, we will not fight another land war in this century. Rather than waging industrial war, we will be fighting the battle of ideas and ideals. Influence will be directly proportional to the observable lived worth of our ideals. It will be measured by others at least as much as by ourselves. And like Republicans in marriage, our ideals will be judged by our actions and vice versa. In short, we're not competing with China on who can manufacture the most cheap lead-laden crap, but whose model of governance and modernization is the more conducive to human flourishing. They're gaining now because of the ruthless efficiency of non-democratic government. Others are emulating them because a system with 10% approval rating, deep poverty and crushing inequality does not appear worthy of emulation. We surrender that long-term vision at our peril: even if we win a Pyrrhic victory of the "prosperity Gospel" and figure out how to out-manufacture the Chinese once and for all, the American experiment will have failed if this comes at the cost of either our systemic influence or the earth itself (recall that production is rather resource-intensive).

In short, we are now perched on the precipice not between Left and Right or a perfect white-washed (in every sense of the term) vision of the Founders and an all-consuming, Sharia-based, apology-making, Euro-socialist disaster, but (as always) on the fence of free will. The choice is this: can this generation choose to accept, steward and strengthen the truly exceptional American dream by dreaming it bigger, or committing the moon-shot fallacy of the generation now in government and go down with the ship of past glories in the vain assumption that they have much bearing on present or future success.

The world only spins forward. The American Dream has expanded from a colonial idea to a more perfect union, but it's not perfect yet. Such perfection as we have achieved has come only from (sometimes painful) growth of the dream itself. The fact that you're sitting at home reading this today is a tribute to the expansion of the American dream to include Dr. King's dream. That didn't happen because somebody re-read his Constitution and said, "Hmmm, they said they'd probably get rid of slavery and the three-fifths fudge sometime" but because Dr. King and a whole lot of other people saw the dream inside the Constitution and said, "You know something? 200 years after a bunch of slave-holders wrote that, I think it's time this country started treating us as more than 3/5 human."

We are at a similar juncture today. Can we expand and enliven the dream, or will we let the Tea Party Congress shut it down along with the government? It will take thinking from both the right and the left if we are to succeed (as even prominent lefties know). It will require a balancing of continuity with the good ideas of the old and change to accept the best of the new. It will require an honest assessment of the true nature of our exceptionalism, the responsibility it imposes, and our own desire to live up to that responsibility. It will require some classical virtues (self-rule, moderation, pursuit of the Good); some biblical virtues (compassion, peace, loving-kindness, humility, humor); and some modern virtues (using modern tools to build and maintain influence through teamwork and transparency, non-zero-sumness, etc). It's also going to require a massive collective effort to get out of our own heads.

Exceptionalism is not an immutable state but a transitive condition -- we are exceptional to the degree that we individually and collectively determine to be so. If it is to succeed, this project will have to be national and eventually global. It must not be the affect of coastal liberals and anathema to mid-American "values voters." And on this day of all days, we might well turn again to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. to inspire us towards that goal. For "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly...this is the interrelated nature of reality." On that view, "if we are to go forward, we must go back and discover those precious values -- that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."

It's not too late for one more New Year's resolution. This year, highly resolve to be exceptional and to work for the building up of an exceptional United States of America. It doesn't have to be big, but if you consciously do at least one exceptional deed every day and get a few people to follow, who knows where you -- and we -- can get. After all, "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."


So go ahead: Shed a little light. Dream your own dream. Share it. Be exceptional. Just "take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." (MLK)