I want to ponder American exceptionalism. The idea unites the political Right and has common ground with some on the political Left. The point here is not simply patriotism, although it contributes to a healthy experience of patriotism. It does not mean a “love it or leave it” approach to the country. It does not mean ignoring the imperfections that are part of the story of the country. The focus is on the exemplary idea of America.
The philosopher Hegel (The Philosophy of History, 1822-1823; 1830-1831, Introduction) commented that America is the land of the future. In it, the burden of the history of the world, especially as the actualization of human freedom, will reveal itself. He even calls it “the land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber room of old Europe.” Even such a German philosopher could see the exceptional character of America at its founding.
The political Right believes that it will serve our country and all of humanity if the United States influences the rest of the world in the direction of American norms and values. Most of the political Left maintains that both the U.S. and the world will benefit if the “community of nations” pushes our country toward a more internationalist posture, with less insistence on American distinctiveness and exceptionalism. That is a simple statement of the difference between the two and needs exploration.
First, American institutional life is already an expression of the longing for spiritual and moral community. Social architecture reflects the urge human beings have toward meaning, purpose, creativity, and wholeness. In short, it reflects the longing for human flourishing. The desire to have our individuality respected by the institutions of society has the balancing desire to participate meaningfully in the various aspects of institutional life. Such meaningful participation has anticipatory healing power as we confront the ambiguities of life.[1]
Few Americans seem aware of the rarity a consensual form of government is in human history and around the world today. Nations organized along constitutional and consensual lines easily perish, in part because of the slender threads that hold such societies together and in part because they ask so much of their citizens. Such nations ask their citizens to vote, to become aware of the issues that face the nation, and to hold political leaders accountable. Only 22 such nations have been in existence for more than 50 years. The idea of America is rare, precious, and fragile. Americans are not under the control of the rich, as were many civilizations of the past. The viability of America has always rested in a broad middle class who lack the dependent life of the poor and the insider influence of the rich.
There are signs that persons in other nations are more aware than are citizens of this rarity. Most human beings throughout the world live under varying degrees of repression. Migrants from various forms of tyranny head toward free nations, and for many, their destination is the United States. The global poor and oppressed want to come to America, even as a large segment of Americans ridicule the idea that founded and continues to shape the United States.
The moral dilemma of statecraft is that nations make policy choices in a persistently dangerous world in which the margin for error is slim. Among the nations and social systems of our time, the choice is never between absolute good and absolute evil. No nation perfectly embodies the freedom, fairness, and justice most of us would affirm, and no nation totally represses freedom from which democracy springs.
Second, the idea for which America stands is a force that promotes consensual government and political pluralism and opposes tyranny and political monism in all forms.
The great conflict over the dignity and destiny of the human person, and over the societal order appropriate to that dignity and that destiny, continues. In this conflict, in this continuing quest to secure a freedom that is worthy of a humanity made in God’s image and likeness, the United States of America is, on balance and considering the alternatives, a force for good. Ideals do not make their way in history except when they are carried by persons and institutions. The carriers inescapably fall short of the ideals to which they witness. It is true in the realm of social and political change. Although it is the primary bearer of the democratic ideal today, America is far from having fully actualized that ideal in its own life. America inherited and embraced many of the sins of its European settlers: slavery, feudal oppression, and colonialism. Colonialism, the marquee European crime, is hardly a European monopoly, far less a European innovation. The Romans, Persians, Mongols, Egyptians, Turks, Inca, Japanese, Arabs, Sosso, Chinese, Sioux, and countless others have conquered and dominated other peoples. Conquest and exploitation are the rules of human history rather than the exceptions. Yet, the American ideals of freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness carried within itself the seeds of guilt, confession, and repentance of its sins, thereby freeing it to embrace its ideals at deeper levels.
Thus, such a culture is worth defending. Believing this denies the notion of the equivalency of all cultures. Believing this denies that this culture has committed too many sins and is not worthy of engaging. Believing this denies that revolution is the only remedy to its imperfections.
Montesquieu clarifies this point when he realized that the outstanding characteristic of tyranny was that it rested on isolation — on the isolation of the tyrant from his subjects and the isolation of the subjects from each other through mutual fear and suspicion — and hence that tyranny was not one form of government among others but contradicted the essential human condition of plurality, the acting and speaking together, which is the condition of all forms of political organization. This tendency toward political, social, juridical, and religious monism absorbs civil society in the State, and the party that controls it becomes the supreme spiritual, moral, economic, and political authority.
Liberal democracy is pluralistic governance and thus the opposite of political monism. By protecting the roles of many institutional and individual actors within the social order, an understanding of limited government keeps society open to the future. It resists the act of historical closure that flows from the totalitarian impulse. Because it cherishes criticism and change, democracy is a progressive movement invoking the promise of the future. Totalitarianism is reactive and fearful. It represses diversity and dissent in a fearful denial of the human capacity for growth and the human need for criticism.
As liberal democracy keeps society open to the future it also keeps the future open. This posture is one of protecting and nurturing individual and institutional visions of alternative futures. The democratic experiment is an ongoing one. All questions will not have answers. All conflicts will not have resolution. The chief goal of such governance is to sustain the process of plurality and freedom. Toward that end, constitutional provisions do not provide all the answers to society’s problems but protect the process by which various answers are debated and adopted, always subject to change. Such government is contingent, modest in its claims, and open-ended.
There is a deep human hunger for a monistic world, for authority, control and definitive meaning which can cut through the ambiguities and uncertainties of our existence. From this hunger the totalitarian impulse emerged. We may expect that the temptation to satisfy this hunger monistically will reappear in new forms in the future. This hunger is religious in character, and it is dangerously misplaced when it seeks satisfaction in the politics of the present time. It cannot and should not be satisfied short of the coming of the rule of God. To mistake any existing or proposed social order for the rule of God is a great crime against humanity.
In our imperfect world, democracy and freedom is always imperiled. Democracy is not a natural product of progress. Democracy is a product and protector of freedom. It does not exist in many of the nations of the world, and nowhere does it exist securely. Those who live under such governments are stewards of a possibility that is available to the world. Churches support such a system of governance in their own interest and out of a sense of what benefits humanity.
This culture has imperfections, given that it is the product of human beliefs and actions. The beauty of modernity is that it has a strong role for reform movements that can correct its sins. As a secular society, religious people brought reform in ridding the country of slavery, the expanding civil, economic, and political rights of women, concern for the spread of alcohol abuse, prison reform, peace movements, and civil rights. In many countries today, slavery remains a viable and legal option, as are denial of rights to women and gay persons. Those who have found happiness in a culture that invites dialogue concerning its imperfections can be frustrating to those who focus upon those imperfection. Birth defects do not define us as persons, and the many failures present at the founding of the nation do not define who America is. What has defined America is its openness to reform in accord with the ideals of freedom and justice.
Third, America has a responsibility to be that shining city on a hill for all the world to see, while carefully refusing to impose its system of liberal democracy on other nations. American use of soft power is its greatest contribution in the world.
America can use its power in the world for increased peace and justice. As William Sloan Coffin put it, this requires a passion and a vision for the possible world in which future generations will live.
For all its military might, America has a peaceful vision for the world. It has a civil society, an economic community, and political community in which it expects people to resolve differences peacefully. We can call it economic and political freedom. It has the same vision for the world. The preference in American policy is that other nations will have a political and economic system that encourages its own citizens to exercise economic and political freedom, for then the government will more likely respect the freedom of other nations to disagree and it will more likely resolve its disputes with other nations in a peaceful way.
The spread of liberty in the world will occur mostly through soft power. In fact, the best and preferred use of American power is soft power. The United States exercises hard power through economic sanction or military force. Soft power is the American ability to get what it wants through attraction rather than coercion. When other countries want the same outcome we want, then we can get what we want without having to spend as much on coercion. Both dimensions of power are important, and they work best when they reinforce each other.
One source of soft power is our values. To the extent that the people of the world see us as a beacon of liberty, human rights and democracy, others are attracted to follow our lead. To the extent that we fail to live up to our proclaimed standards and seem like hypocrites, others are less willing to follow. Thus, the quality of our domestic life -- prosperity, social safety nets, and equal access to justice, democratic elections -- has a strong impact on our international position. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy recognized that racial segregation at home undercut our foreign policy. The attraction of American universities for the half-million foreign students who study in them each year is another source of our soft power. Not all go home satisfied, but most gain a more realistic and positive appraisal of our country than they could get from home. For example, at a time when Chinese government propaganda was lambasting us, a former student in this country who was the son of a high Chinese official published a book widely read in Beijing that described the United States positively.
John Kekes (A Case for Conservatism, 1998) refers to the core belief within conservatism of traditionalism. He refers to a form of natural conservatism in all human beings, in which people tend to enjoy something valued and fear losing it. This “conservative attitude” values political and social arrangements in which one lives, unless one finds genuine evil. Michael Oakeshott (“On Being Conservative,” Rationalism in Politics, 1991) describes this motivation as the propensity to use and enjoy what is available rather than wish for something else. The conservative delights in what is, rather than which for what might be. The conservative is ready to receive the gift of the past, while not idolizing it. Conservatism prefers the known to the unknown, the tried to the untried, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the human to the perfect, and present laughter to the promise of utopian bliss.
One of the points Aristotle makes in Politics, Book VII, is that the best government requires citizens of internal virtue. This view can sound antiquated and oppressive. Some scholars would suggest that while it might apply to the city to which Aristotle wrote, it does not apply to the modern nation. To the contrary, I suggest that recent experiences indicate that we must not divorce the notion of political liberty from the cultural values required to sustain it. While we have a natural care for self, we are also social creatures in need of learning to connect with others. Our care for self includes our need for friendship, for a generous use of whatever wealth we gain, acting courageously when needed, learning good temperament, learning to present a reasonable argument to others, do something that contributes to society through work, value justice, develop good humor, tell the truth, fulfill promises, develop self-confidence, develop public-spiritedness. Such social learning occurs without the force of government. In fact, government may well hinder the development of these qualities through bullish actions toward its citizens. The result of allowing citizens to develop freely, as they make their way through life, is the improvement of the human condition. Aristotle, in Politics, V.9, points out that a common mistake of citizens in democracies is the notion that liberty means doing whatever one wants. However, participating the culture, economics, and political life of a nation, far from being slavery, is a requirement for genuine human flourishing. We are political animals, Aristotle says, meaning that we require some type of meaningful participation in political structures to lead a happy life. This is why economic and political freedom, combined with the cultural values that support them, are the best hope for the improvement of human life on this planet.
Part of the soft power of American culture is its emphasis upon personal responsibility. Culture allows people to transcend their baser instincts in service of higher ideals. Culture is what can bring dignity to human life. I will grant that assuming responsibility for one's life is not natural. In fact, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden involves two people who immediately shift blame for their disobedience to another. Adam blamed the woman, whom God had made. Eve blamed the serpent. We protect ourselves from accepting blame, but we are quite quick to take credit, even when we do not deserve it.
Part of American soft power in American culture is its notion of individual rights. True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. These are negative liberties. They express what government cannot do to individuals because they have natural rights that accrue to them as human beings. John Locke, in Two Treatises on Government (1690), makes the point that we are naturally free to use our possessions, especially our bodies, in any way we choose. We are naturally equal, so that one person has no natural right to be our master. Locke is laying before us the basis for a moral society rooted in liberty. The crucial point is liberty, based upon the notion that your life, your body, is your property. God has given no one, and especially any form of government, the right to this, the most precious property you have.
Another source of our soft power is cultural exports: films and television programs, art and academic writing, and material on the Internet. Not everyone is attracted to the values portrayed in our popular culture: some Iranian officials say that to understand what they mean by "the great Satan," one need merely watch MTV. Nevertheless, watching MTV is exactly what many young Iranians want to do. Soft power also works through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund, NATO, or the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. To the extent that they shape the agenda of choices for other countries in ways that are compatible with our interests, they enhance our soft power. When others see our power as morally based, it is more effective. It is not enough for the United States merely to proclaim that we are right. Others must see it that way, too.
The greatest danger to America fulfilling its role in the world is its own center. We need to accept our role of benevolent hegemony, combined with a noble patriotism. We need to protect our own values and institutions and to spread these blessings to as many other nations who have the will and the ability to enjoy them.
Fourth, the goal of the use of soft power by America and all liberal democracies is a world increasingly peaceful and just. This will mean awareness of the dangers presented by regimes like Russia and China and religious ideologies like Islamic militancy.
Now, the use of soft power to advance the presence of liberal democracies in the world has a peaceful motive and goal. Democracies seem more likely to make the world safer. Totalitarian and Communist regimes seem prone to war within their boundaries and against those nations that border them. In helping to shape a world with more democracy and freedom, America cannot engineer from the outside. America tends to be chauvinistic. We must be modest about what America can accomplish. Liberal democracies have a rational desire to be equal in worth and dignity, but not superior, to other civilizations. Given states have access to resources peacefully through a global system of free trade, the previous economic incentive for war becomes less of a factor. The economic costs of war have increased exponentially with advances in technology. The fundamentally un-warlike character of liberal societies is evident in the extraordinarily peaceful relations they maintain among each other. One way to look at the development and advancement of economic and political freedom is that it transformed aggressive and violent instincts, eliminating the motive for imperialism.
Liberal democracies taught religion to be tolerant. Democracies that choose their friends and enemies by ideological considerations are likely to have stronger and more durable allies in the end. Nor can liberal democracies forget the profound moral difference between their societies or sweep aside questions of human rights in pursuit of the powerful. The United States and other democracies have a long-term interest in preserving the sphere of democracy in the world, and in expanding it where possible and prudent. Democracies do not fight each other. Therefore, a steadily expanding liberal democratic world will be more peaceful and prosperous.
The idea of America, the idea of American exceptionalism, and the sense that liberal democracies have a mission in this world that is open to a future that is increasingly peaceful and just, is the basis for those on the political Right and some on the political Left of the need for a strong military to confront a dangerous world in which tyranny is always seeking a way to dominate the world.
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