I wrote the piece below in June 2003. I'm reposting it with a few edits because I was reminded of it by Greenwald's posts this week about America's loss of moral stature in the world (see here and here). My piece connects with some of the things Greenwald is saying this week as well as laying some groundwork about the cultural task--as opposed to economic and political tasks--that I've been trying to get my arms around. The cultural task is more difficult--that's why we tend not to deal with it. Politics and economics are something you can sink your teeth into.
But the health of our economics and politics is directly related to the health of the culture's soul, and the limits about what is possible in the political and economic spheres are set by the attitudes formed in the cultural sphere. So for instance, in a country in which Libertarianism has become a kind of default philosophy for so many Americans, no remedy for serious problems, like the insanity of our healthcare system, can be found. For Libertarians there is no common good, and there is no sense that we are all in this together. We are in the state of nature where the only law is eat or be eaten. If some Libertarians say that they don't really believe that, they haven't thought it through.
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State of Nature
“[The] USA has been the beacon of hope [this] past half a century to the disenfranchised, the wounded, the refugees (yours truly among zillions), the hopefuls of the world. . . . More important USA, until now, has been seen as the fair arbiter of the world — a fair judge, and, despite its unsurpassed muscles, a fair and unfeared policeman. . . . Nearly all imperial powers in history have been just the opposite. . . . The world is saying USA has become a self-righteous, self-centered Master of the Universe. . . . The world does not want to see you morph into just another imperial power. We know that movie too well. We all walked out, remember . . .? The America we loved was on the side of the poor and the powerless. . . . Yes, we bought the whole story. . . . And we were right in doing so. . . . I am not sure future generations around the world will feel the same as we did toward America." A Chinese-American Graduate Student
"For better or for worse the world is a bunch of petulant teenagers that now think of us (the U.S.) as the parent. They want our protection, our comfort (our financial support). They want us out of their rooms while keeping them tidy, freedom to mock us but come to us when they have problems. They want the keys to the car, allowance money . . . to spend on what they want, freedom to hang around with questionable friends, stay out late, steal from us, con us and always expect we will be there for them whenever things turn sour. Most of all, they want no responsibility for their own behavior.” Roger
“. . .the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." Samuel P. Huntington
The first two quotes are from emails written in response to NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s request for thoughts about why the world hates America. The third quote is from a conservative Yale political scientist who has achieved renown lately for his theory about the ‘clash of civilizations’. So which one of these quotes best represents what America is? Is it still naïve to think of America as a beacon of hope to a world seeking to be liberated from premodern autocracies? Or are we just brutal imperialists in the great Western tradition? Then again, are we just reluctant global adults who, with eyes rolled, forbear the childish antics of our global kiddies as we prod them along into adulthood?
The reality, of course, is complex. The ideals are real, but so have been the paternalism and the violence. We want to think of ourselves as the Chinese-American student wants to think of us, but the US has always played hardball in the realm of international power politics. That’s what nation states do. They seek what’s in their best interest, and they are none too delicate about it.
But there has been all along a kind of blithe assumption on the part of Americans that when America leverages its power, the world benefits. The nations we come to dominate are better off for it. It’s tough love. We beat them up with our military power, and then we convert them into thriving capitalist democracies. Look at Japan. Look at Germany. Such experiences are the reason for Gary’s and other Americans’ paternalism and therefore justify in their minds America’s just doing what it wants. And, so their thinking goes, if these recalcitrant Muslims would just cooperate, their governments, too, could become healthy, vibrant democracies as ours is. It’s inevitable that they have to grow up and enter the real, modern world. So if we have to take them by the scruff of the neck to force them to do what’s for their own good, so be it. Tough love.
But just how healthy and vibrant is our democracy? And while no one would dispute America’s leadership role, does it really have the maturity and the moral authority to be the world’s parent? I don’t think so, and here’s why:
Politics isn’t meant to solve the deepest and thorniest human problems; ideally, the role of politics is to create a fair structure that will enable as many people as possible to freely work out these problems on their own. For most normal people economics and politics—all the issues in their lives that relate to money and power—are important, but they don’t determine for them what is most important. Decent Americans want to do good work and want to be economically self-reliant. Decent Americans value their democratic institutions and traditions and understand the importance of actively participating in them. But their real life, the life that is most important to them is not lived in either of those spheres of activity. It’s found in the sphere of culture.
For most healthy people the “cultural” part of their lives, not the economic or political, is where the meaning is. The cultural is the sphere of leisure and freedom. It’s the sphere of their family, friends, religion, education, sport, art, storytelling, dance, music, and song. The political and economic are spheres of obligation. People whose lives are subsumed either by their economic or political activities or whose life's meaning is determined by their political and ecnomic concerns, need, in the common parlance, to “get a life.” The 70-hour-a-week careerist has no life, neither does the destitute Somali refugee who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from. We have a life to the degree that we don’t have to be preoccupied with the economic and the political. We have a life to the degree that we participate in a rich, warm, creative cultural life. But in order to insure that our cultural life flourishes, we have to fulfill our political and economic obligations.
In some traditions to be chosen as leader was understood to require a significant sacrifice by the one chosen because the ordinary joys of a cultural life had to be given up in order to assume the burdens that came with power. That’s a healthy attitude toward power. The problem lies in that such an attitude is rare because power and the enjoyment of its exercise is for many an end in itself. But the argument that I want to make over the long term in these columns is twofold. First, that the economic and political activities in any society are healthy to the extent that they serve the flourishing of activity in the cultural sphere. Second, that there is something fundamentally disordered about any society which is driven by people whose life’s meaning is determined by their personal political and economic goals. The rich and powerful we shall always have among us, but a healthy democracy lives from the middle and must guard against any society’s natural tendency toward oligarchy. This is a fundamental problem Americans have struggle with since the beginning. [See this Bill Moyers piece to give this some historical framing.]
Americans are confused about how to think about this problem because too many, even the most religious among them, think it’s desirable for the ambition-driven to have as much money and as much power as they can contrive to obtain. That’s what a lot of people think of as their freedom to pursue the American Dream. Any attempt to restrict such pursuits is un-American. So freedom has come to mean “no restriction,” and the less restriction there is, the more American it is. Anything that smacks of restriction is “socialistic,” and there is no dirtier word in the American political lexicon.
But a pure state of non-restriction is the political philosopher’s anarchic and dreaded “state of nature” where the eat-or-be-eaten law of the jungle is the only ordering principle. Societies that live by this law are societies in which people who are sick with greed and powerlust come to dominate people who are not.
This is hardly a profound insight. It’s an everyday observation. And yet most Americans are allowing the current administration in Washington to systematically dismantle the system of restrictions that have protected the small from the big since the age of the Robber Barons in the late 19th century. Maybe most of us don’t think of ourselves as small enough to worry about it now. But the rest of the world has been made to feel small by this administration, and sooner or later so shall we middle-sized fish who live in this country.
I make no apologies for being alarmist about this. Better to be awake to the threat even if it is in its incipient stages than to sleep until it’s too late. In the US, the pursuit of the American Dream is the cover story used by those obsessed by the pursuit of wealth and power to justify what is fundamentally a disorder of soul. And the rest of us are soul-sick to the degree that we collude with their project. The political and economic sphere are not where freedom is the guiding principle. In a healthy society freedom governs the cultural sphere, and our economic and political life should be ordered to insure fair distributions of political power and economic resources to allow everyone real freedom in the cultural sphere. Freedom in the cultural sphere cannot flourish if most people are preoccupied with economic concerns.
And so this cuts to the heart of our dilemma. One of the great advances of the Western democracies was the idea that power should be distributed to as many people as possible to prevent its concentration in the hands of a few. The citizen submits to no other human or group of humans with special powers; he or she submits only to the rule of law. The laws derive their legitimacy from the collective will of a morally responsible citizenry. So everything depends on the informed and enlivened conscience of the individual citizen. There is always the inevitability that citizens out of laziness or lack of vigilance might fail to fulfill their obligations to do what is in the interest of the common good. Then the society will revert to the “state of nature,” which in human social terms is a system of masters and slaves--a society run by bullies, godfathers, warlords, kings, or dictators. In other words, the way most societies operated through most of history. America in our imagination of of it was designed to say No to all of that, and so we look at ourselves and say, “We don't do that.” The rest of the world looks at us and, like the Chinese-American student, is not so sure anymore.
Americans have therefore an easier time understanding why the political power of individuals and groups (kings, dictators, etc.), but they have a much harder time understanding how the power of these individuals and groups is linked to their freedom to acquire enormous wealth. In America it is universally recognized that it’s not ok for anyone to have unlimited political power, but that it is ok to have unlimited economic power? Isn’t it obvious that whatever restraints there might be on the first become meaningless because of the lack of restraints on the latter? Isn’t that exactly why most ordinary American citizens feel that they have no real political power because they are resigned that the real power in this country is in the hands of the big fish who have the big money? Does anything happen in this country anymore except if big money interests want it?
So really just how healthy and vibrant is our democracy? I would say that it is vibrant and healthy to the degree that the big fish are not allowed to do as they please. It is vibrant to the degree that the middle and small fish are vigilant and feisty enough to oppose the big fish when they start throwing their weight around. Right now we are neither vigilant nor feisty--we are bewildered and complacent. And that’s why it’s necessary to be alarmist about this. I don't that some people have a lot of money. There is no resentment or envy here. I care that the very wealthy have an unfair power advantage that gives them the power to work the system to their advantage.
So I care about the agenda of the wealthy to dismantle the tax code and other restrictions in the name of freedom and the American dream. I am frustrated with the attitudes of so many middle fish with Libertarian leanings who support this big-fish agenda because they don't really understand how they are preparing the fire and oiling the skillet in which they eventually be fried. And I am frustrated by this Libertarian mood that prevents any action in the political sphere designed to solve real problems that relate to the common welfare. Libertarianism in the political economic spheres means a return to nature. We've seen that movie. We really don't want to see it again.
Because right now in America we’re letting the big fish do pretty much what they want. And so if our own house is not in order, what right have we to impose order on the rest of the world? Are we really promoting democracy and the ideals of fairness that the Chinese American student looks to the United States for, or are we just promoting the American big-fish agenda? Whatever we might have been in the past, what have we become now?
The world’s revulsion at the actions of the United States in Iraq is quite understandable. As awful as Saddam was, he was not nearly as scary to the world as the United States is. He was just another small fish--crazy, nasty, brutish, criminal, but not someone whom anyone with any sobriety could see as posing a significant threat to the world. In the eyes of the world the really significant threat doesn’t come from a crazy dime-a-dozen small fish like Saddam, but from a big one no one can prevent from doing as it pleases.
No one, that is, except the American people themselves. How? Here’s a conservative proposal: Domestically, let’s prevent the current administration from dismantling the system of laws that keeps us out of the state of nature. Here’s a radical proposal: In the international sphere, let’s help to move the world out of the state of nature by demanding that our government support and submit to the system of international law.