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Show flRiCfltS ISSUES FORUM Becoming Americans: Qw f Unity This is the second in a series of 18 articles written for the nation's Bicentennial and exploring ex-ploring themes of the American Ameri-can Issues Forum. In this firs; of four articles on "A Nation o: Nations," John Higham, professor pro-fessor of history at Johr Hopkins University, discusses the core of beliefs that havf united the American people and formed the tenets o: America's "civil religion.' Copyright 1975 by the Regent; of the University of California By John Higham During the uproar over Watergate, foreigners were baffled and amazed by the passions aroused in the United States by official wrong-doing. In other parts of the world people took for granted a measure of corruption and abuse of power on the part of their rulers. The indignation of Americans seemed, by contrast, cont-rast, naively idealistic if not downright hypocritical. "You don't have a country over there," a German-based diplomat di-plomat said. "You have a huge church." There was a touch of truth to that light-hearted comment. It pointed up the strong vein of idealism in Smerican politics, the national habit of looking upon government as a "sacred trust" and of holding elected ') n ft i i M r-v ... fml ' - i' f --m mm fwmfiJ"'"Vii " ' " " 1 ' " r" in mm ':- Wide World Photos . -'- Albert Einstein and daughter Margot (right) take oath of citizenship in New Jersey court, October, 1940. ' ' Americans have often viewed their country, with its institutions rooted in freedom, as an asykjm for the oppressed. officials as the stewards of that trust. "The American," said philosopher George Santay-ana, Santay-ana, "is an idealist working in matter," From the very beginning, through all of the materialism and cynicism and self-interest in American life, has run a sense of universal mission and a genuine reverence for the symbols of that mission: the Declaration of Independence, the Statue of Liberty, the Supreme Court, the office of the President. "The Union," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is part of the religion of this people." Yet no American associated the United States with "a church." Americans have tho-ought tho-ought of their country as a melting pot, a salad bowl, a magnet, a fortress, an asylum, a caravan, and especially espec-ially as a "promised land." They have a "civil religion" with prophets, symbols, even rituals, but no established church. Indeed, this "civil religion" arose in large measure mea-sure to take the place of a church. The settlements out of which the United States emerged existed long before any consciousness of an American mission or identity; and what those settlements had in common above all else was their jealous localism, their distrust of remote, consolidated power, their determination de-termination to maintain their own particular liberties. Scattered Scatt-ered over 1.300 miles of the Atlantic coast, the English colonies in the 18th century were separated from one another to a degree hard to imagine today. Few people traveled from one province to another. Little news passed between them. Most colonists also felt remote from their own provincial provin-cial capital. While colonial assemblies continually hammered away at the power of royal governors and London officials, within each colony towns and districts that were relatively distant from the centers of trade felt the same distrust for the more cosmopolitan cosmo-politan towns. In Massachusetts, Massachu-setts, for example, the principal princi-pal political issues in the early 18th century were fought out between a "country party" which stood for local rights and a "court party." which rallied around royal authorities. authori-ties. In its anticcntralism, "country party" beliefs helped help-ed to spark the revolutionary movement because in every colony the revolutionary impulse im-pulse sprang from a profound suspicion of concentrated, centralized power. No wonder it took well over a decade before the patroits of 1776 could bring themselves (only with great difficulty and reluctance) reluc-tance) to create a genuinely national government. As for a national church, the very notion of one made them shudder. Still from these thirteen isolated, mutually suspicious little societies a nation was born. What tied it together? What enabled these quarrelsome quarrel-some populations to transform their temporary alliance against aga-inst English power into a permanent union? Domination by a ruling oligarchy or an energetic government? These did not exist in 1776, and the Revolution was generally gener-ally thought to have spared America from the tyranny of either. Identification with a common national or religious origin? England and its established church were what Americans had rebelled against. again-st. The ideology that gave the Americans their identity was linked to the special character of the political system that emerged from the American Revolution, Americans - or, at least, their spokesmen -believed the new republic was created to benefit all mankind - to teach the world a lesson in power, Americans thought that, by basing governmental power entirely on the sovereignty sover-eignty of the people, and by dividing that power so that one portion balanced and checked another, they had discovered how to establish universal liberty but within an orderly social framework. Americans saw themselves as missionaries, appointed to demonstrate the superiority of this new scheme of government. govern-ment. Their sense of mission helped to produce a kind of unity that did not require the dense social fabric, homogen-enous homogen-enous population, or imposing structure of authority which other nations rested upon. Any nation that sees itself incarnating an idea sets an exalted standard for itself. It may achieve much. Yet it also risks falling captive to dangerous danger-ous illusions. In American history three illusions have repeatedly disfigured our ideological ideo-logical goals. First, an ideology - even one that is pledged to liberty -tends toward orthodoxy. Strictness Stric-tness of belief easily becomes a test of membership in the community. Unavoidable differences diff-erences of interest or attitude are magnified into fundamental fundamen-tal principles; opposition is seen as heresy. The party struggles of the Jeffersonian period resounded with fierce ' charges of disloyalty on both sides, and Jefferson himself dealt ruthlessly with opponents oppo-nents whom he suspected of spreading subversive doctrines. doc-trines. Since then, almost every major national crisis has spawned its self-appointed saviors to ferret out the corrupters of the republic. Ideological fervor also accounts acco-unts for the habit of calling undiscrable people or atti-itudes atti-itudes "un-American," a kind of exelusivcness w ithout parallel para-llel in other democratic societies. societ-ies. Second, ideologies create illusions about the course of history. Just as Marx's assur- ances of the inevitable triumph of the proletariat gave communist comm-unist movements enormous leverage, the confidence of 19th century Americans that their country was the spearhead spear-head of history probably contributed much to the scale ' and energy of westward expansion and economic growth. gr-owth. On the other hand, where identity depends heavily on ideology the failure of prophecy prop-hecy can be highly demoralizing. demoraliz-ing. Consider the cynicism and disillusion that afflicted the "Lost Generation" after the First World War, when the promises of Woodrow Wilson turned to ashes. Notice also the bitter hatred of America another idealistic generation felt in the 1960s when the illusions of the Cold War collapsed. At such times a society that has invested heavily in ideals begins to come apart. Third, and perhaps most fateful, an ideology engenders a false sense of universality. It confuses its own aspirations with the world's. It fails to recognize how these aspirations aspira-tions have been shaped by a unique history and physical environment. George Bancroft, Ban-croft, the first great historian of the United States, Tote as an ideologist when he declar ed: "Our country stands.. ..a the realisation of the unity o the human race." In many ways the ideologi cal strain in American cultun has been offset, perhap -fortunately, by a hard-heada -practicality. Abraham Lin coin's central role in america: : experience stems from hi ': ability to defend ardentlv am " articulate the pivotal beliefs o the republic while never losin; " sight of the practical am: possible. Yet Lincoln too shared th- : pervasive American illusion o : universality. According to ou ; civil religion, American instit : utions were rooted in freedor -and the nation divinely chose to provide a model to th world. This belief obscured th -.-facts. The Founding Father -had not practiced it in thei dealings with black and re" races. (li In drafting their case aga !' inst royal authority, the addressed themselves speciij ically to Europeans and drex ' upon a predominantly Englii cultural heritage. "Freedom"" principles did not apply t? other races. The failure of th founders to include all men fa their charter of human right turned out to be a fata ommission. As we shall see fa the upcoming article, it stim-i ulated the growth and defens of racism. |
