I depart from my usual thematic content with this post; it has nothing to do with theological engagement or with the Kingdom of Heaven. It has everything to do with something I feel quite profoundly and about which I am deeply troubled: in the 235th year of our history I fear America has lost her way, and we all are complicit in that waywardness.
In his book, The Rights of the People, author David K. Shipler contends that our constitutional freedoms have been incrementally and steadily eroded in the pursuit of security, especially since 9-11. He points out that there have been six different moments in our history when the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been gutted of their effectiveness–usually in the face of some overt threat–and that the country has typically found its collective way back once the threat has passed. One need only recall the great injustice to Japanese-Americans, systematically rounded up and effectively jailed during World War II. We recoil at such memories from the vantage point of 70 years later. More recent history suggests we have not learned the lessons very well.
Shipler reminds us of the relative ease with which the Patriot Act was enacted in the wake of 9-11 and its subsequent renewal as an example of where Americans have been willing to give up bedrock freedoms against government intrusion, all in the presumed interest of perhaps making it easier to catch terrorists. Never mind that the Bill of Rights insists that legitimate law enforcement was never supposed to be easy, but constitutionally deferential. Security has now trumped the framers’ unique insistence on restraining government’s ability to intrude on our privacy.
It seems that the slippery slope of lost freedoms hits even closer to home. Shipler goes on to observe how the Fourth Amendment guarantees against unwarranted searches have all but gone by the wayside vis-a-vis local law enforcement, as trial courts and appellate courts are all too willing to allow police to take the very short-cuts that the framers sought to limit–all in the name of expediency. Getting guns off the streets, arguably a laudable consideration, leads to a broader interpretation of the sort of exigent circumstances that previously led reviewing courts to establish exceptions to the once hard and fast requirements of the Fourth Amendment. I use the gun illustration as one where the community standards for proper law enforcement oversight has slipped in the pursuit of a commendable goal. One could easily cite the drug war as another example of the same sort of collective acquiescence to a particular brand of tyranny in the pursuit of a greater good. Make no mistake my friends: we all suffer when freedoms are chipped away, and they could not be so compromised if we were not so complicit in the process!
The erosion of liberty is but one symptom of America’s downward spiral, and sadly, we are so engaged in calling one another names that we miss our essential commonality. The Left Wing cannot appreciate that its insistence on individual rights is–or should be– defended by the animated and vigorous and libertarian rhetoric of the Right. And the passion of the Right Wing is diminished by their easy disdain for the liberals on the Left. Instead of informed dialog on the issues of the day, our national debate–if one can truly regard it as such–degenerates all too quickly into something far less helpful . This is shown to be all the more absurd when we recognize that restraint on governmental authority is so often cited by conservatives and liberals alike, in different contexts to be sure, but the conviction is there nonetheless.
Certainly the erosion of constitutional liberties is broader than Fourth Amendment considerations alone; the courts have shown their willingness to carve out exceptions in other areas of criminal procedure as well. The sad truth is that the central characters in most of these dramatic legal episodes are criminals–or suspected terrorists– for whom decent, law-abiding people have little sympathy. The problem, as Shipler reminds us, is that the rights of all of us are compromised as well. But nobody seems to notice how far we have slipped from our original ideals. Worse yet, nobody seems to care.
One wonders if we simply have become so intellectually complacent as to take no notice of our decline, or if there is some force at work which is at once more insidious and pervasive as to render us incapable of appreciating the danger that we face. I submit that America’s soul sickness is born of a new contempt for one another in the face of a creeping awareness that America is not the country it was just 50 years ago. The increasing ethnic and racial diversity of our population and the sudden absence of the Cold War threats that once united us have turned us into a nation that longs for the idyllic days when moral certainty was the rule, and there was comfort in the fact that people who looked liked us were in charge of our national destiny. A dark-skinned chief executive reminds us that those days are behind us, as we scramble to find new enemies to assail. Undocumented immigrants, homosexuals, abortion rights advocates, Muslims…liberals? The quest to define and oppose the un-American “other” is now what animates us, rather than a fierce appreciation of our commonality. Questions about the legitimacy of a bi-racial President find ready expression in such a fearful reality.
As I began this post, I indicated that this installment was not a theological observation. However, I do note that it has a great deal to do with a sort of civic spirituality, if you will. America has long enjoyed a kind of civil religion, which is at once nominally Christian and filled with a mythical sanctification of our history that, one could argue, has served us well for the past 235 years. The nearly religious experience one has when visiting national monuments in Washington, DC is evidence of the sort of pseudo-holy deference to the myth that is America. This is as it should be, for there is great truth in myth. Employing the same pedagogical presumptions of higher literary criticism, it matters little if George Washington actually cut down a cherry tree and later came clean about with his father; the “truth” is in the substance of the myth itself . And the myth of America is–or once was–powerful indeed. Nowadays, we seem more focused on singling out those who do not easily fit into the myth.
Much of our decline has transpired since World War II, a time when America was united as it never was before, according to many historians. Under the present polarization, one doubts if we can ever come together with such clarity and purity of purpose. It has been said of John F. Kennedy, that he possessed the uncanny ability to sense that America was already adrift in the postwar years and to offer an alternate narrative. Those of us who remember the 1960s know something of the palpable excitement that seemed to bubble up with the ascent of JFK. His words and his persona hinted at a certain hope for the future for which America hungered and to which millions responded.
Yet even then America was inching toward a loss of its very soul, a process that had found voice in a new national credo, according to author Andrew Bacevich (Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War), a postwar embracing of America as the sole purveyor of democratic ideals to the rest of the world, irrespective of having been asked to provide them. Our new role as the world’s policeman naturally engendered an expansion of that “military-industrial complex”, about which President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation in 1961. The rest is a sad history of global intervention that comprises the sorry stories of Vietnam, the two Iraq wars, Afghanistan, and several intervening episodes that illustrate this commitment. The international tensions of the Cold War years were part and parcel of this mindset and served an importance purpose in defining America’s purpose in the 1950s and 1960s. And even Ollie North’s illegal “war” against the Nicaraguan Contras in the mid-1980s somehow fades into an implicit acquiescence that what is perceived as being good for America trumps any legal considerations. It is not a huge leap to the abuses of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib of more recent memory. America deserves to be number one–whatever that means–and we will not allow the law, or ethics, or morality to get in the way of our quest.
The public rhetoric at present is evidence of a country seemingly more concerned with being right than with being righteous. The depiction of the Left Wing as being comprised of Godless secularists fits nicely with the self-righteousness of the Right, which has successfully positioned itself as the God-fearing folk who have been called to be the sole guardians of the American civil religion. In a somewhat frightening development, some candidates for national office have begun to say that in no uncertain terms. The implication, of course, is that all others are wrong–a conviction that seems to find favor with many who are haunted by this fear that America is not what it once was. They are clearly right about that on more than one level. Gone is any hint of tolerance for opposing views as we find ourselves more and more distant from the very ideals we profess. Calling the President a liar in public or suggesting that he serves illegitimately all speak of this existential void in which we now find ourselves and with no willingness to name it, except to talk louder and employ invective in the hope that we might find our way again. But sadly, we do not seem even to notice that we are lost.
If America is to find her way again, the process begins with a recognition that indeed we have strayed, and that the truth of our waywardness will be hard to accept. I have long admired the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission which convened in the aftermath of the apartheid horrors as they were brought to light and were atoned for. Can we ever conceive of such an initiative in America? What good might come from a public confession of national wrongs–from slavery to the ill-conceived 2003 invasion of Iraq? I suspect that our deeply ingrained myth of America will forever preclude any well-intentioned attempt to come truly clean. The pragmatists will say that the masses could not handle the truth and perhaps they are right. But then, one cannot apologize when one truly believes there has been no lasting harm done.
The other obstacle to national penitence (maybe this post really is theological!) is the insidious nature of our slow decline–so subtle as to avoid detection–and which embraces us all, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative. The relinquishment of constitutional liberties, of which I spoke earlier, is both a symptom of the diminution of our national character and one which occurs in such incremental steps that most of us miss it altogether. Add to that the fact that administrations of both parties have presided–and continue to preside– over the erosion of freedoms, and we see that indeed all have sinned. Keep in mind that all of this is in service to the postwar credo of American superiority, which is either informed by our mythological narrative, or perhaps is the stuff from which the narrative springs–without the ugly parts!
To borrow the language of author Bacevich in a slightly different context: “In measured doses, mortification cleanses the soul. It’s the perfect antidote for excessive self regard.” Bacevich was speaking of his own epiphany with regard to America’s global role from the perspective of his 23 years in the U.S. Army. I suggest the process be employed on a broader national level. But then, the Christian doctrine of mortification is centered in the work of the Holy Spirit, and we have no such national deity. So where does that leave us? Without leadership and without a legitimate national identity, that’s where.
Many of of us had hoped Barack Obama would be the “one.” I am not unmindful that others were just as convinced that his predecessor, George W. Bush, had been similarly anointed. America suffered a great indignity on September 11, 2001 and in the days and months that followed, decisions were made policies enacted–ostensibly in the interest of national security. If Andrew Bacevich’s analysis is correct, such decisions and policies are the end result of a deliberative process that is so entwined with the post-WW II credo of American primacy that any authentic discussion of their merits is absolutely precluded. We all buy in to this notion of America’s unique global role, such that legitimate questions are never raised, or if they are, they hold no sway. Just take a look at the overwhelming support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the United States Senate by presumably smart people! The end is seen as justifying the means, and even the Obama’s of the world must live with and justify the consequences. The credo is just that strong.
I am thinking of America on this Independence Day and praying for a return to our national essence as envisioned by the founders and without the clap-trap about being a nation founded on Christian principles. The founders were men of reason whose measured passions were products of the Enlightenment. Clearly, they believed in “nature’s God” as cited in the elegant language of the Declaration of Independence, and they designed a government intended to effectuate certain universal principles that belong to all persons. Limitations on government were seen as necessary and desirable, and they encouraged the give and take of intelligent discourse without resorting to demonizing the opposing viewpoint. They would be appalled at the rancor of today’s political scene and they would be disgusted at how we have sold our national soul to the money interests. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams…they would recoil at how we have allowed our nation’s inner structures to crumble while being embroiled in conflict after global conflict. They would be sorrowful at how we have so stripped the Bill of Rights in the interest of expediency. Ours is not the America they envisioned, but there is hope. There always is.
Now is the time for a new national narrative that is based on the rational thinking that first prompted the founders to become founders. If America is to flourish and become the country it can be–the country we all love and believe is possible–then we must come to our senses and reject the sound-bite mentality that so easily yields the quick-fix for complex problems and finds expression in the jingoism that has held sway for the past seven decades. We must envision a world in which America is but one citizen–one with massive resources and impressive ingenuity–and one whose motivation has less to do with dominance and everything to do with being the ideal to which all other nations aspire.
Such a process may take another generation to accomplish, so we ought to be about the quest now. I believe we can make the shift because I believe in the American ideal. We have lost our way but for a moment. May we find the resolve to begin the journey back to wholeness. God bless the United States of America!
July 4, 2011
Raising Basileia 