If we Americans listen to our own music, we hear that America is the land of the free and
the home of the brave. We have purple mountains and amber waves of
grain. “God bless America.” But not everyone sees us this way, even
among our own citizens. It is probably not wise to divide the
world’s view of America into merely five or six different
categories or descriptions. Still, it is helpful to reflect how
differently the country is seen to be. We wonder if we are in a
“decline and fall” situation. Or are we on the verge of a new
breakthrough. Perhaps the barbarians are already in the gate. We just
do not want to notice. They look like us. Our leadership seems vain
and self-serving. Much depends on what we are willing to see rather
than what is in fact there to see.
I.
The
first view is that America is the cause of the world’s problems.
Even though it was never really a “colonial” power, still the
world is best seen as if it were the chief colonial power. As the
wealthiest of the great powers, through its economic system, it has
exploited the rest of the world. Its prosperity is unjust. It owes
reparation to the rest of the world. The poor of the world are
victims; their situation has little or nothing to do with them, their
mores, governments, or religion. Were it not for America everyone
would be rich. America must continually express sorrow for its
actions. Its wealth must be given back to those to whom it rightly
belongs. Moreover, America is morally decadent. It undermines
marriage and family everywhere. It exports every dubious ethical
aberration as if it were normal. The world needs to be protected from
its moral decline and from its economic stranglehold. America is
justly hated for what it is.
The
second view is that America has long overreached its capacities. We
are a relatively small nation that assumes way too much of the
world’s burdens. America has tried unwisely to transform the world
as if it has some kind of magic formula to do so. But the world is
not interested. It rejects as alien any outside help that Americans
might offer. Thus, we need to face facts. We need to withdraw from
the world, pull in our horns, and come home. We need to pursue our
own interests here. We have shipped much of our wealth, jobs, and
talent overseas instead of taking care of our own industry and
interests. It is time to trim our ambitions to what we can do. We
cannot solve age-old problems that only get worse if we try to
interfere in their workings. We need to protect ourselves; we need to
identify our friends and enemies. Ever since we tried to do
everything, everything has gone wrong.
A
third view is that America is a uniquely compassionate and generous
land. We have tried successfully to bring our former enemies back
into the human fold. We did not seek vengeance, but put former
enemies back on their feet so that they could take care of
themselves. At great cost, we have protected Europe and much of the
world. We left them free of worries about their safety. We are the
main country to whom immigrants flock if they can. We are a tolerant
land of opportunity where churches are freer than in any other
country in the world. We have spent much of our wealth and efforts in
giving help to others. Even when we are insulted, we continue to find
ways to assist others, even our enemies. We understand envy and those
who seek power for themselves. We want others to be free and
prosperous.
America,
fourthly, is the only real superpower in the world. If it does not
keep its military and economic strength, no one will be able to
resolve or modify the conflicts that constantly happen in the world.
The United Nations is more of a problem than a solution. What we need
in the country are leaders and highly trained services that can act,
not just talk. They need to know the situation in various parts of
the world, with the necessary power and persuasion sensibly to apply
them to the flashpoints when they happen. No one else can or will do
this service. We will not be loved for it. America does not seek
empire or even gain. It wants a reasonably just peace but knows that
the failure to develop and use power when needed is very dangerous
and usually causes war and greater chaos.
Or,
fifth, America is rapidly becoming, if it is not already, a
welfare-state on the European secularist model. The state is to
control all health, education policies, and monies. Everyone will be
directly or indirectly taken care of by the state and its
bureaucracy. Nothing will stand between the state and the individual.
Culture, arts, and media will be in the hands of the state. Issues of
life and death, well-being, and levels of income will be the state’s
to resolve. The purpose of the state will be to equalize and
rationalize all institutions and individuals. Everyone will be
dependent on the positive law for a criterion of what is allowed.
What private enterprise remains will be at the sufferance of state
policy.
A sixth view might
be that America has helped other peoples to become rich. Not just the
European recovery, but China and India, once the poorest of
countries, are now, through the market, vibrant economies of their
own. Scientific development and technological advances spread from
our universities, think tanks, and corporations throughout the world.
Foreign students crowd our graduate schools. They have been a benefit
to mankind. America’s wealth is not its own but is shared and
exchanged with others. What is called American exceptionalism means
that certain political, economic, religious, and moral ideas and
practical institutions were formulated or perfected in America. It is
these ideas and institutions that cause human well-being. Without
them, societies stagnate or fail to develop or fall apart. They do
not understand their importance. We know how to make everyone free
and prosperous, but not if they are unwilling to accept the means and
discipline that it takes.
II.
We are hard-pressed
today to say that America is a single unified nation in which two
parties vie to offer acceptable moral alternatives to our laws and
problems. We are not allowed to say we are a Christian nation. In our
country historically, it has not made too much difference which party
won an election. The alternate program was also feasible and usually
honorable. Life and death was not at stake in each vote. The
differences were over means, not fundamentals touching the very
meaning of life and human destiny. They were about better or worse
ways of attaining the same purpose.
In many ways today,
our politics are not really politics in the classical sense. They are
closer to wars, not just cultural wars either. There is often hatred,
not gentlemanly respect, for other views which strike at the very
heart of what a human being is. Both sides see the victory of the
other side to be a disaster. We find little cooperation. This level
of antagonism is because the issues that divide us are non-negotiable
at a very basic level. Our politics is really theology, struggles
over the very meaning of what it is to be human.
We would like to
think, moreover, that Christianity is safe under any selection of
party. But this is no longer the case. In many ways, Christianity is
struggling for its very existence, but is afraid to admit it. Odd
theories of “social justice” have replaced the substance of
faith. The state seeks to confine religion to the very minimal
presence of ritual. We are free to use any “ritual” we want
provided we do not seek to do anything else, especially try live
according to its tenets when we leave the place of worship. We used
to talk of Christians who went to church on Sundays but who lived the
rest of the week as if they were secularists. This failure to
practice one’s faith was seen as a personal problem. Today, it is
the state that seeks to prevent us from practicing our religion
outside of church unless it conforms to the state’s arbitrary view
of what human life is about.
What might we
conclude from these different views of America and its situation?
Some in the Church itself have seen that it suddenly must make
vigorous efforts in every sphere, including the political, if it is
to be allowed any but nominal presence in the culture. We do hear
voices that warn us to prepare for persecution. We are reluctant to
think this to be possible. We may be forced to withdraw from the
political arena and become something like the Copts in Egypt, people
who are largely isolated and excluded from the public order but who
keep the faith and get along the best they can, suffering when they
have to.
America no longer
has a coherent, common view of itself and what it stands for. Its
very legitimacy is at stake. Religion itself has become part of the
problem. The notion that all religions, however we tolerate them, are
equal and worship the same god verges on incredulity and the
abandonment of reason. What we will accept as our religion is usually
a function of how we live. We will, in effect, create “civil”
gods who allow us to do what we will. The differing views of America
confirm the old observation that at bottom all politics are rooted in
theology, including the politics that affirms that there is no god.