Living in 21st America, it’s impossible to go a
single day without hearing multiple mentions of “racism.” It seems to be the
lifeblood of our political-cultural life.
Because
of the ever-increasing rarity of overt instances of white-on-black “racism”
(and make no mistakes about it, “racism” is used to refer only to
white-on-nonwhite transgressions), the architects and agents of the
Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC) have had to appeal to what they call
“institutional” or “systemic” or “structural” racism.
Very rarely, though, do we
hear much about patriotism. It’s true,
of course, that we’ll not infrequently hear politicians refer to the policy
proposals of their opponents as “un-American.” Yet
it’s supposed to be bad form to question another person’s patriotism. Given the
ease with which people, particularly leftists, hurl the R-word (as well as many
other derogatory terms) at their opponents, the conspicuous paucity of charges
of anti-Americanism is more than a bit curious.
Well,
it’s curious on its face. But once we scratch the surface, it’s not hard at all
to see why those on the left prefer for the topic of patriotism to go the way
of the dinosaur: Given its
unequivocal commitment to the fundamental transformation of the Western world,
the left has always derived its identity in large measure from its vehement
opposition to the national identities that compose that world.
Thus, the left in America is
practically by definition anti-American. Except for when
appeals to them prove rhetorically effective and ideologically useful, for the
culturally and historically-specific particularities and contingencies that
constitute America the left has nothing but contempt. This is not
hyperbole. Logically, it’s impossible to draw any other conclusion from the
left’s relentless campaign against the allegedly “racist,” “sexist,”
“classist,” “homophobic,” and “xenophobic” character of the country. How,
we must ask ourselves, can those who tirelessly characterize America in these terms
have anything but disdain for an entity that they (supposedly) think is so
ugly, so evil?
Let’s be frank: America was
founded by white people, white Protestant Christians, to
be exact, and for white people of (mostly)
the same description. As early on as 1790, just a short while after the United States
Constitution was ratified, the Naturalization Act was passed. This law
expressly limited citizenship in the new Republic to “free white persons of
good character.” Until as recently as the 1960s, America remained nearly 90%
white. Today, at about 63% of the population, America is still majority
white.
Considering
that it is the white, heterosexual, Christian male on whose shoulders the
contemporary left lays the burden of all of the world’s problems, there is no
way that leftists can, without being blatantly inconsistent, not seethe with
disgust and hatred for this bastion of White Supremacy that they have long
referred to as “AmeriKKKa.”
Still,
there are indeed individual Americans of a leftist bent who will take offense
at the charge of anti-Americanism, individuals who insist upon their love for
the United States. Such folks are doubtless sincere. Their
sincerity, however, goes no distance toward undercutting the anti-American
logic of their ideology.
Nor does
their intellectual confusion exculpate them from their responsibility for
purveying anti-Americanism.
The illogic of the leftist
who genuinely proclaims his love for America no more defeats the allegation of
anti-Americanism than does the genuineness of the white person who insists on
his commitment to racial equality relieve him of
responsibility for (supposedly) promoting “racism.”
Now, “institutional racism” is a
fiction invented by RIC whose staying power owes to its enormous profitability:
RIC needs to perpetuate this Big Lie.
Yet institutional anti-Americanism is all too real.
The
ideas constitutive of leftist ideology are indeed anti-American: The cardinal
leftist principle or ideal of Equality, i.e. the ideal of a more or less equal
distribution of substantive or material satisfactions, leftists labor
inexhaustibly to make a reality. Yet it is precisely a condition of this
sort that the decentralized, Constitutional character of American government
precludes. To put it more exactly, the American government, with its wide
diffusion of power and authority, is antithetical to the sort of government
whose existence is necessary to realize the Egalitarian fantasies of the left.
And,
of course, the racial obsessions of the current left also render impossible any
love for a country that the left insists is and has always been a bastion of
White Supremacy.
But anti-Americanism is also promoted by way of other particularly
popular terms and expressions that have become associated with “patriotism” and
that are typically used by the conservative movement, what I call Big
Conservatism, or the Big Con.
What
all of these expressions share in common, and what makes them anti-American, is
that they unequivocally deny the historical character of the country.
For
example, Big Conservatives are at least as given, and, truth be told, probably
much more prone than are their Democrat liberal counterparts, to characterize
America as a “Nation of Immigrants.” Yet if this was a historically
accurate characterization, then one would have expected for earlier generations
of Americans, and certainly those members of the Founding generation, to have
viewed it as such. They did no such thing.
In
fact, anyone remotely familiar with American history can recognize the Nation
of Immigrants line for the whopper of a Lie that it is.
Only if there is already an existent
social order is it possible for anyone to immigrate to it. To
put it another way, the logic of the concept of “immigrant” logically
presupposes both an established society to which the immigrant immigrates and,
importantly, the concept of “native” or “indigenous,” i.e. of the
non-immigrant.
America was established by those who settled it.
There was no America before specific people at a specific time decided to tame
the vast wilderness that would become the territorial jurisdiction of the
United States. Those people were all white, all British, and, at the time
of the War of Independence—about 170 years after the first settlers made a home
for themselves in Virginia—they were at least 80 percent English and 98%
Protestant Christian.
To repeat, there was no America until
white, British Protestants created it.
Thus,
the term of “Native-American,” designed to refer to those who were formerly
described as “Indian,” are patent misnomers. Yet the movers and shakers of the
Big Con use it just as frequently as do “Politically Correct” liberal leftist
Democrats.
And
Big Cons also have long endorsed the notions of “the Melting Pot” and “E
Pluribus Unum,” both variations of the Nation of Immigrants Lie. Yet
America was never meant to be a melting pot with ingredients from all over the
globe, and “E Pluribus Unum,” every American from more honest generations
would’ve insisted, refers, not to a single nation composed of immigrants, but
the formation of the 13 original colonies into a single country.
According to another anti-American fiction promoted by the Big Con,
America was founded upon “Judeo-Christian”
principles or values. It’s true, of course, that Christianity spun out of
Judaism, and that some of the fundamental metaphysical assumptions of the
latter were transmitted to the former. This, however, does not justify,
at least not from any remotely historical perspective, the nomenclature of
“Judeo-Christian” when referencing the founding of America. To repeat what has already been
repeated more than once above, America was founded almost exclusively by
Christians. That in some abstract sense the “principles” that are read from
the founding are embodied by both Judaism and Christianity no more warrants
describing it as “Judeo-Christian” than does the fact that some of these same
principles are affirmed by Muslims warrants
characterizing America as having been founded upon Judeo-Christian-Islamic principles.
This,
though, gets us to the heart of the problem, to that which is the most
anti-American of all Big Lies purveyed by the Big Con.
This is the Big Lie of
“American Exceptionalism.” Given the ease with which
the language of American Exceptionalism flies from the lips of Big
Conservatives, one would think that this terminology lends itself to more than
one meaning. This
being said, American Exceptionalists always imply that America is exceptional inasmuch as it is the only country in
all of human history to have ever been founded upon principles or ideals or values.
This, though, is anti-American because
it is radically ahistorical.
Principles, ideals, values,
comprehensively, propositions—this is the stuff of
thin gruel. Propositions are inherently abstract and general, i.e. they
easily conceal the demographic-specific contingencies constitutive of America
as it historically existed while conveying an air of plausibility. The 18th century
Scottish philosopher David Hume puts the point well:
“It
is easy for a false hypothesis to maintain some appearance of truth,” Hume
said, as long as “it keeps wholly in generals” and “makes use of undefined
terms [.]” He added that “ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally
faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be
confounded with other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any
term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a
determinate idea annexed to it.”
Big Conservatives, in employing the
terminology of American Exceptionalism, terminology with unmistakably positive
connotations, mean to suggest that they are doing nothing more or less than
affirming the singular greatness of the country. American Exceptionalism is
meant to imply that anyone who doesn’t affirm the “exceptional” nature of
America is less than fully patriotic.
The reality, though, is that this doctrine—and it is an ideological doctrine—is designed to obscure
the ethnic, racial, and religious particularities of the American founding. It
is designed to veil the founding’s historically and culturally-specific
character.
As such, it is anti-American.
Note, I do not mean to ascribe malevolent or unpatriotic
motives to those who belong to the Big Con. Some may very well know what
they are doing. Others, particularly those in the rank and file of the
conservative movement, doubtless do not. The point that I’ve been trying to
make here is that intentions aside, this sort of anti-Americanism is systemic. It’s anti-Americanism without
anti-Americans, to paraphrase Bonilla.
Yet it’s precisely because ideas do
indeed have consequences and that Big Conservatism, relying as it does upon key
terms and phrases that are, functionally, of a piece with those of the left in
facilitating the fundamental transformation of America, that it’s imperative
for those of us on the right to call out the Big Con at every available
opportunity.
Jack
Kerwick [send
him mail] received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Temple
University. His area of specialization is ethics and political philosophy. He
is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and universities in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet.com: At the Intersection of Faith
& Culture.
