What's So Great About America (21 page)

The problems with this root-and-branch repudiation of contemporary ideals can be seen by considering an example, which I offer as representative of the whole culture of authenticity. Recently I stopped into my neighborhood Starbucks, and there, behind the counter, was a specimen who probably would not have existed in earlier generations. I surveyed him with curious fascination: the Mohawk hair, the earrings, the nose ring, the studs on his forehead and tongue, the tattoos. I could just imagine Judge Bork entering the room. His immediate reaction would probably be, “Arrest that man.” Since this is not practical, another option would be to grab the young fellow and yell, “What is wrong with you, you demented freak!” From Bork's point of view there is simply no excuse for some people.

But what good would come of this? The epithets and remonstrations of the conservative have no chance of persuading the Starbucks guy. Indeed, they are likely to have the opposite effect: “Get away from me, you fascist!” From the Starbucks guy's perspective, the cultural conservatives are enemies of freedom. He would undoubtedly regard Judge Bork as a self-righteous mullah who is trying to tell him how to live his life. The Starbucks guy believes that he has the inalienable right to determine his own destiny, to make his own choices. Thus he regards the conservative approach as presumptuous, coercive, and un-American. And he is reluctant to listen to anything these conservatives have to say.

The Starbucks guy's objection to the conservatives is valid on two counts. First, many conservatives do sound like they are against freedom. Bork, for example, has urged the enforcement
of “public morality” through the censorship of objectionable songs, movies, TV shows, and Internet websites.
²⁷
Buchanan heartily agrees, calling state censorship “an idea whose time has come.”
²⁸
Some religious and political activists have gone further, demanding laws that enforce Christian precepts or the norms that prevailed in the 1950s. I cannot see how such strategies could possibly work. Is it realistic for a democratic society to enforce norms based on a moral order that is no longer shared by the community? How can a political strategy that defines itself against America's core value of freedom possibly succeed? Cultural conservatives must recognize that the new morality is now entrenched and pervasive, so that there is no way to go back to the shared moral hierarchy of the past, however fondly that era may live on in their memories.

Second, the root-and-branch rejection of authenticity ignores the moral force of this ideal. Contrary to what the cultural conservatives fear, the new morality is not simply a screen for self-indulgence and immorality. If you were to sympathetically engage the Starbucks guy in conversation and ask him to account for himself, he would probably say, “I am trying to be unique.” “I want to be an individual.” “I am trying to be me.” Some may find these aspirations banal, even comical, but the goals for which the Starbucks guy is striving are legitimate ones. Even at the cost of bodily pain, he wants a distinctive identity, a life that is not simply a copy of other people's lives. In short, he wants a life that counts.

I do not think that it is either right or prudent to attack him for this. The Starbucks guy is an idealist, and it would be wrong to trample on that idealism. Moreover, his ethic of authenticity is entrenched in his psyche; how realistic would it be to uproot
it? A much better approach for conservatives is to acknowledge the legitimacy of the ideal of authenticity, but to make the case that the Starbucks guy has adopted a debased form of it. The Starbucks guy wants to be original, and this is a good thing to be, but it may be pointed out to him that he is not succeeding in this, because every fourth guy at Starbucks looks like him! Perhaps there are more meaningful ways for the Starbucks guy to convey his individuality: through art, for example, or by dedicating himself to a cause he believes in.

Instead of completely denying the value of expressive freedom, conservatives would do better to embrace it—at least in part—and to focus on educating people about the rich moral sources of freedom, and about how to use freedom well. But the conservative is not the only one who needs to change; the Starbucks guy does too. He needs to realize that his bold stance against the institutions of society—against commerce, against family, against community, against morality—is a bit of a pose. Indeed, it fails by its own standard: it is inauthentic. After all, it is our rich, commercial society that makes an establishment like Starbucks viable. It is the legal, social, and moral norms of the community that provide the guardrails protecting the Starbucks guy's freedom and autonomy. Moreover, it is the hard work, discipline, deferred gratification, and frugality of his parents over the years that now enable the Starbucks guy to enjoy his bohemian lifestyle. True, the Starbucks guy is in a situation different from his parents', but they are the ones who have placed him there. In short, a little gratitude and understanding should not be too much to expect from the Starbucks guy.

In addition, champions of authenticity and moral autonomy like the Starbucks guy should understand that identity is not
completely self-generated and that freedom is not its own justification. Our identity and self-image emerge out of our relationships with others. Even the Starbucks guy's studs and tattoos are an attempt to communicate
something
to
somebody.
Ultimately this expressive freedom must have some underlying purpose. Freedom becomes insignificant if it makes no difference what I choose. Thus the Starbucks guy's mantra “I can choose for myself” raises the next and indispensable question, “What are you going to choose?” It is not enough to answer, “Whatever my inner self dictates.” Even the inner self needs a compass—it operates according to some substantive understanding of the good life. There is no cause to believe that this understanding is impervious to reason and cannot be shaped through education and discussion. The grave weakness of the ethic of authenticity is that it evades this fundamental issue and simply stresses the autonomy of choice.

Since the earliest days of Athens and Jerusalem, most of the great figures of Western civilization have regarded the question of the content of the good life as the central one. The American founders agreed with this, and they created a mechanism that allows people to pursue the good life without government interference. Since the triumph of authenticity in the 1960s and 1970s, the emphasis has been on radical freedom, largely to the exclusion of the question of what that freedom is for. The great conservative challenge is to bring this issue back to the forefront. Our freedom and autonomy are precious commodities, and conservatives better than anyone else recognize that it is a great tragedy when they are trivialized and abused. Their mission, therefore, is to steer the American ethic of authenticity to its highest manifestation and to ennoble freedom by showing it the path to virtue.

What We're Fighting For

A
MERICA REPRESENTS A NEW WAY OF BEING HUMAN AND thus presents a radical challenge to the world. On the one hand, Americans have throughout their history held that they are special: that their country has been blessed by God, that the American system is unique, that Americans are not like people everywhere else. This set of beliefs is called “American exceptionalism.” At the same time, Americans have also traditionally insisted that they provide a model for the world, that theirs is a formula that others can follow, and that there is no better life available elsewhere. Paradoxically enough, American exceptionalism leads to American universalism.

Both American exceptionalism and American universalism have come under fierce attack from the enemies of America, both
at home and abroad. The critics of America deny that there is anything unique about America, and they ridicule the notion that the American model is one that others should seek to follow. Indeed, by chronicling the past and present crimes of America, they hope to extract apologies and financial reparations out of Americans. Some even seek to justify murderous attacks against America on the grounds that what America does, and what she stands for, invites such attacks.

These critics are aiming their assault on America's greatest weakness: her lack of moral self-confidence. Americans cannot effectively fight a war without believing that it is a just war. That's why America has only lost once, in Vietnam, and that was because most Americans did not know what they were fighting for. The enemies of America understand this vulnerability. At the deepest level their assault is moral: they seek to destroy America's belief in herself, knowing that if this happens, America is finished. By the same token, when Americans rally behind a good cause, as in World War II, they are invincible. The outcome of America's engagements abroad is usually determined by a single factor: America's will to prevail. In order to win, Americans need to believe that they are on the side of the angels. The good news is that they usually are.

A
merica's enemies are likely to respond to these assertions with sputtering outrage. Their view is that America's influence has been, and continues to be, deeply destructive and wicked. As we have seen, this criticism comes from different directions: from
multiculturalists who allege historical racism and the ongoing oppression of minorities; from Third World intellectuals who deplore the legacy of colonialism; from Western leftists who see America as a force for evil in the world; and from Islamic fundamentalists and cultural conservatives who view America as culturally decadent and morally degenerate.

These attacks on America usually begin with complaints about America's foreign policy. Many European, Islamic, and Third World critics—as well as many American leftists—make the point that the United States uses the comforting language of morality while operating according to the ruthless norms of power politics. This is a theme that we in America hear endlessly from leftist intellectuals like Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Lerner; it is a also a theme that Muslim fundamentalists have stressed. To these critics, America is guilty of such foreign policy outrages as overthrowing democratically elected regimes in Iran and Chile; propping up dictatorships in Latin America and now in the Middle East; fighting to protect oil fields in the Gulf War while pretending to be fighting for the rights of Kuwaitis; ignoring massive human rights violations where no American interests are involved; starving hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children through a cruel policy of economic sanctions; and demonizing people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden whom the United States itself once supported.

These are serious charges, and they seek to expose as wide a chasm between American ideals and American actions as there was between the rhetoric of Pericles' funeral oration and Athens's ruthless massacre of the citizens of the island of Melos. While Pericles sang lofty hymns to freedom, the Athenian ambassadors
conveyed a different message in the Melian dialogue: if you do not submit to slavery, they told the Melians, we will destroy you, and our reason for doing so is because we can, because the law of nature dictates that “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”
¹
In short, the Athenian ambassadors made explicit the law of
realpolitik:
that nations act based not on ideals but on their interests, and that in the field of international affairs, might inevitably makes right.

In his book
White House Years,
Henry Kissinger says essentially the same thing about American foreign policy: America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
²
And in a sense this is true: The American people have empowered their government to act on their behalf against adversaries. They have not asked their government to be neutral between their interests and, say, the interests of the Ethiopians. It is unreasonable to ask a nation to ignore its interests, because that is tantamount to asking a nation to ignore the welfare of its people. Everywhere in the world this is taken for granted. Asked recently why he once supported the Taliban regime and then joined the American effort to oust it, General Pervez Musharaff of Pakistan coolly replied, “Because our national interest has changed.” When he said this, nobody thought to ask any further questions.