Economic, Democratic, or Religious? What Sort of People Are We?

[CHE]
July 11, 2003

The Next Chapter of the American Story
By ROGERS M. SMITH

President George W. Bush's Inaugural Address, delivered January 20, 2001, was a perfect example of a "story of peoplehood," an account offered by a leader to define and inspire allegiance to the political community he seeks to lead.

"We have a place, all of us, in a long story -- a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slaveholding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story."

Bush went on to elaborate that story in ways that included the three types of narratives that I believe are in all such messages. He offered an economic story, suggesting that his policies would make America a society that would materially "reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans." He also delineated what I term a political power story, promising that government would fulfill its "great responsibilities" for public safety by strengthening "our defenses beyond challenge," and confronting "weapons of mass destruction." As a result, all Americans would have both personal protection and a share in great collective power.

But Bush emphasized most what I call an ethically constitutive story: an account explaining why membership in a political community is intrinsic to who its members truly are. There are many kinds of ethically constitutive stories -- cultural, historical, geographic, linguistic, ethnic, racial, and more -- and they can be dangerous, imbuing chauvinistic nationalisms with moralistic fervor. Bush was careful to stress that, in his view, "America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens." And he maintained that these "democratic" ideals were "more than the creed of our country." They represented "the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own." This is what scholars term a "civic" view of political community, in which membership rests on voluntary agreement as to political procedures and principles, not on unchosen "ethnic" components of national identity that can serve invidious ends.

Ultimately, however, President Bush made clear that his American story is not really so "civic" after all. It is a religious story. He recalled how during the American Revolution a friend wrote to Thomas Jefferson, "Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?" And Bush concluded his version of the American story by asserting that, despite our democratic creed, "We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. Yet his purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another. ... This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm."

According to President Bush, then, Americans are really Americans as part of a providential plan, and their purposes are defined by that plan. Many scholars have argued that America is a purely "civic" nation. I disagree, and think that American leaders have often defined America's meaning in more-comprehensive ideological terms, like religious traditions. So I confess that, as a researcher, I was delighted to find in Bush's speech fresh evidence that "civic" themes still make up only one set of threads in the American political fabric, along with ethically constitutive religious stories and much else. Many contemporary political philosophers, led by the late John Rawls, are uncomfortable when government leaders seek to advance religious visions of shared political membership, instead of stressing agreement on rationally grounded principles of justice. I find it healthier and more democratic, however, when a leader like Bush makes his deep religious commitments clear.

Still, I strongly disagree with the president's religious story of American peoplehood, all the more so since the angel in the whirlwind now seems to have directed a basically unilateral extension of Operation Desert Storm. Yet, I believe that such ethically constitutive accounts are philosophically and politically necessary dimensions of political life, so that it is pointless to lament their existence. Those who disagree with stories like Bush's must contest those narratives with, among other things, rival ethically constitutive stories of their own.

Why are ethically constitutive stories, which are indeed politically problematic, so philosophically and politically inescapable? They accomplish certain vital purposes in politics that the economic and political power stories cannot. First, they confer an aura of ethical legitimacy on political memberships. Most people have long thought wealth and political power to be desirable, but only rarely characterize them as serving some intrinsic moral good.

Ethically constitutive stories are also unavoidable for another, more centrally political reason. A peculiar feature of such accounts is that, in comparison with economic and political power stories, they are harder both to prove and to disprove. Most people know if they are affluent or bitterly impoverished, and they have sound notions of what counts as evidence one way or the other. Similarly, we have fairly reliable ideas of how to gauge whether we are a powerful nation or one subjugated to others. But what counts as really convincing proof that we are a divinely chosen people, or speakers of the most beautiful language, or bearers of the highest culture, or members of evolution's master race? Many claim to know, but standards of proof are much less clear.

Because of that, leaders can find it hard to win acceptance for a novel ethically constitutive story, and are well advised to promise economic and power benefits in addition. But in any enduring society, economic and political bad times will eventually come. And if membership has been "sold" strictly on the basis of the economic and power goods that the political community provides, then constituents will have no rational basis to remain loyal to that community and its leaders when the going gets tough -- at least not if there are rivals who offer alternative visions that seem more compelling. If, on the other hand, constituents really believe that membership in a particular political society is part of who they are in ways that give their lives ethical meaning, then they are likely to remain loyal much longer, even in times of economic hardship or political oppression.

Leaders therefore have always had incentives to propagate ethically constitutive stories, and they have always done so. Everyone grows up in societies that socialize them into one or more such stories. The stories often seem like second nature, unquestionable, profoundly definitive of citizens' core affiliations and allegiances. And because many people are deeply attached to their ethically constitutive stories, political leaders who slight those stories do so at some peril. They will always have opponents who will mobilize support by speaking to those neglected identities and values.

As a result, what I call the "politics of people-building" always involves -- along with an equally inescapable reliance on coercive force -- the deployment of persuasive stories to win allegiance, always including ethically constitutive stories. Sometimes such narratives are visibly central to politics; other times they're less pronounced than the economic or power themes. In any case, it would be useless to hope for the disappearance of ethically constitutive stories, and morally inappropriate, because any worldview that is remotely humanistic must rely on some ethically constitutive account that explains why people have normative worth.

If it is misguided to wish for a politics without ethically constitutive stories, however, then how do we guard against their very real dangers? I argue for an approach inspired by James Madison's famous solution to the problem of vicious factions. Since ethically constitutive stories, like factions, cannot be eliminated, we should instead seek to multiply and diversify them and set them against one another. We might then foster a politics in which individuals, groups, parties, and movements often are compelled to rethink their most extreme positions, so that they can form coalitions broad enough to gain power and advance their most valued goals. The need to form such coalitions is present in one way or another in every political system.

This view suggests that we need more-open discussion of ethically constitutive views in politics, of the sort Bush's inaugural provides. But we also need more-robust democratic contestation of views that we think are mistaken, undesirable, sometimes immoral and unjust.

For instance, we should, I submit, be deeply skeptical of all claims to grasp the will of whatever divinities there may be. Public policies should not rest on assertions of blind faith. Other sorts of ethically constitutive stories are far more intellectually defensible and politically responsible -- especially ones that recognize political communities like the United States as humanly authored historical creations. Giving up the religious focus is not to give up transcendence. Historical entities, too, are transcendent, because they extend in time before and beyond the lives of most, if not all, of their members. They are fundamental, too, to people's senses of identity and ethical purpose. But historical accounts reinforce, instead of undermine, notions of our shared responsibility to decide how best to continue our stories of political peoplehood. That notion of responsibility is vital today, because the response of the Bush administration and others to the terrible crimes of September 11, 2001, has underlined how even historical conceptions of American identity can be taken in many conflicting directions.

Many writers have recently contended that the United States has become the modern world's hegemonic imperial power, and that America should now use its power against dictators to spread democracy and liberty throughout the world, by force when necessary. As the constitutional scholar Walter Berns, an emeritus professor at Georgetown University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, puts it:

"America is to modern history as Rome was to ancient, and not only because we are the one remaining superpower. Modern politics began 300-plus years ago with the discovery or pronouncement of new principles, universal and revolutionary principles, respecting the rights of man. In 1776 we declared our right to form a new nation by appealing to these principles. Because we were the first to do so, it fell to us to be their champions, first by setting an example -- this was Lincoln's point -- and subsequently by defending them against their latter-day enemies, the Nazis and fascists in World War II and the communists in the cold war. Our lot is to be the one essential country, 'the last, best hope of earth,' and this ought to be acknowledged, beginning in our schools and universities, for it is only then that we can come to accept the responsibilities attending it."

For the Bush administration, that unique American status carries with it the right and duty to engage in unilateral rejection of international agreements, such as the Kyoto Treaty and the International Criminal Court, when the United States finds them undesirable. It also involves the duty to undertake pre-emptive, unilateral warfare, when the United States thinks national and world security so require. As even supporters of the war in Iraq, like Fareed Zakaria, have recently argued, those positions have made America appear to most of the world to be an "arrogant empire," more a threat to than a source of hope for a more free, democratic, and just world order.

I do not believe that the United States should write the next chapter of our story under the heading, "America: The Imperial Rome of the 21st Century." There are other aspects of the American story on which it is wiser to build. Instead of treating the American polity as essentially already perfected, as "best" in the world, I would stress a less debatable and more desirable feature of American experience. Americans have always been a pioneering people, willing to recognize that existing arrangements are imperfect, eager to try new ways to make human lives better.

Americans were pioneers, of course, in establishing European settlements on New World lands. But we were also pioneers in many other ways. We pioneered a new doctrine of the right of a justly aggrieved people to claim independence and create their own government. Then we pioneered new systems of republican self-governance and governmental economic aid to generate a novel, prosperous, commercial society. We pioneered an unprecedented separation of church and state. We also pioneered new protections for an array of individual and community rights, including limits on police tactics, trials by local juries, and expansive liberties of speech and press. In so doing we gave concreteness to what were still innovative philosophical assertions of universal rights.

Not all American pioneering has been commendable. But it is undeniable that Americans began, in a staggering variety of ways, as a pioneering people, and that we have been so throughout our history. We have often seen that we faced both enduring and unprecedented problems; we have had confidence that it was worth trying to find ways to do better; and we have believed that we sometimes could.

I suspect that most Americans prefer to see themselves as pioneers of progress more than as pious preservers of past achievements. More important, I believe that a willingness to pioneer policies and political arrangements is necessary if Americans are to respond to challenging new global conditions. Both modern circumstances and enduring moral principles demand that the earth's only superpower become a leader in helping to construct a world, and to reconstruct itself, in accordance with a vision of a globe composed of a great multiplicity of moderate, cooperative political peoples, who face their economic, environmental, and security problems by continually extending the representativeness, range, and efficacy of multilateral institutions and international law.

The contrary policies of the Bush administration are not simply expressions of U.S. chauvinism. Because American wealth and power influence the rest of the globe more than those of any other nation, international treaties and institutions may well be used to challenge American policies more than those of any other people. Sometimes those challenges will express envy, resentment, and greed rather than wisdom and justice.

But although caution is prudent, it is contrary to the best American traditions to greet simply with recalcitrance a complex world of interlocked, moderate political peoples. America should instead be in the forefront of efforts to overcome international problems. Achieving responsible, democratic, rights-respecting transnational and international institutions is a daunting challenge. The U.N. Security Council will not always act sensibly; international judges will not always rule wisely; other multilateral entities will often fail. But that is why progress for all humanity cannot be achieved unless the world's most powerful nation becomes a pioneer in helping to craft suitable initiatives and to make them work. Those initiatives must include the disavowal of unilateral "pre-emptive" military interventions, and the voluntary relinquishing of other aspects of unbridled national sovereignty, when the time is right to do so. That is the suspenseful but uplifting plot I think should constitute the next chapter in our story of American peoplehood.

Rogers M. Smith is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. This essay is adapted from Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Memberships, just published by Cambridge University Press.

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education