There’s a discussion going on at RealClearPolitics on whether America is good which I commend to your attention. Here’s a snippet from the most recent piece in the series:
So, given all this, why is American greatness even debatable? The answer is that critics, ranging from well-intentioned academic idealists to angry radicals who genuinely dislike the country, have popularized a two-part critique of the United States. They argue, first, that the U.S. was a compromised – poisoned – society from the beginning. White supremacy (so the argument goes) was one of the nation’s founding principles, the Constitution classified black people as 3/5 of a human being, and slave labor made the nation rich. Second, none of this has ever fully been remedied: the legacy of this horrid past lives on in the America of today, where black men like George Floyd and Michael Brown are not infrequently murdered in the street, and where systemic racism, white privilege, “cultural appropriation,†and implicit bias oppress people of color (POC) in every imaginable context.
This rejectionist narrative is often eloquently presented and guilt-inducing to many who hear it, but it suffers from a fundamental weakness: it is wrong.
Was the U.S. “founded†on white supremacy? It is worth noting that, as both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass pointed out, the word “slavery†is never mentioned in the Constitution. The critical topics discussed in the Bill of Rights include free speech, religious liberty, the right of peaceable assembly, the right to bear arms, and freedom from state quartering of soldiers. The importance of white supremacy, or how to maintain its existence going forward, is never discussed in the Bill of Rights or in the Constitution’s earlier articles. There is a critical difference between saying that the Founding Fathers were personally racist to one extent or another – by today’s standards, most of them were, as were virtually all human beings at the time – and saying that racism was an ideological or moral pillar of the nation they established.
Scrolling down will take you to other pieces in the series.
There was a time when I would have answered the question unequivocally “Yes” but now I’m not so sure. It’s hard for me to think of an America engaged on wars of conquest, however benign the motives, as good. At this point I wonder if we were good but have been on the wrong path, certainly for the last 30 years but possibly longer.
When I look around me I see people complaining about the wrong things ferociously while ignoring the things about which we should be most concerned.
We certainly have a bloody past, certainly on a par with many historical empires, like the Romans.
Countries that the US has attacked, invaded and occupied, or staged coups in (not all successful) since the Korean war, some cases several times (eg Haiti):
Afghanistan, Belarus, Cambodia, Chile, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Granada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Viet Nam, and Yemen.
I might have missed someone. None of those countries had attacked us or our allies.
Earlier there was Canada, Tripoli, Mexico, Hawaii, Spain (Cuba, Guam, Philippines, et al.) Panama/Columbia.
Our brothers in the South count the War between the States as a war of Yankee aggression, supposedly waged to subjugate the South economically. Certainly it was a war of choice, not a war imposed like WW II.
WW I was a war of choice, not necessity.
I will set aside slavery/serfdom/indentured servitude, as it was nearly universal up to the 19th Century.
The Indian Wars lasted from the early 1600’s to the early 1900’s, and often involved outright genocide.
Imperialism was regarded as a positive good, at least for the imperialists. Viz. Jefferson, Polk, Jackson, Kipling, Rhodes, Churchill, Hearst, T. Roosevelt…
No one reading this blog would be in North American were it not for imperialism. Actually no one not an Amerindian would be here.
So, as a modern Indo-European, I reject responsibility for the slaughter of the Neolithic male farmers in Britain by my Celtic ancestors. I also reject responsibility for the slaughter on my Celtic ancestors by my Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and of my Anglo-Saxons ancestors by my Norman ancestors.
My French-Canadian ancestors lived more or less peaceably with the Amerindians. The British part of my family didn’t get here until 1910, so I reject responsibility for black slavery. We were mostly serfs at one time.
And who cares anyway?
Not that interested in the argument. Of course we have done a lot of good. Made a lot of mistakes too. Oh well. On net, very positive.
That said the following is too funny, or too awful or something.
” the word “slavery†is never mentioned in the Constitution. ”
But black people being worth 3/5 of a white person definitely is there. I suppose Jefferson/Madison just threw that in there for no apparent reason?
Steve
“America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud.”
I don’t know whether countries can be good or bad, they are all sinners just the same though. I think Americans should be prouder about America’s role in starting the anti-slavery movement in the 18th century. I think they should learn the antebellum Republican understanding of the Constitution as providing the tools to end slavery and the Declaration of Independence as providing the common purpose. Even if one wants to scoff at them, they did win. We have a very odd historical development in this country in which the winners of the Civil War didn’t get to write history; it was largely written by NY City historians and newspapers in service of the Democratic coalition of Southern whites and Northern liberals.
@steve, race and gender are not in the Constitution, at least as it was originally written. That slavery is not mentioned in the Constitution is undeniable and intentional. Jefferson was not involved in drafting the Constitution. Madison expressly “thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.” Freedom national; slavery local.
The concept of American goodness, greatness, or exceptionalism is mainly boosterism.
The 3/5th of a man compromise was to gain the Southern vote needed to ratify the constitution.
The evil Southern Whites ironically wanted slaves counted as whole to increase the region’s population and power in Washington.
The country, while rife with corruption at the top, is peopled by mainly honest and decent folks who are not corrupt and I think they deserve to be called “good people “.
That’s a good point, Grey. When the other alternatives were NOT to count slaves at all or to count their actual number in the census, granting substantial power to the slave states, 3/5s doesn’t sound so bad.
Sausage-making.
The 3/5ths compromise predated the Constitution. Its context was the need to establish a system of taxation to support the Revolution with a formula which required each colony to contribute according to its population. Colonies with substantial slave labor objected that slaves are not as productive as free people, a point that critics of slavery shared. There was no common understanding that slaves were not people, but an agreement that slavery was an inferior economic arrangement.
When the Constitution was enacted, taxation and representation relied upon the 3/5ths formula to the disadvantage of Southern states.
PD- Yes, I get that, but it is totally disingenuous when you go on to define a black person as being worth 3/5 of a white person. It was a way to admit on paper that we had slaves without acknowledging slavery. Clever, even lawyerly but it still makes clear we had slaves and weren’t doing anything about it.
“The country, while rife with corruption at the top, is peopled by mainly honest and decent folks who are not corrupt and I think they deserve to be called “good people “.”
Well stated and I agree. I am particularly thinking about the public health people in so many of our small towns and rural areas who have always put in a good effort to care for their people who who have faced threats, had their homes picketed and been ostracized from their communities over the past two years. Now you have the election officials in many places going through the same stuff.
Aside from those two groups that are lots of other good people. Yup, you also have lower level corruption in some places, especially those where I think it has become cultural (Chicago, Louisiana, New Jersey) but mostly decent people.
Steve
we had slaves and weren’t doing anything about it.
160 years ago.
public health people in so many of our small towns and rural areas who have always put in a good effort to care for their people who who have faced threats, had their homes picketed and been ostracized from their communities ?
Kermit Gosnell?