Not a Monolith

In his jeremiad about American amnesia at Bloomberg View:

In an unsettled time, with an unsettling president, many Americans are unsure of their conception of the world and their country’s role in it. What should the United States be doing – if anything – to shape the global order? To answer this question, we need to better understand ourselves and our history.

Americans regularly make three curious – and contestable – claims about peace, world order and their country’s role in achieving both. First, they often assume that they are a peace-loving people, and that our republic has been a force to promote amity and stability in the world. Second, they assume that peace is an unalloyed good, both a tool and product of progress, providing incontrovertible benefits; war and conflict, meanwhile, have brought nothing but misery and disaster. Third, they see peace and order as the natural state of the world, and view any actor or force that disturbs this harmony as both anomalous and deviant, to be identified, isolated and eliminated.

Francis J. Gavin fails to take into consideration something basic about American opinion. American opinion is a mosaic not a monolith.

Jeffersonians have no illusions of a peaceful world and are wary of attempts at making peace by making war. Hamiltonians only oppose war when they’re asked to pay the tab. Jacksonians always assume unlimited war and are outraged when they must play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Wilsonians have no opposition to war waged to further their goals. American opinion is forged from the interplay of those wildly differing views.

Most American politicians campaign as though they were Jacksonians but vote like Wilsonians.