american ism and its enemies by david gelernter

8/6/2019 American Ism and Its Enemies by David Gelernter

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Americanism—and Its Enemies

David Gelernter

A NTI-AMERICANISM has blossomed frantically inrecent years. Nearly the whole world seems to

be pock-marked with lesions of hate. Some of thishatred focuses on G eorge W . Bush, but much of itgoes beyond the President to encompass the sup-

posed evils of America and Americanism in general.In its passionate and unreasoning intensity, anti-Americanism resembles a religion—or a caricature ofa religion. And this fact tells us something impo rtantabout Americanism itself.

By Americanism I do not mean American tastesor style, or American culture—that convenient tar-get of America-haters everywhere. Nor do I meanmere patriotic devotion; many nations commandpatriotic devotion from their citizens (or used to).By Americanism I mean the set of beliefs that aretho ugh t to constitute Am erica's essence and to set itapart; the beliefs that make Americans positive th attheir n ation is superior to all others—morally supe-rior, closer to God.

Frenchm en used to think France superior on ac-count of its culture and civilisation; many still do.Germ ans once thou ght they were smarter, deeper

D A V I D G E L E R N T E R is a professor ofcomputa- science at Yale

and the author ofMachine Beauty, D rawi ng L ife, 1939, an d

other books. His novella, "Swan House," appeared in our July-

August 2004 issue; Jud/iisn/ Beyond Words," a five-part s eries,

was published in 2002 and 2 003. The present article, in dijfer-

aitform, was given as a lecture .sponsored by Susan and RogerHettog in New York in October of last year.

and (possibly) racially superior. Englishmen onceconsidered themselves natural rulers and believedthat their governmental structures set Britain on ahigher p lane. And so on. No t all nations have "isms,"and no t all those who do (or did) have been equally

serious about their particular "ism." America has oneand is dead serious about it.

Most national "isms" have seemed fearsome orhateful only insofar as they were militarily threat-ening. Communism was feared because of itspower to foment internal subversion. In the late-18th and 19th centuries, America stood for radicalrepublicanism and the breaking-down of inheritedrank—grounds for hatred among much of the Eu-ropean elite. But over the last century or so, Amer-ica has remained an object of hatred within nationsthat have themselves gone over to American-style

democracy; has been hated by people who hadnothing whatsoever to fear from American power.America, Winston Churchill said during WorldWar n, was the great republic "whose power arous-es no fear and whose pre-eminence excites no jeal-ousy." Evidently this is no longer true.

Americanism is notable, of course, not merelyfor its spectacular ability to arouse hate. Over theroughly four centuries of American and proto-Am erican existence, it has also inspired remarkab lefeats of devotion. You would need some sort offierce determination to set forth in a puny, broad-beamed, high-pooped, painfully slow, nearly unde-fended 17th-century ship to cross the uncharted



COMMENTARY JANUARY 2005

ocean to an unknown, unmapped new world. You

would need remarkable determination to pushwestward into the heartland away from settlement

and safety. You would need ferocious bravado toprovoke the dominant great power of the day on

the basis of rather flimsy excuses, and ultimately to

declare war and proclaim your independence. The

Union side in the Civil War would have neededpractically incandescent determination to keepfighting after the South had won decisive battles,slaughtered vast numbers of Union soldiers, and

gained the sympathy of the two leading West Eu-

ropean powers.

In the 20th century, you would have neededenormous determination to turn your back on the

isolationism and anti-militarism that comes natu-rally to Ainericans and butt into World War I—

and then, after World War II, to reject isolation-ism once again when you accepted the Soviet em-

pire's challenge. Freedom and independence for

Greece and Turkey—not exactly pressing Ameri-can interests—occasioned America's entry into the

cold war. And what on earth would make an Idahoor Nebraska farmer—that man about whom TonyBlair spoke so feelingly in his eloquent 2003 ad-

dress to Congress—believe that it was his respon-sibility to protect the Iraqi people and the worldfrom Saddam Hussein? What did all that have to

do with him}

Americanism is potent stuff. It is every bit as fer-

vent and passionate a religion as the anti-Ainerican-ism it challenges and rebukes.

n

THAT A M ER IC A N IS M is a religion is widelyagreed. G.K. Chesterton called Ainerica "the

nation with the soul of a church." But A inericanismis not (contrary to the views of many people w ho use

these terms loosely) a "secular" or a "civil" religion.

No mere secular ideology, no mere philosophical be-lief, could possibly have inspired the intensities of ha -tred and devotion that Am ericanism has. Ainerican-ism is in fact a Judeo-Chrisdan religion; a millenari-an religion; a biblical religion. Unlike England's "of-

ficial" religion, embodied in the Anglican church,America's has been incorporated into all the Judeo-Christian religions in the nation.

D oes that make it impossible to believe in a secularAmericanism? Can you be an agnostic or atheist or

Buddhist or Muslim and a beheving American too?In each case theanswer is yes. But to accomplish that

feat is harder than most people realize. The Bible isnot merely the fertile soil that brought Ainericanism

forth. It is the energy source that makes it live and

thrive; that makes believing Americans willing to

prescribe freedom, equahty, and democracy even for

a place like Afghanistan, once regarded as perhaps theremotest region on the face of the g lobe. If you un-

dertake to remove Americanism from its native bibli-cal soil, you had better connect it to some other en-

ergy source potent enough to keep its principles aliveand blooming.

But is it not true that the D eclaration of Inde-pendence—one of Ajnerica's holiest writings—treats religion in a cool, Enlightenment sort of

way? It does. Butwe ought to keep in mind an ob-

servation by the historian Ralph Barton Perry. The

D eclaration, Perry reminds us, was an ex post factojustification of Ainerican beliefs. It was addressedto educated elite opinion, especially abroad; it was

designed to win arguments, not to capture the

essence of Americanism as Americans themselvesunderstood it. That essence emerges in the lessguarded pronouncem ents of the Founding Fathersand many other leading exponents and prophets of

Americanism, from Winthrop and Bradfordthrough John Adams and Jefferson through Lin-

coln and Wilson, Truman, Reagan.

Few believing Americans can show, nowadays,how A mericanism's principles are derived from the

Bible. But many are willing to say that these princi-ples are God-given. Freedom comes from God,

George W. Bush has said m ore than once; and if youpressed him, I suspect you would discover that not

only does he say it, he believes it. Many Americansall over the country agree with him. The idea of a"secular" Americanism based on the D eclaration of

Independence is an optical illusion.

m

S UPPOSE YOU were to put together a bookful of

pronouncements and predictions about Ameri-

ca's destiny, ranging over four centuries. W ha t titlewould you give it?

Such ananthology did appear in 1971; it was edit-ed by an associate professor of reUgious studies and

subtitled "Religious Interpretations of AmericanD estiny." The book's main tide was God^s New Isra

From tJhe 17th century through John F. Kennedy andM ardn L uther K ing, Americans kept talking abouttheir coimtry as if it were the biblical Israel and theywere the chosen people.

Where did that view of America come from? It

came from Puritanism—Puritanism being not a

separate type of Chrisdanity but a certain approachto Protestandsm. And here is a strange fact about



AMERICANISM—AND I T S E N E M I E S

Puritanism. It originated in 16 th-century England;it became one of the most powerful forces in reli-gious if not all hum an history. It consistently elicit-ed hitter hatred—and was directly responsible for(at least) two world-ch anging developmen ts. It pro-voked the British Civil War (in which the Puritansand Parliament asserted their rights against thecrown and the established church), and the firstsettlements by British religious dissenters in thenew world.

And then it simply disappeared. In the late17OO's or early 1800's, Puritanism dropped out ofhistory. Traces survived in Britain and (even moreso) in America, in the form of churches once asso-ciated w ith it. But after the 18th century, we barelyhear about Puritanism as a live force; before long

everyone agrees that it is dead.What happened to it? In a narrow sense, Puritan

congregations sometimes liberalized and becameUnitarian; the Transcendentalists, prominent inAmerican hterature from roughly 1820 through1860, are often described as the spiritual successorsof the Puritans. But Puritanism was too potent, toovibrant simply to vanish. Where did all that power-ful religious passion go?

Puritanism had two main elements: the Calvinistbelief in predestination with associated religious doc-trines, and what we m ight call a "political" doctrine.

T he "political" goal of Puritanism was to reach backto the pure Christianity of the New Testament—andthen even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselvesas God's new chosen people, living in God's newpromised land—in sho rt, as God's new Israel.

I believe that Puritanism did not drop ou t of histo-ry. It transformed itself into Americanism. T his newreligion was the end-stage of Puritanism: Pu ritanismrealized among God's self-proclaimed "new" chosenpeople—or, in Abraham Lincoln's remarkablephrase, God's "almost chosen people."

M any thinkers have noted th at Americanism is in-

spired by or close to or intertwined w ith Puritanism.On e of the m ost impressive scholars to say so recent-ly is Samuel Hu nting ton, in his formidable book onAmerican identity. Who Are We? But m y thesis is thatPuritanism did not merely inspire or influenceAmericanism; it turned into Americanism. Puri-tanism and Americanism are not just parallel or re-lated developments; they are two stages of a singlephenomenon.

Th is is an unprovable pro position. But as a wayof looking at things, it buys us something valuable.Consider: Puritanism was shared by people of

many faiths, at any rate within Protestant Chris-tianity. You could find Puritans in Congregational-

ist and Presbyterian churches, and in Baptist andQuaker churches; some Puritans never left theEpiscopahan or Anglican church, and eventually

you could find Puritans in Methodist churches,too. L ater, as I have noted , you could even findthem in Unitarian churches—despite Unitarian-ism's dramatic disagreements with other forms ofProtestantism.

Americanism has these same peculiar properties,and takes them a step further. It, too, is a religionprofessed by people of many different faiths. Be-cause of its "political" o r biblical aspect, specificallyits "Old T estamen t" focus, it was destined ultim ate-ly to be at home not merely in many kinds ofProtestant churches but in every congregation thatvenerated the Hebre w Bible—in American P rotes-tant churches, American Catholic churches, andAmerican synagogues. This may seem like a strangeset of attributes for a Jude o-C hristian religion—^yetPuritanism itself had the same attributes.

IV

IF AMERICANISM is the end-stage of political Pu-ritanism, which in turn was the yearning to live

in contact with God as a citizen of God's new Israel,wha t is its creed?

T he idea of an "American creed" has been around

for a long time. Hu nting ton lists its elements as "lib-erty, equality, democracy, individualism, humanrights, the rule of law, and private property." I prefera different formulation: a conceptual triangle inwhich one fundamental fact creates two premisesthat create three conclusions.

The fundamental fact: the Bible is God's word.Two premises: first, every m ember of the Am ericancommunity has his own individual dignity, insofar ashe deals individually with God ; second, the com mu-nity has a divine mission to all mankind. T hree con-clusions: every human being everywhere is entitled

to freedom, equality, and democracy.In the American creed, both premises and all

three conclusions refer back to the Bible, especial-ly the Hebrew Bible. Americans have defined the"community" of the premises more and morebroadly over the years, until it has grown to en-compass the whole population of adult citizens—thus bringing the premises gradually into line withthe universal conclusions. Today there is pressureto define the community more broadly still, sothat it includes (for example) illegal as well as legalresidents.

Ereedom , equahty, democracy: the D eclarationheld these truths to be self-evident, but "self-evi-




den t" they were certainly not. Otherwise, Americawould hardly have been the first nation in historyto be built on this foundation. D eriving all three

from the Bible, theologians of Americanism un-derstood these doctrines not as philosophical ideasbut as the word of God . Hen ce the fervor and pas-sion with which Americans believe their creed.Americans, virtually alone in the world, insist thatfreedom, equality, and democracy are right notonly for France and Spain but for Afghanistan andIraq.

V

I—I ow ARE the creed's three conclusions derived-' - •*- from the Bible? Freedom is the message of

the Exodus, one of the Hebrew Bible's great im-derlying themes. Bible readers believed that theExodus story predicted the fate of nations. The lit-erary scholar D avid Jeffrey n am es three majorworks that "illustrate the power of the Exodus storyin the formation of American national identity":Samuel Mather ' s Figures and Types of the Old Testa-

ment (1673), Cotton Mather's Magiialia Ch ristiAmericana (a history of 17th-century New Eng-land, 1702), and Jerem iah Romayne's The AmericanIsrael (1795).

In 1777 Nicholas Street preached in East Have n,

Connecticut:

The British tyrant is only acting over the samewicked and cruel part, that Pharaoh king ofEgypt acted toward the children of Israel some3,()00years ago .

T he same day the D eclaration of Independen cewas adopted, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, andThomas Jefferson were appointed as a committeeto propose a seal for the brand-new Un ited States.Given what we know about Americanism, it ishardly surprising that they suggested an image of

Israel crossing the Red Sea and Moses lit by thepillar of fire, with the m otto: "Rebelhon to tyrantsis obedience to God." (The seal was never adopt-ed, but a copy of the recommendation survives inthe papers of the Continen tal Congress.)

Next, equality. Equality was connected withGenesis—every man is created in God's image—and also with the powerful anti-monarchy messagedelivered by the proph et Sam uel. Abraham L incolntook the largest and most important step in Amer-ican history toward putting this part of the creedinto effect, and also gave the clearest exposition ofits biblical roots. Citing the words of the D eclara-

tion of Independence, Lincoln said:

Th is was [the Founding Fathers'] lofty, and wise,and noble understanding of the justice of theCreator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all

His creatures, to the whole great family of man.In their enlightened belief, nothing stampedwith the D ivine image and likeness was sent intothe world to be trodden on, and degraded, andimbruted by its fellows. They grasped not onlythe whole race of man then living, but theyreached forward and seized upon the farthestposterity.

A near-relative of L incoln's argum ent appears inone of the first documents of colonial Americanhistory, Alexander Whitaker's Good Newes From. Vginia of 1613. W hitak er urges that the Indians be

well treated; after all, "One God created us, theyhave reasonable soules and intellectuall faculties aswell as wee; we all have Adam for our comm on par-ent: yea, by nature the condition of us both is allone."

Th ere is also a remarkable similarity between L in-coln's thought and a rabbinic midrash according towhich a phrase in Genesis—"these are the archivesof Adam's descendants"—is the single greatest state-me nt in the T orah. Why ? Because it teaches that allmen, being descended from the same ancestors, areequal in dignity.

OF THE creed's three elements, democracymight seem the least likely to be traced back

to biblical sources— but Americans of past ages knewthe Bible much better than we do. T he Fundam en-tal Orders of Connecticut, often called the "firstwritten constitution of modern democracy," were in-spired n ot by democratic Athens or republican Rom eor Enlightenment philosophy but by a Puritanpreacher's interpretation of a verse in the HebrewBible. They were drafted in May 1638, in responseto a sermon by Thom as H ooker before the generalassembly in Hartfo rd.

Hooker cited the biblical passage, "Take ye wisemen, and understanding, and known among yourtribes, and I will make them rulers over you"(D euteronomy 1:13). This he interpreted to mean"that the choice of public magistrate belongs untothe people, by God's own allowance.. . . T he foun-dation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consentof the people."

Hooker's interpretation was hardly novel or ec-centric. Many preachers knew and believed thesame thing. In 1780, roughly a century and a halfafter Hooker's epoch-making sermon, with theRevolutionary War under way, Pastor Simeon



AMERICANISM—AND ITS ENEMIES

Howard of Boston was pondering the new nation'sgovernment. He too decided—on the basis of thissame passage, and of the classical Jewish historian

Josephus— that America should be a democratic re-public.How ard's advice was as radical as it was straigh t-

forward, as avant-gard e as it was Puritan, Bible-cen-tered, and godly. "In compliance with the advice ofJeth ro," he preached,

Moses chose able men, and made them rulers[over the Israelites in the desert]; but it is gener-ally supposed that they were chosen by the people[emphasis adde d]. Th is is asserted by Josep hus,and plainly intimated by Mo ses in his recapitu-lary discourse, recorded in the first chapter of

D euter onomy.Historians have pointed out that the clergy

wielded far more influence over the colonial publicthan a Tom Paine or John Locke did. In 1776,three-quarters of American citizens were Puritan.Puritans have long been classified as strait-laced,dour, and joyless, far from passionate revolutionar-ies or radical dem ocrats. L ike nearly all stereotypes,these are partly true—bu t they are a long way fromthe whole truth.

A recent Pew Research C enter survey found thatnot even a third of American journalists have "agreat deal of confidence" that the American elec-torate makes correct choices at the polls. T h e Pur i-tans thought otherwise, and so did Abraham L in-coln. T h e historian William Wolf cites L incoln'sbelief "that God's will is ultimately to be knownthrough the peop le." L incoln said: "I must trust inthat Suprem e Being who has never forsaken this fa-vored land, through the instrumentality of this greatand intelhgent people." W ha t chance is there thatAmerican journalists or professors or school-teach-ers would describe Americans today as "this greatand intelligent people"?

V I

WE CAN go further. To sum up Am ericanism'screed as freedom, equality, and democracy

for all is to state only half the case. The other halfdeals with a promised land, a chosen people, and auniversal, divinely ordained mission. This part ofAmericanism is the American version of biblicalZionism: in short, American Zionism.

T he relation between Americanism and American

Zionism is something like the relation between An-glicanism and Anglo-Catholicism. Anglo-Cathoh-cism is Anglicanism, but the nam e was invented to

underline the closeness between Anglicanism andRoman Catholicism. Th e term "American Z ionism"similarly undedines the closeness between Ameri-canism and the biblical idea of a divinely chosen peo -ple and promised land.

When I say that Americanism equals AmericanZionism, I am in one sense merely adding up state-ments by eminent authorit ies. John W inthro p in1630: "Wee shall finde that the God of Israeli isamong us." Thomas Jefferson in his Second Inau-gural address: "I shall need . . . the favor of thatBeing in whose hands we are, who led our fathers,as Israel of old, from their native land and plantedthem in a country flowing with all the necessariesand comforts of life." (The last phrase is an updateof the Bible's "flowing with milk and honey.")Abraham L incoln declared his wish to be a "hum -ble instrum ent in the hands of the Almighty and ofthis. His almost chosen people."

Hun dreds of other statements along the Same linesmight be gathered from the whole formative periodof Americanism, from the early 1600's through theCivil W ar. Among the m ost striking is one of the ear-liest, from the famous journal of William Bradford,OfPlymouth Plantation.. Once the Pilgrirns had land-ed in the new world, Bradford writes, "What couldnow sustain them but the Spirit of God and His

grace?" And he co ntinues:May no t and ought not the children of these fa-thers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmenwhich came over this great ocean, and wereready to perish in th e wilderness; but they criedunto the L ord, and He heard their voice andlooked on their adversity," etc.

Bradford is paraphrasing verses from D eutero no-my (26:5 ff.) that read (in the Geneva Bible of 1560,which Puritans preferred to the K ing James version):"A Syrian was my father, w ho b eing ready to perish

for hunger, went downe into E gypte. . . . W hen wecried unto the L ord G od of our fathers, the L ordheard our voyce, & looked on our adversitie."

The Bible reports that the Israelites were in-structed to speak these verses when they broughtthe year's first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem,ther e to recall publicly the L ord's gift of thepromised land. Bradford was equating the arrivalof Englishmen in Plymouth with the arrival of thewandering Israeli tes in the promised land. Thesame verses play a central role in the Hagg adah r e-cited by Jews on Passover to this day— although

Bradford could not have known that. Showing anuncanny tendency to think like a Jew, he singledthem out on his own, and pu t them at the center of




his own version of (what we might call) a Pilgrimseder.*

Evidently the historian Samuel Eliot Morison did

not realize the Passover significance of these verses,either. His scrupu lous edition of Bradford's journal isthe scholarly standard, with plenty of footnotes—butnone at this point. In other places where Bradfordquotes or paraphrases the Heljrew Bible without giv-ing a citation, it is not quite clear whether or notMorison has picked up the reference. Yet you cannotreally understand the Pilgrims, or Puritans in ge ner-al, unless you know the H ebre w Bible and classicalJewish history; knowing Judaism itself also helps. Butpeople with this sort of basic knowledge have rarelybothered to study the Puritans, and those who studythe Puritans have rarely bothered to know what the

Puritans knew.Early exponents of Americanism tended to define

even their own Christianity in ways that make itsound like Judaism. Th us John W inthro p: "the onelyway to avoyde this shipwracke [of angering the lord]and to provide for our posterity is to followe theCounsell of Micah, to doe Justly, to love mercy, towalke humbly with our Go d." L incoln, a profoundlyreligious man, refused all his life to join a church. Buthe did make the celebrated assertion that he wouldjoin a church whose e ntire creed was "what our lordsaid were the two great commandments, to love the

L ord thy God with all thy heart and mind and souland strength, and my neighbor as myself." H e wasreferring to the Gospel passage in which Jesus citesthese two verses from the Hebrew Bible as theessence of C hristianity.

I do not claim that L incoln, Winth rop , andBradford were crypto-Jews. They were not. Thepoint is that classical Israel's (and classical Zion-ism's) contribution to Americanism is incalculable.No modern historian or thinker I am aware of—not Huntington or Morison or Perry or Mead orPerry Miller or even Martin Marty or Sydney

Ahlstrom—has done justice to this extraordinaryfact. They seem to have forgotten what the emi-nent 19th-century Irish historian William Leckyrecognized: that "Hebraic mortar cemented thefoundations of American democracy." And evenLecky, I suspect, did not grasp the full extent of thistrut h. Un less we do grasp it, we can never fully u n-derstand Americanism—or anti-Americanism.

V II

THERE HAVE been at least four crucial turning

points—"climacterics," Churchill would havecalled them—at which Americans spoke explicitly

and simultaneously about the religious content andthe world mission of Americanism. The first waswhen the colonies declared their independence. H ere

is D r. Banfield, in 1783:'Twas [God] who raised a Joshu a to lead thetribes of Israel in the field of battle; raised andformed a Washington to lead on the troops ofhis chosen States. 'Twas He who in Barak's dayspread the spirit of war in every breast to shakeoff the Canaanitish yoke, and inspired thy in-habitants, O America!

In 1799, with the Great Republic safely estab-lished, Abiel Abbot delivered a Th anksg iving ser-mon:

It has been often remarked that the people ofthe Un ited States come nearer to a parallel withAncient Israel, than any other nation upon theglobe. Hence OUR AMERICAN ISRAEL is aterm frequently used; and our common consentallows it apt and proper.

Washington's early biographer Jared Sparks quoteshim to the effect that "th ere never was a people whohad m ore reason to acknowledge a divine interposi-tion in their affairs than those of the United States."

T he second climacteric was the Civil War. L in-coln's understanding of that conflict, w rites Ed mu nd

Wilson, "grew out of the religious tradition of theNew England theology of Puritanism." In 1862, L in-coln made "a solemn vow before God" to free theSouth's slaves. William W olf no tes that this vow was"more in confonnance with Old Testament than withNew Testament religion," was "imbedded in L in-coln's biblical piety," and "came to him as part of thereligious heritage of the n ation." Th e "climactic ex-pression of his biblical faith," according to Wolf, wasthe Second Inaugural address:

It reads like a supplement to the Bible. In it thereare fourteen references to Go d, four direct quo-

tations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, andother allusions to scriptural teaching.

"We can appreciate even in these few words,"writes Sidney Ahlstrom of the Second Inaugural,"the astounding profundity of this self-educatedchild of the frontier, this son of a Hard-shell Bap-tist who never lost hold of the proposition that na -

* One day, it seems to me, tlierc will be a Thanksgiving l-laggadahfor Am ericans to recite at the national holiday L incoln prochiinied.I have in mind an actual document telling the story of Puritan suf-ferings in England; of America's birth; of the bloody Civil Wir strug-gle to realize the creed's promises; of repeated re-enactments of the

E.\odus that make up America's historj'—interspersed with passagesfrom the English Bible. Th is is a project I'm a t work on m yself.



AMERICANISM—AND I T S E N E M I E S

tdons and men are instruments of the Almighty." IfAmericanism is a religion, this is its holiest docu-me nt after the Bible and the D eclaration; and L in-coln is its greatest prophet.

WORLD W u i I marked the third turning point:America stepped forward to assume its role

as a world power. It happened under PresidentWoo drow W ilson, the son and grandson of Presby-terian m inisters.

Many people found Wilson hard to take. At theend of his career, on his return from negotiations inParis at the close of the war, he went down inflames—shot out of the sky like the Red Baron by aSenate and nation unwilling to join the League ofNatio ns, which Wilson had m ore or less invented, or

ratify the T reaty of V ersailles, which he championed.Yet Wilson stands right at the center of classical

Americanism. No President spoke the language ofBible and divine mission more lucidly. His First In-augural address was composed in pure and perfectAm erican, L incoln-inspired:

The nation has been deeply stirred by a solemnpassion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, ofideals lost, of governm ent too often debauchedand made an instrument of evil. The feelingswith which we face this new age of right and o p-portunity sweep across our heartstrings like

some air ou t of God's own p resence, where jus-tice and mercy are reconciled and the judge andthe brother are one.

D urin g Wilson's adm inistration, Americanismaccomplished a fundamental transition. It had al-ways included the idea of divine mission. But whatwas the mission? Until the closing of the frontier inthe last decade of the 19th century, the mission wasto popvdate the continent. With the frontier closed,the mission became "Americanism for the wholeworld." Of this transition, the historian WilliamL euchtenberg writes:

The United States believed that Americanmoral idealism could be extended outward,that American Christian democratic idealscould and should be universally applied. . . .The culmination of a long political tradition ofemphasis on sacrifice and decisive moral com-bat, the [world] war was embraced as that finalstruggle where the righteous would do battlefor the L ord.

In his speech asking for a declaration of war, W il-son told C ongress that "Th e world must be made

safe for democracy"—a much-ridiculed phrase, and

one that captures perfectly America's sense of obliga-tion to spread its own way of life and its own goodfortune. In another speech, this one explainingAmerican war aims and intended for German con-sumption, Wilson concluded with these words aboutAmerica: "God helping her, she can do no other."The historian Mark Sullivan comments:

Probably not one in a hundred of his Americanhearers recognized that paraphrase of MartinL uther's declaration, imm ortal to every Ge nn anLutheran, "Ich kann nicht anders" (I can do noother).

And so we circle back to the beginnings of Pro tes-tantism, which begot Puritanism, which begotAmericanism.

The final climacteric was the cold war—its startand its finish. Franklin D . Roosevelt had taken th eUnited States into World War 11, but stubbornly re -fiased to accept Chu rchill's diagnosis of S talin as aruthless imperialist. His successor, H arry Trum an,followed FD R's path—at first. But in 1946 Truma nchanged course dramatically. When Britain was nolonger able to prop up the non-Co mm unist govern-ments of Greece and Turkey, Truman decided thatthe U .S. must take over that soon-to-lapse com mit-ment. He announced the Truman D octrine. Fromthen on, the Soviets would n o longer be allowed u n-limited scope for their imperialist ambitions; theUnited States had decided to get into the game.

Truman's announcement was in the spirit of clas-sical Americanism. It recognized America's messageand duty to all mankind:

I believe that it mu st be the policy of the UnitedStates to support free peoples who are resistingattempted subjugation by armed minorities oroutside pressure. . . . The free peoples of theworld look to us for support in m aintaining th eirfreedoms.

Although historians often skip over this point,

Truman's world-view centered on the Bible nearly tothe extent L incoln's had. By his own account, he hadread through the Bible three times by age fourteen;he read it through seven times more du ring the yearsof his presidency. It shaped his understan ding of theAmerican enterprise. Truman makes this remarkablecomment in his Memoirs: "What came about inPhiladelphia in 1776 really had its beginning in H e-brew times."

The end of the cold war was presided over byRonald Reagan, who retu rns us (once again) to thenation's beginning. In one of his best-remembered

phrases, Reagan declared that America was and




mu st always be the "shining city upon a hill." Joh nWinthrop had conceived this idea aboard the Ara-

bella bound for Massachusetts Bay in 1630. The

phrase goes back to Matthew ("Ye are the light of

the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be

hid"), and indirectly to the prop het Isaiah ("In the

end of days it shall come to pass that the mountainof the L ord's house shall be estabhshed as the top

of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the

hills; and many nations shall flow unto it"). Rea-

gan's use of these words connected modern Amer-ica to the humane Christian vision—the Pu ritan vi-sion—the vision (ultimately) of the Hebrew Bibleand the Jewish people— that created this nation.

vm

S OME AGREED with Ronald Reagan and some dis-agreed. Some approved of him and some disap-

proved. Yet, to a remarkable extent, those who hatedhim are the ones who hate America—for m any of thesame religion-mocking reasons that made themridicule Woodrow Wilson.

T he great Brit ish economist John MaynardKeynes had this to say regarding Wilson's behaviorat the Paris Peace Conference: "Now it was thatwhat I have called his theological or Presbyteriantemperament became dangerous." Wilson's ideal-

istic peace plan—the "Eourteen Points"—became,according to Keynes, "a document for gloss and in-

terpretation and for all the intellectual apparatus of

seli^-deception, by which, I daresay, the President'sforefathers had persuaded themselves that the

course they thought it necessary to take was con-

sistent with every syllable of the Pentateuch."

The British diplomat Harold Nicholson con-

curred. He described Wilson as "the descendant ofCovenanters , the inheritor of a more immediatePresbyterian tradition. That spiritual arrogancewhich seems inseparable from the harder forms of

religion had eaten deep into his soul."The same type of accusation would be directed

at Ronald Reagan. On the occasion of his "evil em-

pire" speech, for example, the columnist Mary M c-Grory called Reagan's denunciation of the SovietUnion "a marvelous parody of a revivalist m inis-ter." Another journalist, Colman McCarthy, wrotethat Reagan had descended "to the level of Ayatol-lah Khom eini"—to the level, that is, of an enemyof mankind who uses religion to do evil.

T ha t A mericanism is the successor of Pu ritanismis crucial to anti-Americanism. In the 18th centu-

ry, anti-Americans were conservative, monarchistanti-Puritans. (Boswell reports Samuel Johnson's

announcement that "I am w illing tO love all mankind,except an Americati.") In the 19th century, Europeaelites became increasingly hostile to Christianity—which inevitably entailed hostility to America. In

modern times, and-Americanisln is closely associat-ed with and-Chrisdanism and and-Semidsm.'^

And-Americans are sdll fascinated and enragedby Americans' bizarre tenden cy to believe in God.

In the mon ths before the Iraq war in spring 2003, a

Norw egian d emo nstrator waved a placard reading,"Will Bush Go to Hell?" An expatriate Am ericanwrote recently (for the FrontPage website) of beinginstructed byL ondoners that "the United States is

one giant fundamentalist Chrisdan nadon peopledby raging Bible-thumpers on every street"; thatAmerica is "running wild with religious extremism

that threatens the world far more than bin Laden."And we needn't go to Norway or Britain to find

angry denunciations of President Bush and the

Arhericans who support him in religion-mockingterms. The President's faith, said one prominentAmerican politician in September 2004, is "the

American version of the same fundam entalist im-

pulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, and

in many reHgions around the world."

T he speaker was former V ice President Al Gore.His comments were offensive and false. Today'sradical Islam is a religion of death, a religion that

rejoices in slaughter. The radical Christianityknown as Puritanism insisted on choosing life.Americanism does, too.

Puritans took to heart these famous words fromthe Hebrew Bible: "I have set before you this day

life and death, blessing and curse: therefore chooselife and live, you and your children" (D euterono-my 30:19). On board the Arabella, ]ohn Winthropclosed his famous meditadon of 1630 by citing th atverse from D euteronomy, centering his words on

the page for emphasis:

Therefore letus choose lifethat wee, and our Seede,may live; by obeying his

voice, and cleaveing to him,for hee is our life, and

our prosperity.

No Saudi fanadc, no Kashmiri fanadc could havewritten those words. John Winthrop was a founderof this nadon ; we are his heirs; and we o ught to thankGod that we have inherited his humanitarian d ecen-cy along with his radical. God-fearing Am ericanism.

* It has been many centuries since Christians in the West have lieen

routine objects of organized hatred; they do not even have a word forit. But they had better find one.

american ism and its enemies by david gelernter

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