“The Religion of America is America.”
So says Daniel McCarthy, in an article earlier this month at The American Conservative.
McCarthy’s article is about the history of modern conservatism, but his insight in to the American psyche is a critical one that applies to all our shades of political thought.
Our narrative, to one degree or another, is that America is a great, special, rare and/or a unique nation among the nations in history. We have both a robust and flexible social and legal culture, our entrepreneurial instincts keep us healthy, and our military and good intentions make the world both safe and pleasant.
Does America exist to: (a) make the world “safe for democracy” (b) adopt a global humanitarian mission (c) export our entrepreneurial habits abroad (d) solve problems of global peace and commerce or (e) all of the above?
That is the framework into which we fit much of the new information we receive about the world, and it’s that narrative that allows for our generalisms about our enemies “hating us for our freedom.” It’s this framework that allowed Barack Obama to claim his political movement’s victory would mark the moment when “the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Only a place where all strains of political thought see the nation as historically exceptional could speak seriously — and more or less literally — about saving humanity, either from climate change or global terrorism. That audaciously accepted narrative and vision is what helped us reach the moon within 9 years of President Kennedy’s call to space.
The religion of America is America.
It is simultaneously our great strength and our great weakness.
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