WHICH IS WHY THE RIGHT IS LITERALLY UNAMERICAN:

INTERVIEW: Peter Augustine Lawler on the Declaration of Independence, The Last Days of Disco, 'Good Country People,' and manliness (Colin Foote Burch, June/July 2007, Liturgical Credo)

CB: First off, the book is called Homeless and at Home in America, and the title sounds a lot like – the title sounds a little bit like – Aliens in America [ISI Books, 2002]. Tell me what you’re doing new with your new book.

PL: Well the Aliens in America emphasized the irreducible alienation of the human condition and the American attempt to suppress that. Homeless and at Home in America is more major, and more balanced, and without making a big deal out of it, sort of a correction. The first chapter is about two views of Americanization. The first view is the view of Heidegger, which is also one that’s shared by some social conservatives, extreme social conservatives, cranky cons and such, which is something like this: Americans are absolutely ruthless, ruthless, displaced. The only distinctions they recognize to be true are technological ones. Otherwise, they’re utter relativists. Otherwise, they’re utterly indifferent to the profound moral distinctions that characterize human life.

And so for Heidegger the characteristic of the modern world is technology; America is the height of the modern world. So when Heidegger uses the world ‘Americanization’ he means the reduction, of everything real that human beings know, to technology, and everything else is nothing. And so in Heidegger’s view of nihilism, America is a purely nihilistic, displaced, frivolous, endless progress toward nowhere, and a road-to-nowhere country.

But the other view is the view of Chesterton, which is: America is a home for the homeless, that the great thing about America is the romance of the citizen – everyone can find a home here. The amazing thing is that all you have to do to become an American is agree with a certain doctrine. So Chesterton compares America to the Catholic church. Any race, gender, whatever, class, background, make no difference, as long as you accept the doctrine. That’s the Catholic view, and that’s also the American view – race, gender, whatever, don’t make any difference, as long as you accept the doctrine. So there’s something profoundly at-home about Americans because Americans begin with the premise of the irreplaceable, personal significance of every human being.

In other words, America is based on a very corny view of the Declaration of Independence that’s basically consistent with Thomism and all that. So in a certain way what saves America from utter relativism is this doctrine. And so you look at America carefully and the Americans who are most at home are the ones who believe this doctrine is compatible with their religion, and so they’re particularly at home because they’re at home with their homelessness. That is, they’re at home as citizens while recognizing that citizenship doesn’t capture everything they are. And so it turns out that the best Dads, the best citizens, the people who have the most kids and the most stable family life in America are the ones who take citizenship seriously and who take their religion seriously. So from a certain point of view this book shows that there’s some truth to Heidegger, some truth to Chesterton, but the view that Christianity is incompatible with patriotism – Christians are always resident aliens and all that – this does seem to be very out-of-touch with the reality of America.

MORE:
What is America?: From The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 21: What I Saw in America, The Resurrection of Rome, Sidelights (GK Chesterton)

It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth, and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism. and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow about theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.

Does Europe Need to Be More American?: Europe, the cradle of the nation-state, wasn’t “founded” as a place for poor, tired and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. So might it take lessons from Uncle Sam on welcoming immigrants? (Michael Scott Moore, 11/17/10, Miller-McCune)

Why should Europe take immigrants at all?

The nation-state was invented here, with next to zero rhetoric about diversity and equal rights. America without immigrants would be un-American (or maybe native American), but there’s no way to argue that Germany would be less “German” without Muslims.

Nonetheless, guest-worker schemes, relative wealth in Europe since World War II, freedom to travel inside the European Union, and of course welfare benefits have all made Europe a modern land of opportunity like the United States. Sarrazin, and his legion of fans — his book has sold more than a million copies — have yet to adjust.

So Europe doesn’t need to learn American-style tolerance. But it would bring vital oxygen to Old World societies if Europe did. German-born Turkish students who spend a year in the U.S. are regularly astounded that so few Americans quiz them on their racial backgrounds on the basis of (choose one) their brown skin, swarthy eyebrows or Middle Eastern eyes. The margin of “otherness,” as social scientists like to call it, is different in Europe.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 21, 2010 7:36 AM