Eight years ago today the United States was viciously attacked from within as the result of an international conspiracy. Part of our response was to reenergize a thread in American history that goes back to the founding of the country. A military response was launched not only for defense but also to try to destroy the root causes of the attack.
For most of our history we have assumed that we have the responsibility—even the obligation—to secure human and democratic rights for others. For those who see history this way the United States has succeeded Israel as God’s benighted, exceptional nation and we are required by our Creator to bring his and our civilizing message to the rest of the world.
Over the past 200 years, this peculiar form of connecting the divine to human history has melded into a powerful secular religion of the state. Over time, our secular religion has been the driving force behind much of American foreign policy, justifying and rationalizing our expansion to the Pacific Ocean and many of our overseas adventures and acquisitions.
Since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11, this idea of American exceptionalism, with its civilizing mission, has been manifest primarily in a determination to build Western-styled nations (i.e. states) where they have “failed” or have not previously existed. The underlying rationale is that a world of democratic states, supported by a free-enterprise system, will establish peace, because other democracies will not attack us or tolerate terrorists and will live at peace with each other.
Unfortunately, this has not worked. There are four major reasons for this. First, in the rapidly globalizing world, the state is becoming less important as the only vehicle of political and economic organization and success. Although still very important, the state is now merely one among several major global actors. Second, building a nation takes enormous resources and the US does not have the talent, resolve, or money to accomplish the task in regions of the world that we think need fixing. Third, it is the height of arrogance to assume that everyone wants our model, and this is demonstrated on a daily basis as various groups fight back. Finally, despite our claims, there is no necessary connection between terrorism and particular types of political community. Terrorism can grow in successful as well as in “failed” states.
Over the past two decades we have tried and failed (or are failing) in several critical places to achieve nation building. In the early 1990s, a state-building effort in Somalia collapsed and the effort has never recovered. Shortly thereafter, we tried to build a state in Bosnia and after 15 agonizing years Bosnia is on the verge of collapse. Despite the general reduction in violence in Iraq, the desired goal of a modern, unified, multiethnic, free-enterprise state is not taking hold and there are growing signs that the progress which has been made is likely to unravel once the US departs. Finally, like Somalia, Afghanistan has never been a state in the Western sense of the term and the sacrifice in human life and material resources is not worth the pursuit of a goal that cannot be reached.
While it is certainly legitimate to oppose those who would try to harm us, and while it is appropriate to offer advice and help to those who ask for it, it is a fool’s errand to try to build political communities in our image around the world. It would be much better to heed the advice of John Quincy Adams, offered in 1821: “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
—Steven E. Meyer, Professor of Political Science, National Defense University
(The views expressed here are the author's alone.)
The Capital Commentary may be photocopied or retransmitted in its entirety but not otherwise reprinted or transmitted without permission. Commentaries do not necessarily represent an official position of the Center but are intended to help advance discussion.
Copyright Center for Public Justice 2009.
This piece was issued originally as the Capital Commentary for September 11, 2009.
To learn more about the Center for Public Justice, visit the Center’s website.
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In memory of Neda Agha Soltan, and the other incredibly brave Iranians, who like those in Tiananmen Square in 1989 have said, and against great odds, are saying No to political oppression.
Our Father
May your kingdom come,
may your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
In Christ’s name and for his sake,
Amen
The Francis Schaeffer Institute Fall 2008 Lectures at Covenant Seminary (October 3-4) featured James Skillen. His theme: “Taking Citizenship Seriously: Christian Responsibility in Today’s Political Context.” The three talks were certainly appropriate for this election year, without veering off into topics that appropriate for only this particular election. Skillen, the president of the Center for Public Justice, has spent a lifetime reflecting biblically on Christian faithfulness in the politics and citizenship. His lectures demonstrated a finely honed wisdom and a principled ability to see beyond the narrow horizons of political ideologies that is sadly all too rare when political issues arise in Christian circles. (Watch for Skillen’s lectures to be made available, free, on Covenant Seminary’s web site.)
McCain, Obama, and America’s Two Exodus Stories
There are deeper currents carrying the presidential campaign toward Election Day. We aren’t necessarily conscious of them when we listen to the debates, the stump speeches, and the results of daily tracking polls, but they are there in a big way.
The deepest current, I believe, is the grand narrative about America’s exceptional origin, identity, and destiny. Yet, this story comes in two different versions, which actually conflict with one another, helping to explain some of the cultural as well as political antagonisms that lie beneath the surface of ordinary partisanship. Consider America’s contrasting Exodus stories.
The first Exodus story is the one familiar to most Americans—those with ancestral roots in Europe and particularly Great Britain, but including all who now take the story for granted. Courageous Puritans, in covenant with God, took their exodus from oppression in Britain (Egypt), crossed the Red Sea of the Atlantic, and entered a new Promised Land where they built a City on a Hill to serve as a light to the nations. Freedom for this new Israel was at odds with monarchy and eventually insisted on constitutional protections against any future Pharaoh as well as security against all potential foreign adversaries who might try to snuff out the flame of liberty—America’s light to the nations. A strong central government would be anathema just as a king would be unthinkable. The chief executive for the nation’s minimal federal government (only grudgingly established) should be little more than an executive director, responsible to carry out the decisions of Congress, which the Founders tethered carefully to the states. The Constitution granted the federal government responsibility only to regulate interstate commerce and to defend the states from foreign attacks. The states were to be genuine polities—political communities—with a full range of powers, except for defense. The federal government was to be a servant of the states, not the head of a national polity.
America’s second Exodus story was authored by its slaves—mostly in song. For them the original promise of America, in the providence of God, was that all humans are created equal. The Pharaoh who thwarted the fulfillment of that promise was the slaveholders and the Constitution that supported them. The exodus of these slaves from oppression had to take place within the Egypt of America itself in order to open the way to the liberation of the nation—the Declaration’s promised land of freedom and equality. And that exodus was made possible with the help of a strong federal government, which overthrew slavery and, eventually, after a hundred more years of oppression, established equal civil rights for everyone in the national polity. This story builds on ancient appeals to the “rights of Englishmen.” And as it gathered momentum it drew together other quests for rights and equality, such as voting rights for non-Christians, for those who owned no property, and for women.
Exodus stories today
John McCain mostly represents, or is carried along by, the current of the first American Exodus story. He is an icon of the Puritan errand into the wilderness that continued until the western expanse of America’s promised land had been settled. He epitomizes the defense of American freedom by those willing to give up their lives in warfare. He promises to stand tall against real and perceived enemies by maintaining America’s military strength because of his love for the nation. And he will continue the Reagan-Bush quest for a smaller federal government, lower taxes, and, when needed, deficit spending for the sake of national security and market freedom. McCain can more easily be pictured exercising the presidential role of head of state—symbol of the nation—than the role of head of government—the day-to-day manager, executive, and policy negotiator with Congress.
Barack Obama mostly represents, or is carried along by, the current of the second American Exodus story. The great American promise, realized through the exodus from slavery and the civil rights movement, is equal civil rights for all. Freedom begins at home and is won and maintained by the federal and state governments, with as strong a federal government as needed. Government should not be seen as suspect but must be directed to its proper end of realizing equal opportunity for all in a strong national community. Justice and prosperity will be achieved for everyone not by means of trickle-down economics and government’s waiting on the market to deliver public goods. Instead of deficit spending with insufficient taxation (which led, during the last eight years, to a doubling of the national debt, greatly burdening our grandchildren), government ought to balance its taxes and spending. Moreover, American freedom among the nations of the world depends on upholding principles of the rule of law and the building of sound international institutions. Obama can more easily be pictured exercising the presidential role of head of government while also symbolizing the Declaration’s promise of equality in the role of head of state.
McCain gives voice to the love of freedom—both individual and national—that he holds in tension with a suspicion of government. Obama gives voice to the love of American ideals that are realized in part through government actions. For McCain and many of his followers, the military is attached to the American nation rather than to an overgrown federal government that should be cut down in size. For Obama, the military is one department of a government that should give as much attention to diplomacy as to military preparedness in order to play a constructive role in the world.
Some supporters of McCain who are carried along by the first American Exodus story wonder if Obama is truly and fully American. His life story doesn’t seem to fit their preferred mold. Some Obama supporters fear the impact of racism in the election, an attitude that still lingers in those who cannot yet accept that America is now a multiracial, multicultural national polity.
Moving beyond the Exodus stories
The first American Exodus story runs off the tracks when the exaggerated myth of American exceptionalism leads the president and Congress to take actions that neither enhance U.S. security nor gain respect for it abroad. Moreover, when it pits love of the nation against government, the latter is weakened to the point where it can no longer act deliberately, decisively, and with forethought but is reduced to merely reacting to emergencies, such as the current financial crisis. When free-market advocates like President Bush, Treasury Secretary Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke reach for immense federal power to save the financial system, they contradict their basic philosophy. That, in turn, leads to further suspicion of government by citizens on one side who think government should leave free markets alone and by citizens on the other side who see no comparable action being taken to save the national polity with its crumbling infrastructure, growing trade deficit, expanding distance between rich and poor, and troubling crises in health care, Social Security, and the environment.
The second American Exodus story runs off the tracks when popular appeals to the federal government and the courts turn politics and litigation into little more than competition among more and more identity groups for the “right” to receive benefits or privileges that are supposed to overcome their exclusion or oppression. The cry of slaves for freedom and the long struggle for civil rights by African Americans were responses to the wholesale exclusion of an entire group of citizens from almost every aspect of American life simply because they were black and had been purchased for slavery, not for equal participation in the first American exodus story. But the subsequent misuse of civil-rights appeals by every manner of “group” to try to gain benefits and privileges that extend far beyond the scope of civil-rights claims makes governing increasingly difficult, fueling identity politics and interest-group brokering that frustrate the building of a national polity that achieves the common good.
In preparing to vote on November 4, we need to think carefully about which presidential candidate appears most able to rise above the conflicts between, and the deficiencies of, the two American Exodus stories. Who is best prepared to seek out the ways of wise statecraft for a national polity that is troubled on many fronts at home while confused, overextended, and unbalanced in its foreign and defense policies? Who is best able to move beyond paeans to America’s greatness and lead Congress in the hard work of building a sustainable and trustworthy republic that can, with modesty and forethought, conduct the hard work of multidimensional diplomacy in a shrinking, warming, warring world?
—James W. Skillen, President
Copyright © Center for Public Justice 2008. Reprinted here with the kind permission of James Skillen.
To learn more about the Center for Public Justice, visit the Center’s new website. The Center for Public Justice is an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to public policy research, leadership development, and civic education. With a distinctive Christian-democratic perspective, we help citizens, policymakers, and government respond to the call to pursue justice for all.
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James Skillen is a keen observer of the political sphere of life, committed to seeing it through the clarifying lens of the gospel. This brief essay arrived via email as part of The Center for Public Justice’s thoughtful Election Series ’08 (#8; October 15, 2008). I recommend the work of the Center to you, and would encourage you to sign up to receive this series, as well as their Capital Commentary emails.
The Root of the Problem
September 26, 2008
Hank Paulson, secretary of the Treasury, argued last weekend that the new bailout plan he was proposing would finally go to the root of the problem. That problem, he said, is the “illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded.” He wants Congress to approve a $700 billion package that would give him, on behalf of the federal government, almost unlimited authority to buy up the bad (“toxic”) assets so banks can feel confident to lend again.
But why have so many mortgage assets lost their value and become illiquid? The primary reason is that banks and investment companies irresponsibly encouraged people to take out mortgages not adequately backed by the value of the homes they were buying. Perhaps, then, that is the deeper root of the problem.
Well, not quite. Why were these sub-prime mortgages offered and accepted so irresponsibly? Because both the financial institutions and the homebuyers were betting--gambling--that home values would continue to rise and thus “produce” in the future the asset security that did not exist at the time of purchase. That, in turn, would give the financiers more time to try to make more money by means of more leveraging of more money.
Martin Wolf explains that the “aggregate stock of US debt rose from a mere 163 per cent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 346 per cent in 2007. Just two sectors of the economy were responsible for this massive rise in leverage: households, whose indebtedness jumped from 50 per cent of GDP in 1980 to 71 per cent in 2007; and the financial sector, whose indebtedness jumped from just 21 per cent of GDP in 1980 to 83 per cent in 2000 and 116 per cent in 2007” (Financial Times, 8/24/08).
Yet, why were so many families and financial institutions taking on and trying to leverage so much debt? What was the root of that dangerous gamble? In part, government itself was encouraging individuals and companies to buy (or borrow) now and pay later. Government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led the way or backed up those who were leading the way in this direction. Homebuyers trusted the banks. The banks trusted Fannie and Freddie as well as the investment companies that leveraged the mortgages. Investors trusted the market and those who rated the investments. And this circle of trust depended finally on trust in the government, whose laws and policies backed up or overlooked all this debt-mounting leveraging.
Now, however, the circle of trust has been broken--all around. As a consequence, Paulson’s narrow focus on the “liquidity problem” doesn’t begin to go to the root of the problem. Over the past few months, and particularly the last two weeks, Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have tried one expensive fix after another that has failed to overcome the liquidity crisis. And they, along with President Bush, now want us (and investors, and Congress) to put our trust in their last-minute bailout plan that requires additional massive public indebtedness? Why should any of us now assume that this program will work?
Clearly, the root of the problem is a lack of trust, including lack of trust in government. For after all, Congress as well as the executive branch has been complicit in the entire system that is now collapsing around us. It is a little late, then, for them to cry “emergency,” abrogate the so-called principles of free-market capitalism that the president says he still believes in, and ask the country to trust them now. This is simply the next--and an even bigger--gamble, made in the hope that prosperity can somehow be recovered without requiring any fundamental change in our habits, desires, and mind-set.
But it won’t work. Trust will not be restored until real responsibility and genuine accountability are reestablished at every point around the circle.
-- James W. Skillen, President
The Capital Commentary may be photocopied or retransmitted in its entirety but not otherwise reprinted or transmitted without permission. Commentaries do not necessarily represent an official position of the Center’s but are intended to help advance discussion.
Copyright Center for Public Justice 2008.
To learn more about the Center for Public Justice, visit the Center’s new website.
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James Skillen is a keen observer of the political sphere of life, committed to seeing it through the clarifying lens of the gospel. This brief essay arrived via email as part of The Center for Public Justice’s thoughtful Capital Commentary series. I recommend the work of the Center to you, and would encourage you to sign up to receive the Capital Commentary emails.
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