The US: Last, Best Hope Of Mankind?

For a very long time, generations at least, Americans held as an article of shared faith that their nation and state represented "the last, best hope of mankind." It was the most commonly held sense of "American exceptionalism." Even when confronted with the myriad warts on the face of Uncle Sam, Americans maintained that their experiment as the only country created on a set of shared ideas and aspirations remained the beacon to the rest of the world.

Now that long-standing, widely held self-understanding is crumbling. The tattering of the tapestry of shared myth is shown in a recent Rasmussen survey. The numbers show that barely half of We the People currently hold this positive view of our collective endeavor. When examined closely, vast gulfs on the basis of age and political inclination exist within our social and political body.

Younger Americans overwhelmingly reject the contention that our country represents a hope for the human race. Only thirty-seven percent see matters this way. Fifty-one percent of those of us under thirty reject the proposition categorically. In the wheezing geezer category the percentages run in the opposite direction with sixty-two out of a hundred holding the positive view.

Not surprisingly the conservatives overwhelmingly agree with the positive sentiment while those identifying themselves as liberals are not so certain--forty-three percent hold thumbs down and twenty-nine percent give the US the thumbs up. Another interesting dichotomy comes in comparing the "political class" (as defined by Rasmussen's methodology which seems superficially at least to be sound) and the "mainstream" public. While fifty-eight percent of the "mainstream" are positive, only thirty-one percent of the "political class" agree.

An examination of the Rasmussen method for defining the "political class"--based on three questions plumbing the attitude of the respondent regarding the role of government versus that of the individual--indicates the existence of a large and completely predictable overlap between self-identified liberals and members of the "political class."

Both groups, for example, see the government as being more important than the individual in determining the quality of an individual's life.

Both also agree on the proposition that government has an affirmative obligation to interfere in economic and social matters in order to assure equal and just outcomes.

In addition both groups see the government as playing the key role in protecting people from the consequences of poor personal decision making.

In a companion poll Rasmussen found out that both the liberals and the "political class" hold the UN in higher esteem than they do the US in addressing global issues including those of war and peace than do conservatives and the "mainstream." Seventy-nine percent of the "mainstream" respondents saw the US as a more "positive" force in the world than the UN. Among the "political class" the percentage was much smaller--just forty-five percent. The numbers are similar when comparing conservatives and liberals.

(It deserves mention that ninety-seven percent of the "political class" see the UN in the most favorable light. In sharp contrast sixty-three percent of the "mainstream" view the UN unfavorably.)

Unfortunately the survey on attitudes concerning the UN did not provide an age serrated breakdown. If it had, the Geek is willing to bet hair, the dichotomy between youth and senescence would have duplicated that exhibited in the "last, best hope of mankind" report.

The negative view held by the under-thirty demographic segment is no shock to anyone who has either participated in or closely observed the degeneration in the teaching of American history at all levels from the primary grades to the rarefied air of grad school. The constant theme of deprecation which pervades the entirety of American education at least as regards the history of We the People and the state we have created could have no other result.

The never-ending reiteration of a monomaniacal focus of the American people and the US as a corporate entity as victimizer, exploiter, and imperialistic monger of war is not only historically invalid, a travesty, a sin of both commission and omission. It is also a disservice to the future the magnitude of which is impossible to overestimate.

The primary obligation of the historian--or the teacher of history--is to convey the past as it actually was unpolluted by political or personal agenda or propensity. This means it is equally wrong to hold the US as being "exceptional" in its purity of motive and effort as to interpret the past only in the blackest hues.

Back in the deepest depths of the Cold War both teachers and writers of history were expected to portray the American past as being a smooth, unbroken record of ever greater freedom, equality, and angelic accomplishment. Under the gimlet eyes of the anticommunist crusaders it was as much as a person's job was worth to mention any of the multitude of ills and evils which constituted milestones on our collective drunkards walk to the present. Tenure was the only--and often frail--protector of the academic or public school teacher who adumbrated any negative in our collective experience.

The justification offered was the tired refrain, "It would harm our security and open us to subversion if the facts were known or the truth told."

Since the triumph of the Sixties vintage blame-America-First folks in higher education thirty plus years ago, the tide shifted radically. Since the late Seventies it has been increasingly politically unfashionable not to say dangerous to one's career to see the past (and often, the present as well) in terms which are at all laudable. The textbooks and lectures alike have shifted so as to emphasize every deficiency--real or imagined--which can possibly be impugned to Americans generally and their government, businesses, churches, and leaders more particularly.

The Americans and the institutions of their making have been (mis)characterized as having been unrelievedly racist, sexist, exploitative, imperialistic and generally repressive, oppressive, suppressive, and depressive. We and our institutions have been portrayed as existing only to benefit rich white guys at the expense of all the rest of us. We have been accused and convicted of dominating the world for the most base and selfish of reasons. Of looking for countries to invade. Of despoiling not only our territory but as much of the world's surface as our clutching greedy hands could grasp.

With such an unchanging picture of base evil, of astounding horror as the leitmotif of history it is small wonder that recent graduates (or "through-put products") of the American educational system would hold such a negative view of their country. More surprising is that more than a third of the under-thirties accept as true the contention that the US is the "last, best hope of mankind."

As a scholar and teacher of history the Geek has always believed it was both an ethical obligation and a requirement of intellectual integrity to see the past as it actually was rather than as he personally would have preferred it to have been. It is only by understanding the causal chains as well as the evolving context that one can appreciate the nature and direction of historical trajectories. More, it is only by understanding the trajectories which have brought the present into being that one can accurately appreciate what is happening today--and why it is happening.

There is a point to this exercise. Only by understanding the trajectories and the present which they have created can one hope to both predict the future--and, most importantly, exercise some influence, no matter how small, on the future. An accurate understanding of the past not only makes the present more readily and comprehensively understood; it empowers the individual in undertaking actions intended to influence the future course of events.

The blame-America-first bunch and their fellow travelers of the cultural relativism crowd hope to influence the future in line with their individual agendas by means of indoctrination. These scholars and teachers seek to propagandize not educate, to bend pliant minds to a preformed idea, not encourage independent, critical thinking. They hope to manufacture a future by having manufactured a uniquely distorted historical past.

In the short term they have succeeded in their ambitions as indicated by the Rasmussen reports alluded to. Whether they will succeed equally well in the longer term is less certain.

It is to be hoped that they fail. The historical record shows clearly that while the American experiment has had any number of very negative impacts, overall there is more truth than falsehood in the proposition that the US is "the last, best hope of mankind."