American Notes (5)

Paradoxically, for a country that is in constant flux, that went from something of a pastoral republic to world-class industrial power in fifty years, America is very keen in defining itself. There is no "Colombian way of life" but there is an "American" one. During the Mc Carthy era, the US Congress created the House Committee on un-American Activities without the slightest sense of cynicism.

Continue after the jump.




As is to be expected from such exercises, they are at the end inconclusive because everyone defines America in his or her own way. It covers the entire spectrum of opinions. The American Right lives in constant fear of forces that may change America beyond recognition. (Bad news: it has already changed and keeps changing, but never mind.) But this search for Americanness isn't always to the service of rabid, conservative patriotism. It can be used by the Left as well. When the Bush Administration began to create some elbow room for torture, disappearance and imprisonment without trial, the reaction of many on the Left was "This is not the way we do things here. This is not American."

From the standpoint of a foreigner, this is a bit odd. As individuals, Americans are able of all the good and bad things people elsewhere can do. A few days ago I mentioned Marc Thiessen, the notorious apologist of torture from the Bush Administration. I'm pretty sure that, had he been a Russian bureaucrat in the 1930s he would have felt at home working for Yezhov's interrogation machine. John Yoo, Bush's legal advisor, used arguments to defend unlimited executive power that would have landed him a job in the German government in 1934. American neoCons can be as racist and bloodthirsty as the English officers in India in the 1920s.

And yet, it is true that some things don't happen in America. As far as domestic politics is concerned, Americans can and do resort to intimidation. The Socialist leader Eugene Debbs was put in prison for criticizing the American involvement in World War I. At the same time, Attorney General Palmer unleashed a "Red Scare" that persecuted many socialists and progressives. McCarthyism is now a noun with well-known meaning. But, when compared with the experience of most of Europe in the XXth Century (except Britain, Switzerland and Sweden), these instances become relatively minor.

If you ask American historians what is the closest the US has come to a coup d'etat, they will point to the "Court packing" scheme of Roosevelt in 1937, when he tried to change the composition of the Supreme Court with the laudable goal of saving the New Deal. (Be warned, I am a big, big fan of FDR, to me the greatest statesman of the 20th Century and, so far, of the 21st.) When Menem did the same in Argentina it was considered a sign of progress along the way of respect for the constitution; warts and all, Menem was not Videla.

To me this remains one of the great mysteries of social sciences. The conjecture I am inclined to is that, in some societies, the social order is so stable that it can afford to offer a relaxed treatment to the occasional dissident. Of course, this isn´t good enough. It doesn´t tell us what is it about the US or the UK that makes them so "stable" for so long. I will have a lot more to say about this in upcoming entries. But for the time being, since the point here is to recap some of the best things of the US, even if, like this one, they are not exclusively American, here it goes: in spite of the efforts of the Bush Administration, the US still remains one of the places in the world with the strongest regimes of political liberties.