Predictably, American vocabulary has changed since I left the country in 1988. Hundreds of new words have appeared, old words have acquired new meanings and – more to my point today – old denotations now convey new connotations.
One such is ‘American exceptionalism’. The expression existed in my day, but it was hardly ever used in a positive sense. Liberals associated it with conservatism, conservatives with the loony fringe, and the apolitical masses didn’t use it at all.
That connotation reflected the atmosphere of relative restraint prevalent in public discourse. The political landscape resembled a gently undulating valley with fluffy sheep grazing on the slopes, with only the odd wolf distorting the pastoral serenity. This has since changed into sharply contrasting peaks and troughs regularly shaken up by violent tremors.
Hence ‘American exceptionalism’ has evidently moved from the loony fringe into the Right part of the mainstream where it has been elevated to an ideal. I realised this by listening to the late Charlie Kirk’s orations, all delivered with the sermonising aura typical of American propagandists of both Right and Left.
To me, or any other National Review reader or writer of my day, terms like ‘American exceptionalism’ or ‘American nationalism’ are extremist statements of patriotism, the love of one’s country. And extremism doesn’t belong in conservative – or any other serious – thought.
Such terms turn a laudable feeling into an objectionable cult. Talking to some MAGA people and listening to Kirk’s speeches, one gets the impression that any demarcation line between the two has been smudged.
If we put ourselves in the moccasins of the first Americans, we’ll see that they could hardly avoid a certain amount of pantheistic mysticism when finding themselves face to face with a vast, promising and yet hostile expanse.
Much as they prayed for riches in the future, they knew that the present was more likely to greet them with the fangs of wild beasts or the tomahawks of aboriginal scalpers. The only way to keep going was to lay some groundwork for optimistic fatalism: they had to deify their exploits.
God had to be on their side because no one else was. To find enough resolve to build a new country they had to strive to build a new Jerusalem.
But there is only one real Jerusalem – everything else, including England’s green and pleasant land, can only be its simulacrum. However, this particular American simulacrum has survived to this day, almost 400 years after John Winthrop first described America with a quotation from St Matthew about “a city on a hill”.
The overall sentiment is that America isn’t just different from all other countries. It’s saintlier and therefore morally superior. Hence it’s America’s holy mission to solve every little problem of life internally – and then shine the torch of truth and goodness on other countries, even those that try to shield their eyes from the blinding light.
In 1809 Jefferson, at best a deist, expressed the principle of America as a beacon without relying on biblical references: “Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence.”
Tastes differ but facts shouldn’t: America was not “the only monument… and the sole depository… of freedom and self-government”. Britain, to name one other country, had form in those areas too. But then the puffery of political pietism knows no bounds.
Never in the history of the world, at least not between the collapse of Rome and the emergence of Bolshevik Russia, had there existed another nation so bursting with such refreshingly sanctimonious arrogance. Many have commented on the perverse references to religion in Bolshevik iconography, with atheistic people expected to worship the mummified relics of a secular saint, but few have noticed that the same mimicry is just as robust in America.
Hardly any speech by American leaders from the 18th century onwards has omitted quasi-religious references to canonised historical figures, whose deeds are routinely described in Biblical terms. “Fellow citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of Independence,” pronounced John Quincy Adams, and he meant it exactly as it sounded.
Sacral visual imagery also abounds, as do the mock-religious shrines to past leaders. George Washington in particular is worshipped in a religious manner as the ‘Great Father of the Country’.
The interior of the Capitol dome in Washington displays a fresco entitled The Apotheosis of Washington where the sainted Father is surrounded by Baroque angels and also representations of other Founders in contact with various pagan gods, such as Neptune, Vulcan and Minerva.
The Jefferson Memorial, not far away, is also a replica of a pagan shrine, with various quasi-religious references inscribed. Cited, for example, is a quotation from Jefferson’s letter to Washington preaching “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? … Commerce between master and slave is despotism.”
It is useful to remember that these ringing words were uttered by a deist, more likely an agnostic, who had his chattel slaves flogged to mincemeat for trying to escape. The statement would therefore be hypocritical if we were to forget that by then ‘God’ had become the shorthand for ‘America’.
In due course, another term was added to the lexicon of American exceptionalism. In the 1840s the journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the term ‘manifest destiny’ to describe America’s messianic mission in the world. Said manifest destiny was according to him ‘divine’: it was incumbent upon America “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man”.
In other words, it was now up to America, not Jesus Christ, to save the world. Americans thus corrected the conservative triad of God, king and country by eliminating the middle element and merging the other two into one.
Such sentiments have always existed at the grassroots of American conservatism. But in my day they were seldom enunciated in the mainstream. American conservatives, such as aforementioned NR readers and writers, tended to be civilised gentlemen, not loudmouthed zealots.
They were the ones who created a minor revolution in the American political mind, making conservatism intellectually, culturally and socially respectable. However, judging by the shift in the connotation of ‘American exceptionalism’, the relay baton has been passed from the gentlemen to the uncouth touts and ideologues.
Connotation has triumphed over denotation, and most activists may be unaware of the historical undercurrents into which I’ve barely dipped. They proudly list ‘exceptionalism’ in their rota of American virtues, and no one questions their conservative credentials.
No one with any influence or public presence, that is. Civilised, erudite, well-spoken conservatives still exist in America, and in fact I know a few who are quite appalled. But they no longer have an audible voice. The Right has fallen into the hands of shrill demagogues who confuse jingoism with patriotism, chest-thumping ardour with arguments and semi-literate musings with rhetoric.
That’s why European conservatives don’t see the MAGA types as their kin. Conservatism, as I never tire of arguing, is above all a matter of style and temperamental predisposition, not ideology. A real conservative wouldn’t be caught dead sporting a legible baseball cap and spouting slogans in elementary-school English.
And of course, loud protestations of American exclusivity have a rather limited international appeal. This is unfortunate because, issue by issue, the MAGA types and British conservatives agree more than they disagree.
However, much as they may be consonant in their ideas, they are stylistically incompatible. That makes them incompatible, full stop.
Equally discomforting is the widespread use and emphasis on “the flag”.
Patriotism is pleasing, but the kow-towing to the flag and its prevalence in public affairs seems to me to be unhealthy displays that go well with over-reactive responses such as lead assassins to their triggers.