America Right or Wrong

by Lieven, Anatol;

  Ossification, Race, and the Tea Parties

  In the future, as U.S. power declines and domestic problems grow, the dangers of ideologically driven U.S. aggression seem likely to decrease—though it is easy to imagine how the language of an American-led crusade for democracy could be mobilized in the context of increasing hostility between the United States and China.

  As of 2012, however, a greater danger fuelled by American civic nationalism is a domestic one: that the creedal foundations of that nationalism are ceasing to be, on balance, a force for renewal of the United States, and instead are becoming a force for ossification, and from a force for expansion of the American identity to take in broader and broader groups of Americans, as absolutist attachment to the American Constitution is once again becoming a weapon to exclude much of the American population from real power. There is a real risk that aspects of American civic nationalism will both speed up America’s decline and embitter relations between Americans. This could in turn lead future American governments to seek to unite the nation again through foreign conflict.

  These dangers are very evident in the Tea Parties and the sections of the white “middle class” that they represent. This part of American society has suffered very badly in recent decades. Absolutist faith in both the formal and informal elements of the American Creed, however, help make it impossible for many of these people to explain what is happening to them and to America in rational terms.

  A perfect constitution can by definition not have become an obstacle to effective government and a contribution to political paralysis. The free-market, individualistic capitalism, which has supposedly been responsible for America’s economic greatness, cannot need qualification in order to meet new challenges. People who are suffering and cannot explain their suffering in rational terms and seek rational solutions will adopt irrational answers and solutions: on the one hand, demonologies and conspiracy theories, and on the other, theologies and nostalgia for a return to supposedly perfect pasts.

  Such nostalgia is characteristic of right-wing populism all over the world, and in some ways has fed into left-wing populism as well. What makes America special is that the nostalgia has before its eyes not just a vague vision of a better past, but formal, written political texts that were supposedly bound up with and even responsible for that better past: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution, on the one hand, has mythic, quasi-religious force, but on the other hand, contains the detailed, specific rules that regulate U.S. democracy and government.

  It is important to note that while the Tea Parties are not supported by a majority of Americans and have taken worship of the Constitution to extreme lengths, they have only been able to do so because of a quasi-religious language in this regard that already permeated American civic nationalism and political culture. Thus the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and framers of the Constitution are generally known as the “founders” or the “founding fathers,” and these documents as “founding texts.” Declarations of allegiance to these universally worshipped texts allow the Tea Parties to seize for themselves the banner of Americanism, and to portray themselves as representing everything that is truly American.

  This kind of language in itself tends to discourage analysis of the founders as members of the elite in the British colonies, products of a particular society and economy at a particular time. Instead, the Constitution becomes “a lesson in timeless wisdom,” in the words of a Tea Party supporter.109 When the Republicans took up the majority position in the House of Representatives after the 2010 midterm elections, they began by reading the Constitution, and passed a rule requiring that every new proposed bill contain a statement by the lawmaker who drafted it citing the constitutional authority to enact the new law—something that under the Constitution is actually a matter for the Supreme Court to decide.110

  The attachment of the Tea Parties and their allies in the Republican Party to these texts is indeed religious rather than political in tone, and gives strong endorsement to Louis Hartz’s argument about the danger that the creedal elements in American nationalism, while devoted in principle to liberty, will lead to a crushingly illiberal conformism. The sight of people at Tea Party rallies waving copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence brings irresistibly to my mind pictures of Mao’s followers waving his Little Red Book. Tea Party supporters meet to read these documents aloud together—once again, traditionally a religious rather than a political pattern of behavior. In the words of Michele Bachmann:

  To those who would spread lies, and to those who would spread falsehoods and rumors about the Tea Party movement, let me be very clear to them. If you are scared of the Tea Party movement, you are afraid of Thomas Jefferson who penned our mission statement, and, by the way, you may have heard of it, it’s called the Declaration of Independence. [Cheers, applause.] So what are these revolutionary ideas that make up and undergird the Tea Party movement? Well, it’s this: All men and all women are created equal. We are endowed by our creator—that’s God, not government [applause]—with certain inalienable rights.111

  Bachmann’s statement reflects a widespread sentiment in the Tea Party movement that attributes the founding texts to divine inspiration, and perhaps the tendency in the Tea Parties to quote the Declaration of Independence over the Constitution is because, unlike the Constitution, the second phrase of the Declaration speaks of the Creator. The influential book The Five Thousand Year Leap, by the late Cleon Skousen, argues that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on divinely ordained Natural Law, and that this was responsible for

  the 28 fundamental beliefs of the Founding Fathers which they said must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desired peace, prosperity, and freedom. These beliefs have made possible more progress in 200 years than was made previously in over 5,000 years. Thus the title “The 5,000 Year Leap” …

  Principle 1—The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law. Natural law is God’s law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”112

  This book is relentlessly plugged by right-wing media star Glenn Beck, whose views have great influence among the Tea Parties. The same argument is made in Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, by John Eidsmoe, a book that had a great influence on Michele Bachmann.113

  An especially potent melding of religious and constitutional faith into a hysterical American chauvinist nationalism is to be found in the speeches and writings of Phyllis Schlafly, one of the leaders of the Christian Right. She linked hostility to foreigners to a quasi-religious faith in the U.S. Constitution in an attack on Clinton’s desire to sign a range of international treaties:

  Global treaties and conferences are a direct threat to every American citizen…The Senate should reject all UN treaties out of hand. Every single one would reduce our rights, freedom and sovereignty. That goes for treaties on the child, women, an international court, the sea, trade, biodiversity, global warming, and heritage sites …

  Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are the fountainhead of the freedom and prosperity Americans enjoy. We Americans have a constitutional republic so unique, so precious, so successful that it would be total folly to put our necks in a yoke with any other nation. St. Paul warns us (II Corinthians 6.14): “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?” The principles of life, liberty, and property must not be joined with the principles of genocide, totalitarianism, socialism, and religious persecution. We cannot trust agreements or treaties with infidels.114

  This passage beautifully illustrates both the intertwining of democratic and religious exceptionalism in parts of American society and the deep na
tionalist isolationism that helps feed nationalist unilateralism.

  For the bulk of the Tea Parties, however, it would be truer to say that the founding texts are the religion; and indeed the reverence for these texts does have echoes of the fundamentalist Christians’ reverence for the literal word of the Bible. A fundamentalist faith in the original Constitution, and a belief that this mandates small government and low taxes, are the ideas that tie together what in other ways is a very disparate movement—indeed, hardly a movement at all, but rather a loose alliance of local groups.

  Thus, while according to CNN, 57 percent of Tea Party supporters polled agreed with the statement that “America is and always has been a Christian nation,” according to the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of Tea Party supporters polled in August 2010 did not have an opinion about the “religious Right.” However, on issues like gay marriage and abortion, majorities of between 59 and 64 percent of Tea Party supporters agreed with conservative religious positions, while 44 percent of self-declared conservative Christians polled agreed with the Tea Parties, against only 4 percent who disagreed. However, there is also a libertarian streak in a fair number of Tea Party supporters, which opposes government regulation of morality. This tendency is represented by Ron Paul, who is also at odds with most of the Tea Parties on military spending and America’s superpower role.115

  A quasi-religious faith in the Constitution is not only present in the less-educated ranks of the Tea Parties, but it also permeates the language of many American conservative intellectuals. Thus the Mount Vernon Statement (“Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the Twenty-First Century”) of February 2010, drawn up by a long list of such intellectuals, and backed by, among other institutions, the Heritage Foundation, begins as follows:

  We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

  These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.116

  It should hardly need pointing out that while the spirit of the Constitution does indeed provide a great inspiration for future generations, the text and its detailed provisions were drawn up by late eighteenth-century aristocrats and haut bourgeois for a small, overwhelmingly rural, preindustrial and in part slave-owning society with 13 federal units, a total population of around three million people, and almost no regular armed forces. It hardly seems controversial to suggest that to govern a society with a population of more than 300 million, a vastly expanded territory, a completely different economy, vast military forces, and a far more culturally and ethnically diverse population will probably require significant changes to that constitution. When it comes to voting rights, to return to the original Constitution would disenfranchise not just most blacks, but Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.

  As Michael Lind has cogently argued, “freedom rests on a culture of constitutionalism, not on a particular document.” He points out that not only has the U.S. Constitution been amended 27 times, these amendments include some beloved by the Tea Parties, like the Second, establishing the right to bear arms, and the Tenth, reserving to the states and the people all powers not explicitly vested in the United States. Moreover, the constitutions of individual states have been repeatedly and radically changed—seven times, in the case of Texas.117

  These criticisms of the Tea Parties’ understanding of the Constitution and of American history are accurate, but also to a great extent irrelevant, for the Tea Parties are neither a political party nor an organized movement. Rather, they are an incoherent shout of protest and anger that appeals to certain deep and ancient strains of American political culture.

  These features of the Tea Parties have led them to be dismissed with contempt by many liberal observers. In addition, there is a widespread—and well-based—liberal view that this movement is in many ways a tool of sections of the capitalist elites, who are far more concerned with deregulation of the economy and low taxes for the rich than with love of the Constitution. Special attention has been drawn in this regard to the role of the Koch industrial group in funding the Tea Parties and institutes associated with them.118

  This analysis would see the Tea Parties as essentially ignorant tools of big capitalism, promoting a vision of small government that in fact works against their own middle class economic interests. Thus the origins of the Tea Parties owed much to public anger at the governments’ bail out of crippled banks in 2008–2009, an anger with deep roots in traditional left-wing populism; but by 2011, criticism of the banks had been completely swamped in the Tea Parties by hysterical attacks on Obama’s health care reform—but without focusing on its most negative aspect, namely the failure to rein in the profits of the big pharmaceutical companies.

  On the other hand, while the ideological backers of the Tea Parties in the right-wing intelligentsia are strongly hostile to all aspects of big government except the military, the Tea Parties and their representatives generally steer clear of attacks on the key programs that support the middle classes, especially Social Security and Medicare. Bizarrely, but understandably, the elderly, white, middle class beneficiaries of these government programs do not see them as part of the big government that they want to reduce.119

  The Right’s fetishism for the Constitution is especially dangerous since aspects of the Constitution (at least, as interpreted by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court over the past 25 years) and rules associated with it are contributing strongly to the inability of any government of the United States—Republican or Democrat—to govern effectively. The constitutional guarantee of free speech, interpreted to mean that there can be no effective limit on election contributions or spending, condemns politicians to an endless search for money that inevitably puts them in the pockets of special interests. Midterm Congressional elections and short presidential terms turn the entire political system into one continuous election campaign, boosting still further the role of money, lobbyists, and focus groups, and reducing the chances of crafting long-term policies with long-term results.

  Above all, both the power of the U.S. Senate and its internal rules (especially the filibuster) give immense power to a minority in that body to block legislation by the majority. This not only frustrates the entire democratic process, it boosts the wasteful government spending the Tea Parties and the Right say they desire to reduce—because it helps give senators the ability to extract massive subsidies and benefits for their states in return for their votes. The increasing radicalization of the Republican Party, and the retaliation it has provoked by the Democrats, has led to an immense expansion of the use of the filibuster. The only precedent for this was the battle of Southern senators to block civil rights for blacks in the 1950s and 1960s, and that was essentially a one-issue campaign. Current Republican use of the filibuster extends across much of the field of legislation and federal appointments—and Democrats are likely to follow suit when they are in the minority. In the 1960s, around 8 percent of bills were faced with a filibuster; in the 2000s, it has been around 70 percent. This is not a recipe for the decline of progressive government, it is a recipe for the decline of government in general.120

  Fetishism of the Constitution makes it even less likely that Tea Party–influenced Republicans will contemplate even small changes to the Senate’s rules, let alone the Constitution in general. Their refusal to do so is not, however, irrational—at least if one assumes that, as the next chapter will argue, considerations of race and ethnicity have been a central thread of U.S. politics for much of the past 200 years. For any serious conside
ration of a change to the U.S. Senate is bound, sooner or later, to come to the conclusion that bad as they are, it is not the rules of the Senate that are the greatest barrier to the will of democratic majorities in America, it is the composition of the U.S. Senate.

  The existing distribution of U.S. Senate seats is colossally weighted in favor of white conservatives. The rule that every state in the United States has two senate seats irrespective of population was framed at a time when the largest state (Virginia) had 12 times the population of the smallest (Delaware). Moreover, the distribution of states and populations meant that there was a rough balance between the Senate representation of the different regions of the original United States. As of 2012, the largest U.S. state, California, has more than 70 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming—but they both have two senators. The smallest 21 states of the United States put together have a smaller population than California, which makes 42 senators to California’s 2. Above all, this means that six western states with only 3 percent of the U.S. population have 12 senators between them and are thus in a position to block any legislation that displeases their mainly white conservative populations.

  This has already contributed enormously to blocking legislation on a range of issues that affect the populations of those states either emotionally or materially, from gun control to carbon taxing. As long however as the United States as a whole has an overwhelmingly white majority, the issue of disproportionate representation will not become couched in racial terms.

  This is very unlikely to remain the case, however, as whites decline steadily from a majority to a plurality of the U.S. population—unless, that is, they also lose their majorities in the upper belt of western states, which does not seem likely. The white proportion of the U.S. population has declined from 75 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2010. According to projections of the U.S. Census Bureau, whites will cease to be a majority (while remaining a plurality) sometime between 2040 and 2050. Meanwhile, the proportion of Latinos will have grown to almost a quarter of the U.S. population.121 Even in times of growing economic prosperity, a shift on this scale would have been bound to cause tensions (especially when a sizable proportion of the change is due to illegal immigration)—and the next three decades do not seem likely to be ones of growing prosperity for many less-educated whites. Moreover, this shift in the United States coincides with a shift in global power toward the non-white states of China and India. This shift reverses the pattern of the past 500 years and overthrows deeply rooted assumptions that exist at a subconscious level in the minds of even liberal white Americans and Europeans.