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We have always been good haters: Our Donald Trump problem goes all the way back to the Founding Fathers. By Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg. Salon, January 16, 2016.
Burstein and Isenberg:
The battle between fear and hope is as old as America. We have always been idealists – and suspicious.
The battle between fear and hope is as old as America. We have always been idealists – and suspicious.
Some
days, the poll-manufactured drama of the long and laborious 2016 campaign is
presented as though it’s the only development in the life of the planet that’s
current and newsworthy. We lose the larger picture. In truth, a super-rich
guy’s affront to American values is not really newsworthy, and its currency is
equally debatable. Furthermore, despite what you’ve heard, the coming
presidential contest is not about one-upmanship; it’s not about little things
at all.
As
historians, we’ll go so far as to suggest that the culture-warring drums that
daily beat are but reverberations of the 18th-century Enlightenment and
19th-century struggles to define America’s moral position in the world. That’s
how not far we’ve come in 2016. We
are not independent of our cultural inheritance. Americans were always
idealists. And always good haters.
Historians
are taught to see the present through a long lens. To take one hot-button issue
of the here and now–perceptions of immigrants from Mexico and the Islamic
world–a student of the past knows that the visceral language used to tar new
arrivals as pollutants and regard them en masse as objects of suspicion is as
old as our country. In colonial Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin had no patience
for Germans who refused to abandon their native language. The Irish, across
generations, were despised as simple-minded, argumentative drunks and
rabble-rousers. Swarthy southern Europeans and Jews were “filthy”; Chinese were
“loathsome” and legislatively prohibited from entering the country.
The
list is long. The anti-foreign types in today’s GOP who court the votes of
bigots and xenophobes reflect American history. And yet, the story we are
taught is that of the Statue of Liberty, and the poor immigrant who saw America
as an asylum from persecution. So many politicians credit their honest,
hardworking immigrant parents for pointing the way. But what are they leaving
out? Answer: historical perspective. Without even knowing it, here is what they
are professing: that the United States of
America was the one place in the world that enacted the admirable ideals of the
Enlightenment. This one statement underlies all claims of American
exceptionalism. It is who we wish we were.
The
Enlightenment, first and foremost, was a movement conceived for the broad
betterment of the human condition, promulgated in an age when the civilized
world, so-called, regularly wrought destruction through military adventure. The
technology is vastly improved, but that’s where we still are in terms of the
ethical dilemmas we confront. War is constant.
A
second, highly charged aspect of the Age of Enlightenment was an
intellectualization of the reactionary tendencies inherent in organized
religion. Traditionally, ministers retained influence and obtained preferential
treatment by allying with royal power and the warrior class of aristocrats
attached to the authoritarian state. Ordinary people were kept from thinking
for themselves, kept from challenging aristocratic prerogatives and the royally
sanctioned power structure. In short, popular ignorance kept the powerful safe.
So you
see, we’re pretty much in the same place as we debate the role of government
and rights of the individual today.
Philosophes
challenged existing authority by holding that religion was but one branch of
knowledge, imperfectly understood, and subject to science and the law of
nature. Miracles and biblical authority belonged to ancient superstition, and
had no place in the modern world. The divine right of kings, as a concept, was
overthrown. When Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Almighty God hath created the mind
free,” he was reflecting at least a century of Enlightenment philosophy
emanating from the works of Baruch Spinoza, John Locke and others decrying the
willfully blind, self-promoting clerics who ran from rationality and logic.
In the
eighteenth century, religious conservatives who resisted the Enlightenment
stood against humanistic progress that they insisted was illusory. They felt
the rise of the individual conscience in human affairs would bring on chaos and
the collapse of moral civilization (as symbolized by the sturdy pillars of
church and the royal state). Thus, the grasping leaders who profess belief in
abject submission to an all-powerful deity–a deity whose implicit message for
humanity such men arrogate to the gyrations of their own minds–have always been
able to subordinate worshippers to their “received” message. Why wouldn’t they
be comfortable with a tough-talking strongman who courts their bloc of votes?
It should come as no surprise that leaders of today’s fundamentalists (in more
than one religious sect, mind you) ally themselves with the pro-war/apocalyptic
message of the political right wherever they are. They retell stories about the
need to smite mortal enemies, so as to better worship God.
In the
grandest terms, the Enlightenment contested imperial dominion. Adopting that
liberating spirit, progressives of 2016 have effectively reconstituted the
moral-intellectual energy of the Enlightenment. They express pride in
possibility, in the idea of applying scientific knowledge to the existential
challenges of our century; they protest the oppressive power of the large banks
and corporations that pay millions to influence government; they place trust in
global institutions and cooperative bodies to engage in high-level negotiation,
using calm reasoning and respect for difference in order to reduce conflict and
minimize the chances of economic catastrophe or world war.
And the
reactionaries? Who adopts the role of the unenlightened war-making kings and
the ministerial cohort of old? Why, those who have no respect for the liberal
intellectual class and their dreams of a world built on collaborative,
multi-state organs aimed at a peace-seeking balance of global forces. They
prefer a Social Darwinian order, in which the strongest prevail by force of
arms. They want Andrew Jackson to be in charge.
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| Andrew Jackson with the Tennessee Forces on the Hickory Grounds (Ala), 1814. Library of Congress. |
He was
the epitome of reaction. Everything about Jackson (as a soldier, politician and
president) revolved around character assassination. Name calling was his
specialty. When he rejected a perspective, he would (in vague terms) recommend
punishment at the hands of the people; in opposing a decision, he’d call the
decision maker “base and vindictive,” but he never acknowledged himself as
vindictive. Retributive justice was his mantra. He demanded “redress” of
whatever injuries he felt, and decried every man he saw as a “petty tyrant.”
Every political enemy was a “villain.” Defending a coarse vocabulary, he
insisted it was the language of “freemen” who know their rights. He made it a
habit to judge others’ character while asserting his own virtues with an
unshakable self-confidence. And people loved it. He threw caution to the wind.
He preferred, as much as possible, to dictate terms. He made good on his threats
when he fired his entire cabinet. He most assuredly did not accept criticism.
He did not admit mistakes. He regularly promoted yes men. In 1824 and 1828,
Jackson’s vocal supporters declared their candidate a man of active energy, and
the over-educated President John Quincy Adams a “sedentary” executive–in
Trumpian parlance, a low-energy bureaucrat. This week, President Obama remarked
that the Trump phenomenon was “nothing new” in American history. He’s right.
Since
the Tea Party triumph of 2010, fanatics have shouted obscenities at the
industrious thinkers and project engineers whom they associate with the
amorphous enemy known as “big government.” In the eighteenth century, the
equivalent enemy was “Philosophy.” The question that reactionaries could not
effectively answer then or now is: how does blind adherence (dishonestly called
“personal freedom” today, when it’s really fear-based tribalism) make things
better for anyone?
Even in
the lumbering age of sail, a promoter of the Enlightenment was a global
citizen, someone who dreamt big. Education and self-cultivation, engines of
gentility, were synonymous with personal opposition to dogma. Their idea was
that critical thinking among a literary public produces societal change,
advancing a community-wide sense of decency. It remains part of the Obama way
of thinking too: that thoughtful engagement is not weakness but the definition
of responsible republican governance, and preferable to the language of “attack
and subdue.”
The
countervailing Jacksonian model came with heroic imagery associated with
westward expansion. Jackson embraced warfare initiated by the state and
violence initiated by the armed individual–both as a proper function of
conscience when one anticipated a possible attack. His populist message was
laden with bellicosity, if not cruelty. But it resonated because it was
predicated on a belief in the essential goodness and innocence underlying the
“true” American identity. The Hollywood myth of the frontier hero, forced to
commit violent acts to save the world from unreasoning evil, is as alive today
as it was when the Indian fighter Andrew Jackson came of age. That America has
to protect itself at all costs, using any and all means.
Supporters
of Trump, Cruz, Rubio and those who see threats to the homeland coming from all
directions are the inheritors of this Jacksonian mindset. They lead with
threats. Jackson did so because it came naturally to him as a hardened
frontiersman. His language was more than bluster; that of today’s GOP
candidates is nothing but. Though they have never been to war or courted danger
in any appreciable way, they pretend that their political competitors are
weaker than they, and that they know how best to contend with existential threats.
Such irresponsible, pandering phoniness is the military equivalent of a
preacher insisting that God has instructed him in charting a moral course for
society at large.
For
those who are responsive to the pandering candidates, the world today is
relatable to the lawless Wild West of myth, where the good guy out-shoots the
bad guy. It is a useful myth. (And on occasion, it’s true.) Jackson, the first
president to arise from outside the elite world of college-educated sons of
relative privilege, made America strong, whereas–the way the story went–his
predecessors, frilly bewigged eggheads, merely cogitated. The Jacksonian of
today promotes conflict, believes in winning at all costs, and insists on peace
that is best sustained in social Darwinian terms by retaining preponderant
power. And in that world view, those who don’t belong–immigrants who don’t
readily appear assimilable–are necessarily suspect.
While
the Enlightenment exposed faulty beliefs, it did not preach pacifism but
reason. The so-called conservative candidate of today may label the empathetic
progressive as weak, but progressives are not utopians either. A Bernie Sanders
would not unilaterally disarm, because that defies reason. (No one can talk
sense to the irrational dictator of North Korea.) So if the history of the
post-Enlightenment teaches anything, it is that peace is sought not by wishing
for enlightened communion among culturally distinct states, as desirable as
that might be to all who owe their sense of humanity to Enlightenment values; rather,
coexistence is based on rationally applied leverage, balances of forces.
Yet
even this approach is flawed. The United States, during the Cold War,
befriended undemocratic governments, looked the other way at the backwardness
and inhumanity of leaders, and rewarded them with arms in return for oil, air
bases, etc. As a nation, we have been doing this for so long on the basis of
realpolitik that we have to recognize that neither a Democratic or Republican
presidency can reverse course easily.
So this
is where we are. Where we still are, locked in a 300-year-old battle between
fear and hope. For some, discredited forms of knowledge are still considered
sacrosanct, because any threat to hallowed tradition is perceived as a threat
to a protective order of the world without which the fires of anarchy will
consume all. Enlightenment thinkers objected to tyranny over the mind. To
consider Biblical stories timeless, universal, and somehow “the holy word of
God,” was, they understood, to artificially construct a moment of uniform,
universal truth. Rather, the “holy” Bible was a less than intelligible
compilation of ideas that animated a narrowly positioned, long-dead people of
one very limited part of the world.
An
expansive, unfettered liberal arts education dictates against blind allegiance
and uniformity, placing historical study for the sake of intellectual
advancement alongside empirical energies directed toward improving humanity’s
lot. Cross-cultural communication and the evidence-based questioning of old
ways are the very definition of enlightened modernity, while an unquestioning
acceptance of rigid ideologies only stands in the way of new possibilities.
We have
the world we do today because the change we want happens very, very slowly and
in select places only. The Enlightenment set the course for Obama-style hope
and change. But in spite of the general, imperfect direction pursued by
America’s founders, responsive to the Enlightenment, reactive forces continue
to limit choice and promote authoritarianism. The suspicion-laden Jackson model
(commanding obedience from lesser peoples) makes America’s delusive
neo-populists appear in the eyes of others as hubristic, hypocritical,
contemptuous, gun-toting moralists.
Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg are professors
of history at Louisiana State University and coauthors of "Madison and
Jefferson" (Random House). Follow them on Twitter @andyandnancy.
This is a typical attack by liberal progressive academics on Jacksonian America, its people, its values, and the Jacksonian style of leadership. It reflects the widening gap between the liberal progressive elites and the Jacksonian populist/conservative public which responds to leaders like Trump. Burstein is also the author of The Passions of Andrew Jackson, which has very little good to say about Old Hickory.
