Pardon me if I repeat myself, but I think I failed to make my point clear
the first time. Or if I did, nobody's acting like it, so I'll just be
like an American tourist and say it louder. :-)
It is reasonable that intelligent people will try to stop and think and
consider the quality of their nation, and what place it might have in
history.
It is also reasonable, however, that intelligent people will stop can
consider the terms and criteria used for making an evaluation.
Take the category "great," for instance. For some it seems to define a
category filled with nations who made a both a unique and good
contribution to the world in some way. But let's look, again, at some
"great" things:
Ancient Egypt. The Kingdom of Solomon and David. The Persian Empire.
The first Greek Empire. Alexander the Great. The Second Greek Empire.
The Roman Republic. The Roman Empire. Caesar, Ausustus, Constantine.
The Byzantine Empire. The Arab & Islamic empires. (Empires and such
include the associated cultures, here.) The Mayans. The Aztecs. Perhaps
the Olmecs and Toltecs. The people in Peru with the giant roads that go
on forever--I forget if they have a special name other than the Peruvian
Empire or not. The Chinese Empire. The Mongols. The Tokugawas.
Probably some African ones I'm too ignorant to name. The Medicis. The
British Empire. Napoleon and Napoleon's France. The Spanish, Portugese,
and Dutch empires. Russia. Mao Zedong (No, you say? Not that butcher? But
Caesar, Napoleon, Alexander....all would recognize his achievements, and
Mao ruled vastly more people and territory than most of them. Mao stays.)
So ok, let's add some Americans: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison,
Lincoln, FDR--and I still can't stomach Reagan, but I'll spot him to the
conservatives as a peace gesture. And let's put America on the list,
because good or bad it's hard to deny America's sheer power and influence
in its own time.
It's not an inclusive list by a long shot, but it's a start. Throw in
Winston Churchill because he's a personal favorite.
Now, what do all these great things and people have in common? That they
were good? Hardly. That they revolutionized the world? Sometimes, but
some were just really good at manipulating the world they were in.
Actually, about the only thing they all had in common, that I can tell, is
that we remember them and we think more highly of a person who values
their memory than we do of somebody who doesn't.
In other words, by virtue of sheer size, momentum, and influence, they
became the things that fill history books.
Now, by this loose standard, America is certainly great as I think pretty
much everybody has already conceded. It doesn't take a lot of thought to
realize that, barring a catastrophe of the sort that obliterates learning,
America will play a big role in the history books of the the 19th, 20th,
& 21st centuries and possibly beyond.
Unfortunately, slapping the word "great" on America as though we were
labelling a can of tuna doesn't really tell us much. The meaning of the
word is so nebulous that it doesn't really *mean* anything, except this:
that if somebody leans back in his chair, takes a puff on his pipe, and
talks about the greatness of America, then people will feel constrained to
accept this as given because to argue would indicate a lack of education
or breeding.
Also, as a rule, we declare things great when we think we ought to
be emulating them, which is fine, but we only resort to the word "great"
when we want to evoke the feeling of a thing and not the specifics. When
somebody says, "Ah, the greatness of Rome! The patriots of the Republic
knew the concepts of duty and service, and we're a puny nation if we fail
to emulate them!" what he means is that there are a couple of heroically
mythologized historical figures by which the whole of "Rome" is to be
judged, and he thinks that we should be more like those Romans, completely
ignoring the fact that most Romans were as dull and ordinary as anybody
else living then or now. The intent is that we should ingore the venal
and the corrupt and the bloody, and hew to the model of those few good
citizens.
I assert that when people want to proclaim their nation great in the
present tense, it is because they want others to look upon them NOW with
the misty eyes of history, and likewise ignore the venal and the corrupt
and the bloody. The word greatness is never invoked in the course of a
strict accounting of the good and the bad; it is a blanket term that means
so many things it means nothing *except* that the bad must ultimately be
excused. That is all the word means or can mean unless one chooses
arbitrarily to redefine it.
(And before anyone accuses me of nitpicking semantics, please remember
that insisting on the proper use of words in accordance with historical
precedent is above all a *conservative* trait.)
Running around insisting that America is great is like Napoleon crowning
himself because nobody else is qualified. It's like the aging actress of
Sunset Boulevard stamping her feet and demanding adoration when others are
just tired of her hysterics. It's like an old whore chasing her past
tricks down the street with a case of makeup in one hand and frayed lizard
pumps in the other, imploring them to give it just one more go.
In short, it's America, still full of WW2 pride and Cold War
self-righteousness, casting about for accolades (while the rest of the
world tries to get on with its business) and asking, "Is this all there
is?" And when the rest of the world finds American institutions
every-freaking-where, even interfering with local democracy for the sake
of global free trade, and when they complain, America gets its panties in
a wad and shrieks, "You ungrateful cads!"
Lots of folks think Reagan is great, but imagine if he (assuming he were
still fully competent) were to get on a talk show and try to prove, point
by point, that the world should regard him as a great man on a level with
historical figures like Churchill and Washington and Richlieu and Caesar,
yada yada. We'd all wince with embarrassment, even George Will, and
think, "Poor guy, what's gotten into him?" And we would do our best not
to encourage the behavior, because it's just unseemly. Of course, some
people like Rush Limbaugh would say, "Hell! He's a great guy! He should
be allowed to demand as much fealty as he wants," but then people would
just conclude that Limbaugh is a scat-munching buffoon. Well, except for
those who wouldn't, and then everybody else would assume that *those*
people are scat-munching buffoons too. Of course, the dittoheads will
simply conclude that the rest are just freeloading commie liberals, but
hey.
So when people, Americans and non-Americans alike, choose not to join the
American chorus of self-congratulation, and even offer reasons why they,
in their position, don't think America's really very great (after all, did
the Greeks or the Syrians think Rome was so wonderful?), that's not
Anti-Americanism (gasp!), it's just common sense and self-interest
asserting itself.
And it's some old partners staring askance at a working girl who *really*
needs a makeover and who just doesn't know when to let it go.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
