Twilight of the American Century

by Andrew J Bacevich

  Miller describes Lasch’s quest as a search for “another way of achieving America.” With evidence of spiritual disarray piling up, that search aimed to salvage and preserve as much as to create something new. “The development of political freedom,” Lasch wrote in 1973, had proceeded “hand in hand with the growth of a system of private enterprise that ravaged the land, eradicated the past, destroyed older traditions of commercial life, and accentuated class conflict.” How to stem this malignant tide constituted the central problem of the age. So Lasch, in Miller’s words, began to articulate an altogether different vision of progress or freedom, one “rooted not in personal liberation but in the dignity of privacy, kinship ties, moral order, and civic duty.” He sought to restore “joy in work, stable connections, family life, a sense of place, and a sense of historical continuity.”

  In the context of American politics, of course, words like kinship, duty, family, and place carry deeply conservative connotations. Indeed, over the course of his intellectual journey, Lasch moved toward a cultural conservatism, which drew upon older Jeffersonian, agrarian, and—above all—populist traditions. Conservatism in this sense was less an ideology than an orientation, one that recognized, valued, and sought to defend an inheritance assailed by the proponents of progress. Once squandered, Lasch believed, that inheritance was likely to prove irretrievable.

  (A note to those for whom “conservative” conjures up images of Karl Rove or Newt Gingrich: don’t confuse the sham conservatism of the Republican Party with the authentic article. Lasch expressed complete contempt for those styling themselves as conservative while worshipping at the altar of capitalism, employing conservative-sounding tropes to justify a worldview profoundly antagonistic to conservative values. To understand this point, ask yourself, for example, what, if anything, George W. Bush, an ostensible conservative, managed to “conserve” during his eight years in the White House.)

  For Lasch, only a genuinely conservative orientation was entirely consistent with his radical self-identity. Indeed, in late-twentieth-century America, only an anti-progressive sensibility could provide the basis for serious radicalism.

  Here lay the makings of a true counterculture, he believed, one that opposed excessive concentrations of wealth and power, rejected the notion that limitless economic growth held the key to human happiness, and stood for political decentralization, self-sufficiency, meaningful work, the closing of gaps between rich and poor, a decent respect for received wisdom, and modesty in claiming to interpret God’s will or history’s purpose.

  This Tory radicalism, as Miller dubs it, placed Lasch at odds with other would-be radicals of his time. Nowhere was this more evident than on matters relating to gender. In Lasch’s eyes, the chief accomplishment of contemporary feminism, with its emphasis on self-actualization and empowerment, was to deliver women into the maw of the marketplace. For the most part, the women’s movement served as an adjunct to “the dominant culture of acquisitive individualism,” rather than offering up a meaningful alternative. A small percentage of women benefited, as a result; the vast majority did not.

  Although Lasch devoted the preponderance of his attention to domestic affairs, his critique has considerable implications for foreign policy. The progressive impulse to construct a secular utopia at home finds its counterpart in dreams of doing likewise in the great, wide world abroad: this has become an enduring theme of American statecraft. Do not mistake this rushing to the aid of others—Cubans in 1898, Afghans in 2010—for altruism, however. The impulse to do good remains bound inextricably to a determination to do well. Whether acknowledged or not, the exercise aims to sustain the existing American way of life, or, as Lasch put it, “to maintain our riotous standard of living, as it has been maintained in the past, at the expense of the rest the world.”

  Lasch declared progressivism, especially in its virulent Wilsonian form, to be “a messianic creed.” In international politics, messianic tendencies foster illusions of omniscience and omnipotence. They also point ineluctably toward great crusades, since those standing in the path of righteousness necessarily represent the forces of darkness and put themselves beyond the pale.

  The combination of conviction and power induces grandiosity reinforced by vast self-assurance, evident in Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end all wars” and in the younger Bush’s insistence that the time had come for Muslims everywhere to embrace American-style democracy, along with the American definition of human rights. For those of a messianic bent, inaction implies complicity with evil. Given such a mindset, prudential considerations need not apply: that which should be must be.

  “The thirst for action, the craving for involvement, the longing to commit themselves to the onward march of events—these things dictated war.” Lasch refers here to the progressives who threw their support behind Wilson’s campaign to make the world safe for democracy. Yet the same might be said of the neoconservatives, faux conservatives, and militant liberals who formed the cheering section for Bush’s preposterous “global war on terror.” The most important thing was not to be left out or left behind. “Accordingly, they went to war and invented the reasons for it afterward.” Written in connection to the events of 1917, Lasch’s judgment applies just as neatly to the period following September 11.

  The progressive mindset pervading both of the major American political parties refuses to acknowledge the existence of limits. An appreciation of limits—not simply of power, but also of understanding—infuses and distinguishes an authentically conservative sensibility.

  Writing in 1983, Lasch located “the real promise of American life” in “the hope that a self-governing republic can serve as a source of moral and political inspiration to the rest of the world, not as the center of a new world empire.” The record suggests that rather than erecting an empire—or fulfilling the obligations inherent in global leadership, as some would have it—the United States will serve as a moral and political exemplar only by keeping faith with the aspirations expressed in the nation’s founding documents. In that regard, we have a long way to go.

  Of at least equal importance, whereas the proponents of progress believe that the key to success is to entrust power to a corps of experts—a power elite, to use the classic formulation devised by C. Wright Mills—any serious conservative rightly sees this as mostly bunk. Do four-star generals, high-ranking government officials, insider journalists, corporate executives, and Wall Street financiers possess a demonstrably superior understanding of the way the world works? Are they any smarter, more sophisticated, or better intentioned than your Aunt Betty Lou or your Uncle Fred? Survey the various and sundry debacles of the past decade alone—the September 11 attacks, the invasion of Iraq, the collapse of Enron, Hurricane Katrina, the Madoff scandal, the Lehman Brothers downfall (the list goes on)—and the question answers itself.

  “America in denial,” writes Eric Miller, was “Lasch’s perennial story.” In our own day—still very much a scattering time—denial persists in spades, reinforced by a ruling class that throws money at problems in hopes of concealing them and by a national security apparatus that promotes an atmosphere of perpetual crisis in order to justify its existence. Washington attempts with one hand to buy people off and with the other to frighten them into acquiescence.

  In 1962, the young Lasch observed that “progress is not enough.” Sometimes progress isn’t progress at all, especially in the cultural and spiritual realms. Instead, it’s backsliding.

  The record suggests that counting on large, distant, impersonal, and largely unaccountable institutions to make good on America’s promise is misguided. This is the insight to which populists from the time of William Jennings Bryan to the present have returned again and again. The demonstrable truth of that insight explains why populism is not going away any time soon. It also explains why Christopher Lasch, the great exponent of democratic populism, deserves our respectful attention today.

  ____________

  1. Eric Miller, Hope in a Scatterin
g Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).

  15

  Randolph Bourne

  The Man in the Black Cape

  (2009)

  In his 1932 novel Nineteen Nineteen, John Dos Passos paid tribute to a “little sparrowlike man,”

  tiny twisted bit of flesh in a black cape,

  always in pain and ailing,

  [who] put a pebble in his sling

  and hit Goliath square in the forehead . . . .

  The man in the black cape was Randolph Bourne, who in an unfinished essay shortly before his death in 1918 uttered one of the contemporary era’s great truths: “War is the health of the State.” Ninety years on, as Americans contemplate the implications of waging what the Pentagon is now calling “the Long War,” Bourne’s biting observation demands renewed attention.

  Beset from birth by agonizing physical deformities, Bourne was an intellectual, a radical, and a patriot who cherished freedom and loved America. His crucial contribution to political discourse was to draw a sharp distinction between Country—the people and their aspirations—and State, an apparatus that perverts those aspirations into a relentless quest for aggrandizement at the expense of others. “Country,” Bourne wrote, “is a concept of peace, of tolerance, of living and letting live. But State is essentially a concept of power, of competition.”

  Bourne abhorred war, describing it as “a frenzied, mutual suicide,” devoid of redeeming value. America’s 1917 entry into the apocalyptic European conflict then known as “the Great War” appalled him, not least because, as he saw it, US intervention signified the triumph of State over Country. A war fought to make the world safe for democracy, as President Woodrow Wilson promised, was more likely to undermine authentic democracy at home.

  As Wilson whipped up popular fervor for his great crusade (and as his administration relied on what Bourne described as “white terrorism” to punish anyone who opposed the war or questioned Wilson’s policies), Bourne devoted himself to enumerating the perils of allowing State to eclipse Country. War, he warned, inevitably produces “a derangement of values,” with the interests of the people taking a back seat to the purposes of the State. Prestige and authority shift from the periphery to the center, from the legislature to the executive, and from domestic concerns to foreign affairs. During times of war, the future is expected to take care of itself; only the present matters. The imperative of victory overrides all other considerations.

  War imbues the State with an aura of sanctity. Those who purport to represent the State—the insiders, those who are in the know—expect deference and to a remarkable extent receive it. The more urgent the emergency, the more compliant the citizenry. A people at war, Bourne observed, become “obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them.”

  Above all, the sacralization of the State exalts the standing of the First Warrior, investing in the commander-in-chief something akin to blanket authority. “The President,” wrote Bourne, “is an elected king, but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance . . . than the fact that he is pragmatically a king.” As with the French monarchs in their heyday, so too with wartime American presidents: L’Étât, c’est moi. In times of crisis, Bourne explained, the legislative branch effectively ceases to function “except as a wholly mechanical ratifier of the Executive’s will.”

  The very concept of a democratic foreign policy, therefore, becomes “a contradiction in terms.” Statecraft remains “the secret private possession of the executive branch.” The deliberations that matter occur behind closed doors, with participants limited to those “able to get control of the machinery of the State” or the handful of outsiders with privileged access either conferred or purchased outright.

  To those who most fully identify themselves with the State’s interests—the king-president’s inner circle—war signifies liberation, triggering, in Bourne’s words, “a vast sense of rejuvenescence” that accompanies the full-throated exercise of power. The “State-obsessed” are drawn to war like moths are drawn to flame. Only through war and the quasi-war of recurrent crisis and confrontation can they express themselves fully.

  When war erupts, it typically does so as a result of “steps taken secretly and announced to the public only after they had been consummated.” Although Congress may issue a formal declaration, in Bourne’s eyes this amounts to no more than “the merest technicality.” Not infrequently, those dealing in secrets cross the line into deception and dissembling. Yet even when this occurs, Congress shies away from demanding accountability. After all, any legislator asserting that “the country had been grossly deceived by its own Government,” with war the product of “almost criminal carelessness,” would risk the charge of disloyalty, complicity, or sheer negligence. Better just to register a few complaints and quietly vote the money needed to fund the enterprise.

  The architects and advocates of armed conflict broadcast “appealing harbingers of a cosmically efficacious and well-bred war.” Such rosy predictions inevitably turn out to be illusory, but no matter: once thrust into the conflagration, the Country succumbs to “a spiritual compulsion which pushes it on, perhaps against all its interests, all its desires, and all its real sense of values.” It’s not that the people will war’s perpetuation, but when told that no alternative exists except to persist, they acquiesce. Thus, according to Bourne, does the State have its way.

  As it was in 1918, so it is in 2008. Granted, in its attempts to silence or discredit its critics, the Bush Administration’s actions, however egregious, fall considerably short of constituting “white terrorism.” On every other point, however, Bourne’s critique of the State during the Age of Wilson describes with considerable precision State behavior during the Age of Bush and Cheney.

  Since September 11, war has certainly enhanced the health of the State, which has grown in size, claimed new prerogatives, and expended resources with reckless abandon while accruing a host of new acolytes and retainers, a.k.a. “contractors.” Once again, we have witnessed the compromise of democratic practices, as the imperatives of “keeping America safe” take precedence over due process and the rule of law. Once again, the maneuvering of insiders has produced war, cheerfully marketed as promising a clean, neat solution to messy and intractable problems. When that war went sour in Iraq, opponents in Congress solemnly promised to end it, but instead obligingly appropriated billions to ensure its continuation. Although the people profess unhappiness with all that the State has wrought, their confidence in the institutions of government all but exhausted, they remain reliably docile, if not apathetic. None of this, it seems fair to say, would have surprised Randolph Bourne.

  By almost any measure, the Country has fared poorly of late, a point that presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama both explicitly endorsed. The State, meanwhile, has fattened itself on seven years of plenty. Unlike the biblical cycle, when abundance gave way to want, this pattern seems likely to continue. With the Long War projected to last for decades, if not generations, the ascendancy of the State bids fair to become a permanent condition.

  When McCain and Obama competed with each other in promising to “change the way Washington works,” they held out the prospect of re-subordinating State to Country. “Install me as king-president,” each seemed to proclaim, “and I will employ the apparatus of the State to fulfill the people’s fondest hopes and dreams. The State will do my bidding and therefore the Country’s.”

  “Only in a world where irony was dead,” as Bourne once mordantly observed, could such claims be taken seriously. Doing so requires us to ignore the extent to which the parties that the candidates represented, the advisers on whom they relied for counsel, and the moneyed interests to which they looked for support all share a vested interest in ensuring the State’s continued primacy. This is as true of liberal Democrats as of conservative Republicans.

  The reality i
s this: The election that so many saw as promising salvation was rigged. Its outcome was predetermined. Whichever candidate won in November and whichever party ended up governing, the State was guaranteed to come out on top. Barring the truly miraculous, our new President will continue to serve as primary agent of the State, privileging its well-being over that of the people. And the American penchant for war that Bourne decried and that has in our own day returned with a vengeance will persist. Piously wishing it were otherwise won’t make it so.

  Although ninety years ago the man in the black cape may have struck Goliath a sharp blow, the giant barely noticed and quickly recovered. Today Goliath is running the show.

  16

  William Appleman Williams

  Tragedy Renewed

  (2009)

  Exactly fifty years ago, late in the Eisenhower era, if still early in the Cold War, William Appleman Williams, then a young historian teaching at the University of Wisconsin, started a revolution of sorts. With the publication of his book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, US foreign relations became as never before an exceedingly contentious subject. It has remained so ever since.

  According to Williams, even in 1959 when Tragedy first made its appearance, US foreign policy was in the midst of a profound “crisis.” An approach to statecraft that had once “worked brilliantly” had become “impossible to sustain.” Revolutionary changes were sweeping the world. If the United States refused to adapt to those changes, it would soon find itself facing “literal isolation.” Yet if they embraced the new order, Williams wrote, Americans could “help other peoples achieve their own aspirations in their own way” and “do much to sustain and extend man’s creativity.”