Five American Contributions to Civilization

In the hope of balancing my American-bashing of late, I looked for some positive contributions the USA has made to global society, excluding Apple products.  (And if you say "world wide web" I will beat you even more senseless.)

Charles William Eliot wrote "Five American Contributions to Civilization" in 1914, just as Europe was preparing for World War I, and it is a tribute to America prior to that period.  But reading it today, it is also a damning account of America since.  I encourage you to read the full essay, but as Americans have a well-deserved reputation for short attention spans, I will summarize.  (I should just make a video of me ranting and raving, preferably with made-up statistics.  That seems to go over well in the States.)

Briefly, the "characteristic and durable contributions the American people have been making to the progress of civilization" are peace-keeping, religious tolerance, suffrage (right to vote), immigration, and the diffusion of wellbeing.

As Eliot wrote, "They are reasonable grounds for a steady, glowing patriotism. They have had much to do, both as causes and as effects, with the material prosperity of the United States; but they are all five essentially moral contributions, being triumphs of reason, enterprise, courage, faith, and justice, over passion, selfishness, inertness, timidity, and distrust. Beneath each one of these developments there lies a strong ethical sentiment, a strenuous moral and social purpose. It is for such work that multitudinous democracies are fit."

I absolutely agree with that.  But now let's consider those virtues post-1914:

1. "The United States have had only four years and a quarter of international war in the one hundred and seven years since the adoption of the Constitution [but] have been a party to forty-seven arbitrations [over] questions of boundary, fisheries, damage caused by war or civil disturbances, and injuries to commerce... The United States have maintained...a standing army and a fleet which, in proportion to the population, are insignificant."

The effects of this are two-fold: "[T]he direct evils of war and of preparations for war have been diminished; and secondly, the influence of the war spirit on the perennial conflict between...individual freedom and collective authority has been reduced to the lowest terms. Individual freedom is crushed in war, for the nature of war is inevitably despotic."

Since 1914, we've been involved in international wars in 36 of the past 97 years. If you include all of the small skirmishes, political assassinations, and "military support" America has given other (often repressive) governments, that rises to 61 of the past 97 years!  How did we go from 4 out of 107 years to 61 out of 97 years?!

Yet Eliot wrote, "Looking forward into the future, we find it impossible to imagine circumstances under which any of these common causes of war can take effect on the North American continent. Therefore, the ordinary motives for maintaining armaments in time of peace, and concentrating the powers of government in such a way as to interfere with individual liberty, have not been in play in the United States as among the nations of Europe, and are not likely to be." So we maintain the world's strongest standing army...why?

More presciently, Eliot wrote, "Iit will be the best machine that wins, and not necessarily the most enduring men. War will become a contest between treasuries or war-chests; for now that 10,000 men can fire away a million dollars' worth of ammunition in an hour, no poor nation can long resist a rich one."

On religious tolerance, he wrote, "As a means of suppressing individual liberty, the collective authority of the Church...comes next in proved efficiency to that concentration of powers in government which enables it to carry on war effectively.  [In the US] no single ecclesiastical organization ever obtained a wide and oppressive control." And yet, America today has completely forgotten the reasons church and state were separated in the first place. If you need a reminder, just look around at the rest of the world. And please don't tell yourself Christians are incapable of religious persecution; they practically invented it!

Writing 6 years before women got the vote, Eliot wrote, "[I]t is a direct effect of a broad suffrage that the voters become periodically interested in the discussion of grave public problems... The interest in the minds of the people...comes from the frequently recurring elections. The more difficult the intellectual problem presented in any given election, the more educative the effect of the discussion."

To put that in modern context, consider that about 70% of Muslim countries are run by hereditary rulers, with no elections. What effect does that have on social mobility, ambition, and education?  The "Arab Spring," affecting 17 countries over the past six months, will undoubtedly do more to help the "war on terror" than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have accomplished in the past 8 years, combined.

Eliot also noted suffrage promoted social mobility, "and this freedom to rise is intensely stimulating to personal ambition. Thus every capable American, from youth to age, is bent on bettering himself and his condition." I would argue that by creating a social safety net, the government has also created a permanent underclass, and significantly curtailed social mobility at all levels.

Immigration is always one of my favorite topics, and Eliot does not mince his words: "In two respects the absorption of large numbers of immigrants from many nations into the American commonwealth has been of great service to mankind. In the first place, it has demonstrated that people who at home have been subject to every sort of aristocratic or despotic or military oppression become within less than a generation serviceable citizens of a republic; and, in the second place, the United States have thus educated to freedom many millions of men. Furthermore, the comparatively high degree of happiness and prosperity enjoyed by the people of the United States has been brought home to multitudes in Europe by friends and relatives who have emigrated to this country, and has commended free institutions to them in the best possible way. This is a legitimate propaganda vastly more effective than any annexation or conquest of unwilling people, or of people unprepared for liberty." 

Those words still ring true today except, of course, America has largely shut its doors to immigrants, despite having one of the lowest population densities in the world. (It is ranked 179 of 240 countries, with 83 people per square mile.  The UK, by comparison, is at #53 with 660 people per square mile, eight times as many!)

And finally, the fifth contribution to civilization made by the United States is "the diffusion of material well-being among the population. No country in the world approaches the United States in this respect. It is seen in the housing of the people and of their domestic animals, in the comparative costliness of their food, clothing, and household furniture, in their implements, vehicles, and means of transportation, and in the substitution, on a prodigious scale, of the work of machinery for the work of men's hands. As proof of the general proposition, it suffices merely to mention the telegraph and telephone, the sewing-machine, the cotton-gin, the mower, reaper, and threshing-machine, the dish-washing machine, the river steamboat, the sleeping-car, the boot and shoe machinery, and the watch machinery."  Actually, I have no idea what he is trying to say, but I suspect it has to do with income inequality, which has been steadily rising since the 1980s. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.  However, in the past 30 years, the rising tide has submerged the working class.

Eliot finished the essay with these prophetic words: "In regard to all five of these contributions, the characteristic policy of our country has been from time to time threatened with reversal—is even now so threatened. It is for true patriots to insist on the maintenance of these historic purposes and policies of the people of the United States. Our country's future perils, whether already visible or still unimagined, are to be met with courage and constancy founded firmly on these popular achievements in the past."

Instead, we have the likes of Glenn Beck and the "tea party movement" claiming "true patriotism" when, in fact, they stand opposed to all five moral principles.  And that is a deep, deep shame.