[Salon] The Death Of American Exceptionalism: What Will Come Next? - Guest Posst by Allan Brownfeld

THE DEATH OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: WHAT WILL COME NEXT? By Allan C. Brownfeld ————————————————————————————————————————- The Strange Death of American Exceptionalism By Jack Ross, Sublation Media, 231 pages, $27.95 More and more observers are arguing that the U.S. may now be moving toward a major decline, one from which great powers rarely recover. The Founding Fathers worried that the love of liberty which motivated our early leaders would give way to more narrow and selfish interests. James Madison and other Founders believed that the kind of government established in the Constitution could not endure if the people abandoned dedication to its principles. Benjamin Franklin said of the government that was created at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that it was “a republic if you can keep it.” We have already seen the attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power with the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 200l. Even now, our former president claims that he really won the election and millions of his supporters share this view. His attorneys suggest that a president is above the law and should be immune from prosecution even if he ordered the assassination of a political opponent. Those who make such an argument may be unfamiliar with Magna Carta—-or with the charges made against King George III which led to the American Revolution. We live in a political era none of us ever imagined. Shortly after graduating from law school, I worked in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. This was the era of the Cold War and the end of segregation. Today, Republicans and Democrats view themselves, more and more, as “enemies.” In one position, I worked at the House Republican Conference. Among our board members were two future presidents, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford. I never heard them speak ill of the Democrats. Their goal was to convince the Democrats that the legislation we were developing was good for the country. Working together, Republicans and Democrats defeated Communism and advanced civil rights. Remember the friendship of Ronald Reagan and Tip 0’Neill. Sadly, those days seem to be over. In this important and thoughtful book, Jack Ross places our current political moment in historical perspective and provides us with an eloquent call to revive a new vital center and return to the fundamental values of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. He shows us how both the Republican and Democratic parties have lost their way. Jack Ross is an independent historian whose previous books are “The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History” and “Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism.” Ross examines in depth how we have reached our current political situation: “There have been two central stories of American politics since the dawn of the 21st century. The first was the disintegration of the organized conservative movement that defined both the voter base and governing ideology of the Republican Party for more than a generation. Astute observers noted this as soon as the failures of George W. Bush became evident, with the Iraq war followed by the 2008 financial crisis. But only the rise of Donald Trump would force the movement to at last face up to the fact.” The second central story, in Ross’ view, “was the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its one enduring constant over 200 years —its identity as the party of working people. First set in motion in the 1970s, the watershed was Bill Clinton’s embrace of free trade in the 1990s, with Barack Obama’s response to the 2008 financial crisis accelerating the trend. The campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 then proved to be the last stand of whatever link the Democratic Party maintained to its historical identification with the working class.” Out of the wreckage of the Bush presidency, Ross argues, “the American right came to mirror the rising European populist right—-largely working class and secular, and primarily moved by real and perceived threats to national identity. As the shared outcome of those two central stories, this suggests that the 2016 election represented a pivotal movement of realignment in the American political system.” With regard to the idea of American “exceptionalism,” Ross provides this assessment: “…America is a new type of civilization different from all others , existing in the course of human events on terms exempting it from the normal cycles of rise, decline and fall afflicting other nations and civilizations throughout history…The common secular version of this belief…is of America as a ‘propositional’ nation…that America is founded on an idea rather than shared ancestry and culture.” In Ross’ view, “It is striking that the basic tenets of the American Creed have retreated in parallel with the collapse of the three pillars of American exceptionalism—-religiosity, belief in American mission in the world and persistent upward mobility…the deeper background to this strange death of American exceptionalism was the fatal undermining of the American Creed as a consequence of the Vietnam War.” When it comes to Donald Trump, Ross makes the case that he “possesses the most revolting and irredeemable personal character ever to grace the office of President…an office for which he was self-evidently unfit. He never had any aim or purpose in life rather than his personal enrichment and aggrandizement; he has never believed in anything whatsoever other than himself; and his shambolic, petulant refusal to concede the 2020 election right up to his incitement of the surreal putsch at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021…represented a unique menace to the American republic.” Populism on the right and “wokeness” on the left are, Ross declares, threatening not only American exceptionalism but the very future and integrity of our society. He presents many suggestions for reform: “..to the usurped authority over the English language by ideologically captured style guides of corporate media,America must establish its version of the Academie Francaise, to undo extensive damage ranging from the jargon creep of gender ideology and critical theory to the racist capitalization of ‘black’ and ‘white.’ ..Indeed, the most urgent public policy action to arrest the disuniting of America belongs to the U.S. Census Bureau, to overhaul its racial classifications and end the ‘one drop rule’ in the classification of non-whites.” Historically, many have warned that democratic societies have limited life spans. At almost 250 years, we have exceeded expectations. . No other country in 2024 lives under the same form of government it did 240 years ago—-only Americans. More than 200 years ago, British historian Alexander Tytler wrote that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury—with the result that democracy collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship.” In 1857, Thomas Babbington Macaulay expressed the view, “I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both.” Looking to America, he said that, “Either some Caesar or Napolean will seize the reins of government…or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians…as the Roman Empire was…with this difference—-that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your institutions.” In this book, Jack Ross may take his place with other historians who warned about the dangers confronting free and democratic societies. He has tried to give us a road map to protecting our free society, if only we will take it.