How much longer?
Many of us today, perhaps a majority, entertain the certainty that we have replaced the Children of Israel as God’s Chosen People. Historians call this “the myth of American exceptionalism.”
This belief has roots in the theology of some of the earliest British settlers in America shepherded by John Winthrop and the Puritans. And it continues today in an almost-unbroken line, interrupted only occasionally by dissenting voices such as William James, William Jennings Bryan and Mark Twain.
The idea of exceptionalism was called into question earlier by Abraham Lincoln, who described us as an “almost chosen people,” implying a mild skepticism. Rather than beneficiaries of God’s favor, America’s unprecedented success could more realistically be attributed to accidents of geography.
Far removed from European distress and wars by eight to twelve weeks of sailing time through treacherous waters, the American colonists developed and prospered pretty much on their own in their formative years. When the American Revolution began in 1776 the colonists had been essentially governing themselves for nearly 150 years. Theirs was a political, not a social, revolution.
After the Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation’s size, Americans continued to pursue the mystical promise of “Manifest Destiny.” In less than forty years they gobbled up the remainder of territory to the Pacific coast to the misfortune of a politically corrupt, financially prostrated and militarily impotent Mexico.
More good fortune: No area on the entire globe contains the natural resources in such varieties and quantities as does the North American continent to which we have fallen heir. These blessings include essential minerals, fertile soils, abundant rainfall and a moderate climate. Yet even our earliest forebears entertained the idea of a providential “chosenness” to account for their good fortune. But over a century ago historian Frederick Jackson Turner made the attribution: “Not the Constitution, but free land and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit people.”
In World War II America’s relative remoteness prevented large-scale attacks on the U.S. mainland by Germany’s and Japan’s naval and air forces. By more good fortune we emerged from the war the only major power without its manufacturing base and infrastructure more or less devastated. Pure fortuity, not military preparedness. And at the end of the war the U. S. possessed almost two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves, half of its manufacturing capacity, and its exports more than doubled imports. But these advantages would not last indefinitely. By 1950 the culture of assured American superiority was unraveling.
Once a net petroleum exporter, in 1950 we began to import foreign oil. This was a warning sign, but it was ignored. Then an unprecedented crushing defeat in Viet Nam, OPEC-LED oil price crises, the Elvis (and others) craze, the “pill” and all that that entailed, and the weakening of our moral consensus and compass along with the reported death of God ushered in a decadent “Empire of Consumption.” Jimmy Carter tried to alert us in his 1979 “Malaise” speech, but we would have none of it. Americans deal in assurances, not warnings or challenges.
We are living in a dream world that could eventually prove to be our undoing as a nation. How much longer can we afford the dubious luxury of political self-delusion and a credit card with (we think) only fictional limits?
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@bellsouth.net