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Jewish World Review Sept. 17, 2001 / 28 Elul 5761
Philip Terzian
In one sense, this is a characteristically American reaction. We are
often bewildered by the attitudes of other nationalities toward our country,
seeing in ourselves a certain purity of heart and unique natural goodness.
Not everyone agrees. Some of our foreign friends find this form of American
exceptionalism endearing, or amusing, or naive, or slightly irritating.
Others, unhappily, see it as arrogance -- and have, over time, developed a
hostility that is manifestly lethal.
Of course, the word "innocence" has two meanings. There is the innocence
that is the opposite of guilt, and there is the innocence that suggests a
lack of guile.
There is a continuing debate about the first kind of innocence. The
people who throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at meetings of the
International Monetary Fund think that the United States is complicit in
global misery. Jeane Kirkpatrick used to talk about the "blame America
first" crowd, who still dread American influence overseas, and think that
disarmament will guarantee peace. You may believe, as I do, that both the
anti-globalization rioters and the blame-America-firsters are misguided; but
they hold a point of view with which some will agree, and to which anyone is
entitled.
On the second kind of innocence, however, there's no argument. Unless
your knowledge of American history is limited to the past several weeks, you
cannot seriously maintain that America "lost its innocence" when the World
Trade Center was destroyed. This would suggest that, until earlier this
month, Americans lived in an air-conditioned Eden from which the murderous
hijackers suddenly expelled them. If only it were so.
In truth, while we like to think of our country as a refuge from the
cynicism of Europe, or the chaos of the Third World, the post-colonial
United States was conceived by men who knew exactly what they wanted. The
Constitution is not a framework for the peaceable kingdom, but a document
based on troublesome experience, full of knowledge and perception about
human instincts. The Framers did not look upon their fellow countrymen as
babes to be nurtured, but as men whose basic rights required a written
defense.
Some would argue that a society which countenanced slavery at its
founding could hardly be called innocent. Others would point out that, while
the early republic may have thought itself immune from the world's travails,
that was quickly disproven by the British destruction of the White House and
Capitol building in 1814. America's relentless expansion westward was not an
expression of innocent endeavor, but of vigorous, sometimes cruel, ambition.
At the end of our four-year civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of
Americans died, and farms, towns and cities were destroyed, it would have
been bizarre to suggest that America had retained its innocence.
Indeed, as nations go, we have seen our share of the human condition. We
have uprooted indigenous populations, endured a Great Depression, built huge
industrial empires, saved Europe from itself, bred organized crime, nurtured
physicists, novelists, scoundrels and villains. The infant son of a national
hero was kidnapped and murdered in 1932; between 1865 and 1901, just 36
years, three of our nine presidents were assassinated. There were riots in
the 1840s, 1860s, 1880s, 1919, 1960s and the 1990s. We are the most
churchgoing society on Earth, and the world's leading producer of
pornography.
Why, then, do we persist in assuming that, every time America is shaken
or stirred, it has lost its innocence? One answer, obviously, is ignorance:
Americans are notably unaware of their past, which naturally magnifies
present-day events. But while always looking forward has its obvious virtues
-- progress unencumbered by history's debris -- it has its distinct
disadvantages as well. It means that we are perpetually rediscovering what
we should already know, and that lessons learned from history are discarded
at our peril.
When the Cold War ended, there was a suggestion that history had ended
as well, and that the clash of ideologies would be supplanted by new kinds
of conflict and crisis: AIDS, global warming, technological dislocation. But
as we have been reminded this week, the end of the Cold War only signified
the resumption, not the end, of history, and our actions are met with
differing reactions. If Americans have a periodic tendency to turn inward,
and exaggerate their own parochial concerns, they are bound to be regularly
awakened from their torpor -- which some have mistakenly described as
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