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most amazing thing about America has always been ourselves, as we
are rediscovering in our exemplary response to the disaster of September
11th. "A restless, reasoning, adventurous race," our national
psychoanalyst, Alexis de Tocqueville called us, "which does
coldly what only the ardor of passion can explain." We are
a bundle of contradictions, at once the most religious and the most
secular, the most individualistic and the most socially conscious,
the most isolationist and the most interventionist people on earth.
Our unique dynamism is generated by these contradictions; they create
an inner tension that drives American creativity.
Like no other
people, we tend to our own personal affairs, and we have done it
so well, we are the first people in history to believe that peace
is the normal condition of mankind. That is one of the two major
reasons why we are never ready for the next war. Every time a war
ends, we demobilize, believing war itself has been defeated. As
far back as 1846, when we were on the verge of a two-front war that
produced the expansion of the United States into Texas, California
and Oregon, the Congress was planning to shut down the military
academy at West Point. We have to be dragged into war. In the 20th
century we were torpedoed into the First World War on the North
Atlantic, bombed into the Second World War in the Pacific, terrified
into the Cold War by Stalin, and shocked into the Gulf War by Saddam
Hussein. September 11th revealed that we had once again let down
our guard, despite years of terrorist attacks against Americans
within and beyond our borders.
The other reason
we are not ready for war is our radical egalitarianism and our belief
in the perfectibility of man. We think all people are fundamentally
the same, and, having turned the study of history into a sanitized
hymn to the wonders of multiculturalism, we are reluctant to accept
Machiavelli's dictum that "man is more likely to do evil than
good." It is singularly bad form for anyone in America to suggest
that there are some truly evil people, and even some thoroughly
evil regimes, whose hatred of us is so intractable that "live
and let live" will not do. It has to be "kill or be killed."
Having understood
our character better than anyone else before or since, Tocqueville
warned that foreign policy was our Achilles heel. But he also recognized
that we have an amazing capacity to draw together, and to postpone
our craving for personal success until the common good has been
safeguarded. "War almost always enlarges the mind of a people
and raises their character," he tells us, and "in some
cases it is the only check to the excessive growth of certain (selfish)
tendencies." Just ask the Germans or the Japanese or the Soviets,
all of whom grossly underestimated our enormous capacity to unite
to accomplish a national
mission.
They are not
alone; our national capacity to spontaneously organize ourselves
to overcome challenges is hard to explain, even for a genius like
Tocqueville. It is the mystery of American patriotism. How does
it happen that in the United States, where the inhabitants have
only recently immigrated...where they met one another for the first
time with no previous acquaintance; where, in short, the instinctive
love of country can scarcely exist; how does it happen that everyone
takes as zealous an interest in the affairs of the whole state...as
if they were his own?
It is because
we feel ourselves part of a common enterprise-the advance of freedom
— and we spontaneously organize ourselves to achieve that enterprise.
One of the
few to understand this magical process is Oriana Fallaci, the celebrated
Italian writer, a longtime thorn in the bodies of the self-important,
a proud Tuscan who has become a New Yorker, who took four full pages
of the Corriere della Sera to speak of the September events
and our response to them. She was struck by the response at Ground
Zero to the president.
All of them,
young people, little kids, the old, and the middle aged. White,
black, yellow, brown, purple...Did you see them or not? While
Bush thanked them they waved the American flags, raised their
clenched fists, and roared, "USA! USA! USA! In a totalitarian
country I would have thought, "but look at how well the powerful
have organized them!" In America, no. In America you don't
organize these things. Especially in a cynical metropolis like
New York. New York workers are tough guys, and freer than the
wind. These guys even disobey their trade unions. But if you touch
the flag, if you touch the country...
The fact
is that America is a special country, my dear friend. A country
to envy, of which to be jealous...and it is that way because it
is born of a spiritual necessity...and of the most sublime human
idea: the idea of liberty, or better, of liberty married to the
idea of equality...
Oriana Fallaci
is our friend, and she understands us very well. Our enemies don't,
which is why they constantly make the mistake of striking at us
before they can be sure they will take us out. Thus, the Japanese
at Pearl Harbor. Thus, Osama bin Laden in New York and Washington.
They see our internal divisions, they see our drive for material
comfort, they know our leaders dread the thought of body bags, and
they think we are not capable of fighting them hand to hand. They
should listen to Tocqueville, who knew back in 1831 that once we
are engaged in a fight, "the same passions that made them attach
so much importance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to
arms." The awesome power of a free society committed to a single
mission is something they cannot imagine.
I daresay that
few of us, a month ago, imagined that the American people would
react with such vigor, such coherent rage, such determination to
destroy the evildoers. Until then, many of us believed, feared,
or suspected that our will had been sapped, that our great wealth
had made us thoroughly self-indulgent and indolent, and that we
might well fail such a test.
Now we know
better, and our enemies will soon see the evidence in their own
streets, deserts, and mountain redoubts. We have rediscovered the
roots of our national character, which are an unshakeable confidence
in the rightness of our mission, deep religious conviction, and
a unique ability to come together to prevail against frightening
obstacles. Once we have defeated the latest incarnation of servitude
— this time wrapped in a religious mantle — we must remind
ourselves of what we are, and the magnitude of our task. Next time,
we must not listen to leaders who delight us with fables of peace
and who tell us we are not worthy of our
high calling. Next time, we must dismiss those who tell us that
all people are the same, all cultures are of equal worth, all values
are relative, and all judgments are to be avoided. Silvio Berlusconi
was right: We've accomplished more than our enemies, and the overwhelming
majority of mankind knows it.
Have you seen
millions of people from the West clamoring to live in Iran, Iraq,
or Saudi Arabia? Do you think Assad, Saddam Hussein, or the Ayatollah
Khamenei could win a free election? If their regimes come under
attack, will their people spontaneously rally round them? If you
answered "yes" to any of the above, kindly report for
reeducation.
Finally, next
time, we must remember that those who wish for peace must prepare
for war, remind ourselves that Americans are great warriors, and
get ready to fight again. Because that's the way it is.
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