Barry Shain
Colgate University

One From Many: Celebrating and Getting It Right

National Meeting of The Philadelphia Society
What Is An American?
April 30, 2005
Miami, Florida

           Thank you so much for having invited me to join you in this important conversation.  I am most appreciative of this honor.  And given the themes addressed by previous panels and the concluding nature of this one, also forgive me for wilfully interpreting E Pluribus Unum in a somewhat unusual manner, that is, as not concerning American states as was its eighteenth-century meaning, but rather individu­als.  Accordingly, in my talk I offer my understanding of what makes an American, celebrate our enduring ability to create Americans from diverse peoples and what this demonstrates, suggest how this process is often misunderstood by partisans on the left and right, and close with a plea for a renewed focus on such issues while attempting to restore scholarly integrity to contemporary American colleges and universities, in particular, in regard to the role enjoyed by political theorists. 

What is An American

          Careful students of American immigration, such as Thomas Sowell, have demonstrated that the United States has consistently transformed wave after wave of immigrants from diverse cultures into something recognizable as Americans.  But what is this entity into which American immigrants are transformed?  Above all else, what I believe may define Americans is their ability to govern them­selves, that is, as individuals, in small self-regulating families and groups, and more broadly as a sub-national and ultimately a national people.  This demands that limits be placed on inexhaustible individual and group wants, in large measure, through the operation of intimate over-lapping groups.  Indeed, it was the British authority's attempt to suspend American self-government, as reported by learned and unlearned Americans alike, that ultimately led to the political break between the peoples of North America and Britain.

          What is so impressive about Americans is their ability to live with freedom and exercise it, on the whole, as (ordered) liberty rather than license.  That is, Americans while exercising mutually reinforcing restraint have kept freedom within the boundaries imposed by the responsible exercise of liberty.  This means, as well, that unlike continental Europeans, Americans are a people who have lived with a certain measure of hierarchy without either being captivated by or reactively opposed to it.  As our Puritan and Revolution­ary forebears made clear, their goal was not the creation of democratic governance, but of popular government in which the voice of the many and the accomplished few could each be duly heard.  Often forgotten and far too often by those on the right, the movements that led to America's independence from Great Britain and to the adoption of our current Constitution were powerfully shaped by mid-state and southern conservatives who were as concerned with preventing the rise of democratic government as they were in defending the right of Americans to govern them­selves.

          As a cursory examination of the history of modern France demon­strates, being able to live with freedom and a measured degree of hierarchy are not skills universally present among Europeans to say nothing of those raised in still more dissimilar cultures.  Yet, again, what is so striking about America, past and present, has been its ability to transform various peoples, within one to three generations, into individuals capable of self-government, into Americans.  It is clear that whatever it is that helps immigrants in America develop these skills, it has worked.  About this, we can surely agree even if the causes are more likely to lead to debate. 

Creating Americans: E Pluribus Unum

          But what is it, as least in my opinion, that lies at the foundation of this culture that has successfully turned men and women, or at least their grand-children, into self-governing individuals and groups?  It is, as I have tediously argued for the past decade (and of late have begun to enjoy some success), the formative power of (1) a Hebraic Reformed Protestant culture, (2) embedded in an English legal and political order with (3) an added emphasis on joint-stock legal codes and charter-derived political structures.  Although these were almost wholly accidental or, if you prefer Providential, features of the initial English migrations to North America, these institutions took on in America populist, localist, legalist, egalitarian, entrepreneur­ial, and low-brow cultural qualities that by the end of the eighteenth century distinguished colonists from metropolitan British.  Even as the religious impulse lessened in some -- though in fact few -- as the end of the eighteenth century approached, the central liturgical (puritan), theological (Augustinian), and ecclesiastic (congregational) features of Reformed Protestant­ism, along with English legal and constitutional forms and institutions, continued to shape the American political, legal, and cultural landscape.  (Let me add, parenthetical­ly, that similarly, America has also been importantly shaped by what it lacked: Catholi­cism, an entrenched feudal aristocracy, and close and warring neighbors.)

           America, I believe, has continued to produce Americans out of disparate peoples because of the continued formative power of its largely Reformed and Pietistic Protestant and English legal and political inheritances, and the lived nature of these norms and institutions as shaped by America's geography, economic resources, and the self-same diverse peoples.

          Yet, many of our forefathers, such as Benjamin Franklin, believed that only Englishmen could fully live the life developed by their cousins in America.  We now know that they were fundamentally wrong and that Southern European serfs, Catholics of all sorts, ill-mannered Russian Jews, Chinese and Japanese deferential peasants, and women can be transformed into self-governing citizens.  America, thus, truly has been a light onto the world in demonstrat­ing that most men and women, when properly enculturated, corporately constrained, and living under short chains of responsible hierarchy, are capable of self-government.

          America has proved that its culture, and inherited norms and political institutions can be adopted by almost all peoples when they are properly embedded in a receptive host culture.  But based on this same experience, there is no reason to believe that the norms and institutions that America has developed, by intention or more often through happenstance, can work to produce the same results without appropriate cultural antecedents.  As contemporary Japan and Germany suggest, under the right conditions, much can be accomplished in achieving similar results elsewhere when such elements, even if different from our own, are present.

America and Americans Misunderstood

          But for most of our national history and by too many of the right, Americans have been characterized very differently than that found in the portrait sketched here.  Instead, we are told that America is exceptional in being a nation founded not on a particular cultural model, a unique history, or distinct religious and political institutions, but rather on an idea that is universal and readily transplantable to other lands with little concern whether the receiving culture is hospitable or the people prepared to exercise freedom responsibly.  America is believed to embody the idea of individual equality as derived from distant works of political philosophy that can then explain what Americans failed to express in their lived lives or most of their public docu­ments.  In this rendering of American history, Americans are not a people preeminently formed by Reformed and Pietistic religious inheritances and historical English political rights and institu­tions, but instead by a secular theology, a rarified individualis­tic political philosophy, and abstract rights and political institutions.

          This universal language of abstract rights and innate equality, and freedom uncon­strained was, unsurprisingly, viewed with disdain by the brilliant and numerous conservatives from the middle colonies -- men who should be the heros of men and women in this audience -- and embraced enthusiasti­cally by French authors and those Americans, too often errantly celebrated by contemporary conservatives, most influenced by them.  In a perverse way, select American elite (and many of their populist followers) borrowed their self-understanding from the French so that America might become the universalistic model upon which the French and others might build utopian edifices.  Of course, what has regularly strained Franco-American relations has been that their model of America was more French than American and, therefore, an authentic America resting on its historical Protestant and English foundations proved consistently disappointing, as was true then and continues true today -- little has changed. 

Distortions of the Left and Right

          This vision of America is embraced by both theory-intoxicated partisans of the left, but more surprisingly, also by far too many conservatives who otherwise distance themselves from French Revolutionary thought.  Let me suggest, therefore, that a robust understanding of America's exceptional features is endangered not only by those on the cultural and political left, but as well by many on the right.

          On the left stand cosmopolitan liberal internationalists who in recent polls castigated America as one of the most morally defective and dangerous of all nations.  This largely results from Americans' continued adherence to evangelical Protestantism, nationalism, market capitalism, and worst of all a mild version of democratic populism.  From the perspective of European elites, embedded in their post-Catholic internationalism, Europeans sacrificed much of the twentieth century experimenting with nationalism, capitalism, and some measure of democratic populism and, after millions of deaths and untold destruction, they rightly concluded that these experiments were horrible failures.  Accordingly, Western European elite are returning to tried and true ways of (1) elite-controlled internationalism married to (2) a universalistic secularism, and (3) economic dirigisme.  European hostility towards America is readily understandable when framed against American success in creating a level of popular self-government that Europeans can only marvel at or disdain for its admitted vulgarity.  (As an aside, let me urge you to visit Europe as soon and as often as possible for the opportunity to witness cultural suicide is something that demands our attention.  Here you have a people who no longer wish to marry, have children, work much, form religious bodies of faith, or engage in military activities and as such, they should be observed, maybe even pitied, but never emulated.)

          But as suggested above, America's exceptional political culture is not only under attack from the left, but is being diminished by the embrace of friends on the right.  Following the likes of Jefferson and Lincoln, contempo­rary defenders of America who insist on understanding America through the lenses of political texts, are narrowing America's self-understanding and making less comprehensible the rich traditionalism, historical complexities, and Hebraic particularism that has made this country so able to manage diverse pools of immigrants.

          A correct understanding of America cannot be had by having high-school students and teachers memorize the catechisms of political partisans working in ideologically driven think-tanks, or by reading distant and largely irrelevant texts in high political philosophy.  Instead, a vibrant understanding of this nation's fostering of popular self-governance can only be accomplished through the close study of American lived norms and institutions, and their historical development.  John Locke, no matter how masterfully read, cannot explain the changing and variegated responses of thirteen deeply divided colonies to Britain imperial pretensions. 

Towards a New Study of Western Ideas and American Civilization

          What is needed, then, is a turning away from the artificial American landscapes painted by political theorists bereft of the necessary training and methodological tools to explore an America, most importantly, without (1) great works in political philosophy and (2) few, if any, great authors, thus allowing for a return to the intensive and close study of American history.  The authentic features of American history are far more interesting and illuminat­ing than the bizarrely barren histories offered by political theorists overly committed to the undemonstrated importance of great works in political philosophy and little, if any concern, with the means by which such ideas were putatively disseminated.  America's war of separation from Britain, even it cruelly unnecessary, and France's Revolution, for example, offer wonderful materials for better understand­ing the dangers of too rapid a democratization.  Such an account, when fully developed, could guide us in better understanding why the French Revolu­tion, with its universalism and abstract rights, was so unsuccessful and our minimally ambitious war of independence, with its late and not wholly convincing articulation of similar claims, was so much more successful.

          Thus, to understand the genius of America and its unparalleled ability to produce Americans from disparate materials, friends of America must encourage the renewed study of American history and culture, a new study of American Ideas and Civilization.  In fact, at a college like Colgate, where I teach, one of the few areas of study one cannot pursue, is the political history and religion of America's dominant white populations; the sociology, beliefs, values and norms of America's contemporary majority; or the politics of American states and localities.  Accordingly, as the NEH in a recent symposium discovered, what is sorely needed is a renewed focus on the study of American history and culture by scholars unguided by fashionable political sensibilities of the left or right.

          Unfortunate­ly, in spite of the splendid efforts of the NEH, the Liberty Fund, and the Earhart, Bradley and Olin Foundations, vastly more needs to be done; the current turn to insular university centers without permanent lines populated by improperly trained political theorists who confuse overly broad teaching activities with necessarily narrower scholarly ones, is not the answer.  In fact, such centers are destructive in their overemphasis on the guiding role of political philosophy in the creation of America.  Far more pernicious, though, is their propaganda value to politicized university administrations who use them in defending their political agendas before incensed but easily misled alumni.

          A new American studies focusing on Western thought, as differentiated as it truly has been, and American norms and institutions must be moved to the center of university and college curricula and this must occur before the current generation of professional historians, such as the likes in early American history of Professors McDonald, Wood, Bailyn, Morgan, and Greene withdraw from active scholar­ship.  With their prestige and knowledge, following perversely in the footsteps of the pioneers of women's studies programs, they can help shape and lend credibility to the creation of new programs in American studies with appropriate links to and financial incentives for, those working in other fields of study.  As well, increased formation of scholars in regularly constituted departments can be enhanced by means of graduate and early professional support (much of this, thankfully, has already begun).  Only in this way, is the truly exceptional genius of this remarkable accidental or, if you prefer, Providential nation to be better understood, protected, and extended to future generations.  We must, therefore, do everything possible to take back the universities so that our children can be made aware of their most unusual inheritance.