The American Spirit . . .
First of all, I should say that I've never liked this essay . . . it lacks something (though, perhaps, that's its greatest asset). This essay is really an ending to a longer examination of religion and freedom, (a la Tocqueville/Rousseau) in the US. In light of the religious messages conveyed in the President's speech . . . this essay seems uneasily applicaple:
. . . .Tolerance has always been a silent issue for Americans, but rarely have they had to test its bounds. It has never made them uneasy. The tolerant civil religion encouraged by both Tocqueville and Rousseau as the necessary requirement for the establishment of a liberal democracy seems to have guided America safely through two centuries. Yet, have the circumstances of the modern world begun to reveal the limitations of civil religion? Tocqueville’s writing suggests that he is not unaware of the contradiction inherent to civil religion, but despite his recognition of it, he never considers the paradox to be detrimental to society. Ultimately, he suggests to his readers that democratic nations depend on religion and self-made law in order to guarantee freedom. This leaves modern readers left to wonder whether the Tocqueville-Rousseau solution will be a sufficient answer for an uncertain future?
Modern philosophy and the intellectual enlightenment of the past few centuries have effectively scraped off the patina of the early colonial interlude in American development. Yet in looking back, one is compelled to admire a people who braved death to make “an idea triumph.” The early New Englanders, devoid of pretension and filled with the sort of contentment that possibility brings, founded a society that was incapable of buying itself a slave. No citizen was forced to enter into the contract under false pretenses and because of this no one harbored a desire to opt out. All spiritual and political needs were fulfilled.
But the Americans that Tocqueville so admired no longer exist. Modern Americans no longer adhere to the Puritan doctrines of the past; they are the product of a strict religion that they no longer practice. Already one begins to see that the religious paradox has infected the American spirit. Religion, which made American democratic freedom possible, is no longer able to sustain itself against the demands of the modern world. This is even more apparent in the 21st century than it was in Tocqueville’s day. One need only consider the out of control commitment of the Americans to social, cultural, and religious diversity to see that they are no longer fully capable of sustaining the balance between religion and freedom. Any claims to a current harmony between these two spirits are no more than a sort of sophistry.
Religions that preach the indefinite perfectibility of man are formally unclear about religious (let alone political) virtues. In a time that grapples with the shaky effects of such religions and the advancement of new, more worldly and concessionary faiths, one wonders how and why the Americans can remain true to their principle religious and political virtues? Or perhaps it is accurate to say that they are loyal to neither? If Americans were truly prudent in their political virtues, their need for religion would be satiated by the definitive answers they received from the law. Likewise, if they were a genuinely religious based society, politics and law could never speak as openly to their hearts as revelation; they would have no need for a political community.
Daily, each American bears witness to the struggle between religious freedom and political freedom brought on by a fundamental disagreement between liberals and conservatives. Tocqueville’s own text is touted by both sides as the definitive answer to the respective sides of their disagreement. However, one should be painfully aware that the Tocqueville-Rousseau solution lacks a definitive answer. The circumstances of the modern world have made the paradox of American civil religion transparent. This transparency has led some Americans to see that civil religion is caught in an almost circular argument. The Americans are forced to ask themselves whether it is religion that supports freedom and equality or whether it is political freedom and equality that supports religion? Both sides understand the argument but are silent as to the answer. It remains to be seen whether the current inconsistency between religion and freedom will be able to resolve itself. One certainty though, which Tocqueville does remind his reader of, is that the burden of decades to come will be bore on the backs of democratic nations. America will bear the greatest burden of all because its struggles will be internal. America’s greatest war will be fought intellectually. To sustain itself in the future it must discover what it was, what it is, and what it can be.
posted by sac at 9/15/2005 08:39:00 PM
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