American Exceptionalism -- or not

The people of the United States are, in their majority at least, suffering the effects of a severe economic recession.  We don't like it.  We're not used to it.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  We are taught that for a lot of reasons the United States is the world's leader in prosperity, in academic achievement, in technology, in the pursuit of happiness, in everything.  Some of that may have been true at one time.  It isn't any more.

Let us examine the reasons we believe lie at the heart of why we are so much more successful than the rest of the world, leaving aside for the moment the question of whether in fact we are.  Publicly, a lot of our political leaders aver that our peculiar blend of democratic government and free-market capitalism is responsible for everything good and great in the US.  Our European cousins, late to democratic political institutions and suspiciously agnostic on the question of capitalism, just don't have the constituent fundamental elements to be Number 1.  We're Number 1.  More perniciously, many people believe that prosperity and power in the US are due to American Exceptionalism, specifically, Divine Favor.  Both of these views are, of course, wrong.

If either democracy or free markets were required for world economic domination, well, then China would not be running the show today.  But it is.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for democracy.  I just don't think it's necessarily good for business.  What is good for business, and what America had in spades right up until (I guess) the 1970s, is resources and infrastructure.  Until about the turn of the 19th century, the US was just another 2-bit player in the world.  We were mostly agrarian.  We had moderately successful trade, more successful with our western hemisphere neighbors than with Europe.  We were doing all right.  Then came the Industrial Revolution.  Practically overnight we became an international powerhouse.  Why?  Were babies born in the United States automatically endowed with superior faculties relative to their (literal) cousins born elsewhere?  Certainly social mobility was greater in the US than in Europe but I doubt that accounts for Cornelius Vanderbilt.  What does is coal and steel and timber and space.  That, I think, is what made the US strong.  Democracy doesn't hurt, but I don't think it helps that much.  Ready access to resources, cheap land to build on, infrastructure to transport goods, these are what really allow economic development to  flourish.  If the United States had been less endowed with the basic raw materials of industry, I don't believe our democracy would have propelled us to trade dominance.  We would still have been a free people, sufficient unto ourselves, secure in our pursuit of happiness.  We would have been, as Jefferson had hoped we would be, more like Sweden and less like Rome.  That I think is the rational view.

American Exceptionalism is, on the face of it, the irrational view.  America is great because it was ordained by God that we should be.  Where to start?  Did God favor the geography or the people?  If the geography, then would the natives have somehow become an economic powerhouse with stone tools if the Europeans hadn't come?  If the people, how are we different for having immigrated than if we had stayed in Europe and Asia and Africa?  But most egregiously, American Exceptionalism fails the categorical imperative, enunciated by Emmanuel Kant.  Simply put, something is morally right if it would be fine if everyone did it.  Now, loving one's country, or society, or clan is charming in the way that small children playing big music is charming.  But if we insist that the world is broken if we, ourselves, are not the absolute masters of it, then what if Colombians felt that way (and why shouldn't they?), what if Chinese felt that way, what if Angolans felt that way?  Politicians of every stripe are fulminating at the notion, no, reality, that China dominates the world economy.  Why?  Was it horrible for Austria when the US dominated the world economy?  Why should it be horrible for the US when China dominates?  Can everyone dominate?  Congress went ballistic when Air Bus won an Air Force procurement.  Why?  Boeing wins European competitions all the time.  Should France be worried that the US is building their military planes?  Then why must they not build ours?

Whatever became of the Thracians?

The other day, for some reason I found my self wondering how Jews became so thoroughly dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, and how, moreover, we remained Jews.  Take the Thracians for instance.  Why weren't they sent to Iberia, or Caledonia?  If they were, why aren't they still Thracians?  Curiously enough, since I almost never consider religion a rational reason for anything, I think it was the peculiar mono-theism of the Jews that is responsible.  Consider:

The Roman Empire is expanding over Europe, Mesopotamia, North Africa.  Everywhere they go, there are, of course, people living there already.  While these people obviously don't consider themselves Roman, they don't really have all that much attachment to their own rulers either.  They are living under more or less totalitarian despots who, while they probably speak the same language as the population, are not governing by the consent of the governed in any real way.  So, why not the Romans?  Now they come to Judea.  The population believes, universally I think, that the land, from Golan to Goshen, is theirs because God gave it to Isaac.  Their rulers are anointed by God.  While the Roman emperor is actually divine, the Romans have so many gods that one more or less has got to be pretty insignificant.  Furthermore, the Jews, because they have only this one god, and because Moses told them that this god said so, are pretty intolerant of gentiles, especially gentile overlords (1st commandment).  As long as there are Jews in Judea, they're going to want to run things, especially the temple.  As long as there are Jews in Judea, there will be rebellion.  We're just that ornery!  Not so the Thracians.  For them, it's just a change of uniform, a change of currency, no change at all, really.  What to do about the Jews?  Well, send them to Iberia of course.  Send them to Germania.  Send them to Scythia.  Let them practice their peculiar religion.  Let them long for Jerusalem.  Let them, in the mean time, establish commerce with the far-flung reaches of the empire.

The Romans come and go.  Likewise the Visigoths and the Saxons.  The peculiar residents who were never actually "from there" even though they've always "been there" remain.  And all because we couldn't be made to play well with the other children.

We still don't play well, apparently.  How else to explain why the settlement question is so intractable?  When the United States annexed parts of what had been Mexico,  the people living in those places, who had been Mexican, who had considered themselves Mexican, who spoke the language of Mexico, did not feel like they had to leave.  They did not, nor did the Mexican government, nor did the US government, think that it was impossible for them to remain in their settlements while the political boundaries changed around them.  So there are Jewish settlements in Palestine?  Let them become part of the Palestinian state.  Why not?  Because, I suppose, we're just not Thracians.