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?
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