Thomas Klau: 'Cult of the Founding Fathers' is Obscuring America's Worldview
[Thomas Klau is a columnist for Financial Times Deutschland.]
Translated By Ulf Behncke
At the beginning of United States history - exactly 400 years ago in Virginia and a little later in New England - sectarianism, a spirit of adventure, religion and greed drove immigrants to America. In the 19th Century, escaping poverty became the dominating motive for migration, and it still is. Others even more desperate had no other choice: they came to save life and limb from persecution.
To this day, all of this determines the USA, shapes her political language and justifies her self assuredness, as is evidenced by the way she so generously admits legal as well as illegal migrants. But only to a certain degree does the story of migration - that constant and noble pride at being a place of refuge - explain the perception that America has of itself.
FROM WASHINGTON TO WAYNE
For generations, Europe has gotten accustomed to regarding the United States as a young nation. At the same time in the midst of our lethargy, we tend to forget that the United States is the oldest of today's existing republics. And it was the pioneer myth that more than anything else shaped how the United States was perceived by the outside world: John Wayne superimposed on George Washington.
But the U.S. draws its pride and the perception of its special calling, at least as much from the achievements of its founding fathers. This manifests itself in monuments like the Jefferson Memorial in the capital, Washington DC, and in the way they carefully maintain the physical condition of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, both of which are ranked as nearly divine in the United States.
For the people of the United States, respect for their own heritage is undoubtedly a source of strength and stability. It helped them endure the upheaval of four dreadful years of civil war which cost the lives of three percent of the population. It also kept the United States from succumbing to darkness in its domestic affairs, even during those times that the authority of the Supreme Court was ignored.
Brazil and Argentina, Canada and Australia are also immigrant nations. The Brazilian melting pot is perhaps even more successful than that of North America. But it is in the USA alone that one finds a historically uninterrupted relationship to a group of founding fathers, amongst whom were the best political philosophers and policymakers of their time and our civilization. What Jefferson and Adams, Hamilton and Washington accomplished and conceived of is valid to this day: The United States is more directly connected with the great age of the Enlightenment than any other nation in this world...
... And while it is a pillar of American democracy, that healing strength that is founded in the cult of the founding fathers has a rather peculiar consequence: The intentions of these political actors of two centuries ago are the ultimate touchstone for conditions in the United States today; and to this day it is this backward-perspective that to a great extent influences America’s perceptions of the rest of the world.
Americans are hardly conscious of this, and since they never discuss it, the phenomenon is hardly registered in Europe. But anyone who listens to the way Americans discuss themselves is surprised at America's implicit self-comparison, less with real foreign countries than to another, mythical, abroad. And it's this imaginary abroad which is manifestly ruled by an unrestrained monarch where no constitutional court dominates state and government, and where people are not equal and less free than the citizens of the much-blessed United States.
Read entire article at WorldMeets.us (via Financial Times Deutschland)
Translated By Ulf Behncke
At the beginning of United States history - exactly 400 years ago in Virginia and a little later in New England - sectarianism, a spirit of adventure, religion and greed drove immigrants to America. In the 19th Century, escaping poverty became the dominating motive for migration, and it still is. Others even more desperate had no other choice: they came to save life and limb from persecution.
To this day, all of this determines the USA, shapes her political language and justifies her self assuredness, as is evidenced by the way she so generously admits legal as well as illegal migrants. But only to a certain degree does the story of migration - that constant and noble pride at being a place of refuge - explain the perception that America has of itself.
FROM WASHINGTON TO WAYNE
For generations, Europe has gotten accustomed to regarding the United States as a young nation. At the same time in the midst of our lethargy, we tend to forget that the United States is the oldest of today's existing republics. And it was the pioneer myth that more than anything else shaped how the United States was perceived by the outside world: John Wayne superimposed on George Washington.
But the U.S. draws its pride and the perception of its special calling, at least as much from the achievements of its founding fathers. This manifests itself in monuments like the Jefferson Memorial in the capital, Washington DC, and in the way they carefully maintain the physical condition of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, both of which are ranked as nearly divine in the United States.
For the people of the United States, respect for their own heritage is undoubtedly a source of strength and stability. It helped them endure the upheaval of four dreadful years of civil war which cost the lives of three percent of the population. It also kept the United States from succumbing to darkness in its domestic affairs, even during those times that the authority of the Supreme Court was ignored.
Brazil and Argentina, Canada and Australia are also immigrant nations. The Brazilian melting pot is perhaps even more successful than that of North America. But it is in the USA alone that one finds a historically uninterrupted relationship to a group of founding fathers, amongst whom were the best political philosophers and policymakers of their time and our civilization. What Jefferson and Adams, Hamilton and Washington accomplished and conceived of is valid to this day: The United States is more directly connected with the great age of the Enlightenment than any other nation in this world...
... And while it is a pillar of American democracy, that healing strength that is founded in the cult of the founding fathers has a rather peculiar consequence: The intentions of these political actors of two centuries ago are the ultimate touchstone for conditions in the United States today; and to this day it is this backward-perspective that to a great extent influences America’s perceptions of the rest of the world.
Americans are hardly conscious of this, and since they never discuss it, the phenomenon is hardly registered in Europe. But anyone who listens to the way Americans discuss themselves is surprised at America's implicit self-comparison, less with real foreign countries than to another, mythical, abroad. And it's this imaginary abroad which is manifestly ruled by an unrestrained monarch where no constitutional court dominates state and government, and where people are not equal and less free than the citizens of the much-blessed United States.