The Bourne Identity
A hundred years ago, Randolph Bourne was a hot property—an intellectual wunderkind who was taking the American intellectual scene by storm. Bourne was the complete package: brilliant, charismatic, filled with social energy, and exquisitely attuned to the moment. Bourne’s essays appeared in leading periodicals like The Atlantic, The Dial, and The New Republic back when magazines set the American political and cultural agenda. Admirers considered him a visionary, an exponent of a humane new cosmopolitanism. True freedom and real democracy, he believed and exemplified, implied a spirit of tolerance, generosity, and creativity consummated in what he called “the beloved community.”
Barely two years after writing these words, Bourne became persona non grata. His offense involved not personal scandal—no violence, fraud, embezzlement, or sexual shenanigans—but something much, much worse: when the climate of opinion abruptly shifted, he refused to follow. They zigged, he zagged. While other members of the New York intelligentsia were swooning at the prospect of waging a war to end all wars that would make the world safe for democracy, Bourne dared to dissent. For this, they shut him out of virtually all the journals in which he had been publishing, and all respectable outlets generally.
A year after his ostracism, Randolph Bourne was dead at thirty-two, felled by the terrible influenza pandemic of 1918. That his premature passing cut short a career so full of promise must remain an eternal cause of regret. That in the brief time allotted him Bourne courageously stuck to his principles should elicit gratitude. In the intervening century, his critique of Woodrow Wilson’s war has acquired greater salience. At Cineplexes and in pulp fiction, the derring-do of Jason Bourne may entertain, but it’s the insights of the all-but forgotten Randolph, the prophet without a Hollywood deal, that remind us who we once were and aspired to become.
Crucial among those insights is the imperative of distinguishing between country and state. To Bourne, the former is benign, the latter anything but. Country, in Bourne’s lexicon, is nearly synonymous with civilization. It implies a way of life, based on shared language, customs, and culture. The modern state, by contrast, is a “repository of force.” It exists for one purpose alone: to impose its will. Toward that end, the state engages in a never-ending quest for power, conducted chiefly at the country’s expense—taxing, policing, stoking rumors of war. The country flourishes in an environment that permits and even encourages nonconformity. The state seeks compliance, deference, and regimentation. ...