In “Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion,” David Gelernter, a Yale computer-science professor and a versatile and prolific public intellectual, makes a provocative claim: Such professions of faith express “belief in . . . a religious idea of enormous, transporting power.” Indeed, he contends that America “is a biblical republic and Americanism a biblical religion.”
This does not in any way detract, Gelernter is quick to clarify, from America’s commitment to religious freedom: Liberty, democracy and equality constitute the American Creed [bold mine-DL]. And Americanism entails a duty to not only realize these universal ideas at home, but to spread them around the world. ~Peter Berkowitz
It’s simply appalling in so many ways that I am at first overwhelmed. In the first place, the title is a little baffling (why the fourth?), until you realise that he must mean to include Islam as the third great “Western” religion, at which point we can already take it as a given that words mean nothing to the author. Then there is this bit from his book’s description:
Gelernter argues that what we have come to call “Americanism” is in fact a secular version of Zionism. Not the Zionism of the ancient Hebrews, but that of the Puritan founders who saw themselves as the new children of Israel, creating a new Jerusalem in a new world. Their faith-based ideals of liberty, equality, and democratic governance had a greater influence on the nation’s founders than the Enlightenment.
It is hard to say which is the worse part. You have this business about “secular Zionism” that is at once religious and not religious side by side with misrepresentations about ” faith-based ideals of…democratic governance” when referring to 17th century Calvinists along with a New England-centric spin on the whole of American identity, as if the Randolphs, Jeffersons, Morrises, Washingtons, Madisons and Pinckneys of the early republican era were guided by the zeal of New England Puritanism. Whether or not I dislike many things in the Enlightenment heritage of many of the Whig ideas at the core of the political philosophy of many of the Founders (and I do), I cannot pretend that it played second fiddle to some mythical Zionism. To the extent that this did exist at all and influenced American political life, the phenomenon he describes has very little to do with the establishment of the Republic and much more to do with the “refounding” or rather destruction of the same in the War. If this Americanism has as three of its patrons Lincoln, TR and Wilson, the question is not whether it is dangerous (since it clearly is), but whether it has so entered into the mainstream of American politics that it cannot now be expelled.
If “liberty, democracy and equality” constitute “the American Creed,” I am glad to say that many of the more esteemed Americans in our early history were only two-thirds or even one-third believers in it.
Then there is another item from the book description:
If America is a religion, it is a religion without a god, and it is a global religion. People who believe in America live all over the world. Its adherents have included oppressed and freedom-loving peoples everywhere—from the patriots of the Greek and Hungarian revolutions to the martyred Chinese dissidents of Tiananmen Square.
I don’t know what to call this except insane. There was another global godless political religion that sought to spread all over creation. Perhaps Gelernter has heard of it. As its fate reminds us, the Lord does not suffer such blasphemies to long endure. You cannot serve both God and Americanism.
This claim about the other peoples of the world is also shockingly presumptuous, even for someone of Gelernter’s policy views. It is as close to someone saying publicly that “inside everyone there is an American trying to get you” as I have ever seen in real life. This idea is often implied in what many democratists say, and it can be inferred from many of Mr. Bush’s major speeches, but most have the good sense not to say such things quite so bluntly. Quite obviously, the patriots of the Greek and Hungarian revolutions “believed” in Greece and Hungary, if we must use this language of “believing in” countries. (The physical places exist whether or not anyone believes in them, and the cultural distinctiveness of Greek and Hungarian would exist whether or not any political revolutionary ever “believed” in a national cause.) The latter made the mistake of trusting the shaky promises of foolish American ”rollback” advocates, but the heroes of 1956 did not “believe in America” or in Americanism. If they believed in an -ism, it might have been Hungarianism or something like it. Give Gelernter credit for a certain bizarre consistency: if all it takes to be an American is to buy into a few tired political slogans, anyone who embraces those slogans really must effectively be an American or at least an Americanist.
Then there is this last bit, which is just too funny:
Gelernter also shows that anti-Americanism, particularly the virulent kind that is found today in Europe, is a reaction against this religious conception of America on the part of those who adhere to a rival religion of pacifism and appeasement.
Or it might have something to do with prudential objections to policies that are perceived as dangerous and misguided. However, as we can all see, that’s obviously far too outlandish of an interpretation, so the “religion of appeasement” explanation will have to do. Does that mean that anti-Americans in Latin America and the Near East also belong to the broad church of appeasement? Hugo Chavez, pacifist–you heard it from Gelernter first! No wonder the description calls the argument “startlingly original.” I am startled that it even got published.
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July 16th, 2007 at 3:22 am
Herman
Hugo Chavez, pacifist–you heard it from Gelernter first!
Bad day for the publisher’s intern or whoever wrote that book description. Given the way these writings usually read, Chavez is not a practitioner of appeasement or pacifist, but merely an object of such things.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Kosmo
The book is shockingly bad–so bad, in fact, that Michael Novak (he of “On Two Wings” fame) refused to blurb it. It is historically ignorant, poorly written, deeply self-contradictory, and pervasively illogical. I should know; I had the displeasure of reviewing it for a certain conservative journal of opinion. (Alas, the exigencies of publication required softening some of my more pointed criticisms.)
And yet, having said that, I should think that Mr. Larison would rather like it. “Americanism” reads like an overblown paleocon satire of neoconservatism: the Founding as universalistic, Lincoln as global democratizer, Wilson as neocon extraordinaire. Another way of putting it, I suppose, would be that Gelernter is to Larison as D’Souza is to Sullivan. In both cases, a bombastic argument provides the rope for its own hanging.
July 16th, 2007 at 10:35 am
daninardmore
At least all these “ideas” are gathered together in one place where they can be shot down with one good ten-gauge blast.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Carter
I thought I heard a snippet of him being interviewed on the radio today and explaining the three religions are Judiasm, Catholicism, and Protestantism. But I’m not sure.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Daniel Larison
Thanks for all the comments, especially this last one clarifying the title. I guess I jumped the gun on the “fourth religion” language, but it is certainly misleading if he does mean to refer to Catholics and Protestants as having different religions. The title gave off a whiff of Karen Armstrong, and I assumed that this was a nod towards “Abrahamic” ecumenism. I expect Protestants would be surprised to discover that they belong to an entirely different religion from other Christians.
The difference between Gelernter and D’Souza may be that essentially no one agrees with D’Souza’s latest book, while Sullivan’s thesis relies on the claim that D’Souza’s sorts of ideas are the essence of modern conservatism. Gelernter’s book does receive high praise from some of the usual suspects, so it is possible to see in at least certain prominent neocons real sympathy for this most outlandish of arguments. Taken one by one, you can find parallels in other writers; Gelernter has brought all of these crackpot notions together into one place and so made them all seem even more incredible as a result. Gelernter’s thesis about America does seem to me to be implicit in many of the things many neocons write and say.
Even so, it has been fairly rare to find anyone quite so bold or mad as to declare America a religion. This takes the “American creed” idea to its logical conclusion, of course, since religions, not countries, have creeds, but it struck me that many credal interpretations of American identity hinged on not taking the creed idea too far (the credal nation types tended not to be terribly fierce adherents of credal Christianity and wouldn’t want there to be too much confusion).
July 16th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Grumpy Old Man
Gelernter’s thesis is Exhibit A on the terrible lostness of a certain type of American Jew–intelligent, assimilated, successful, and estranged from traditional Judaism.
The Bolshevik God, and its Trotskyist offshoot have failed. Israel is an unpleasant provincial backwater. Watered-down Judaism proves as empty as its watered-down Christian analogues. Freud, of course, died before Marx.
Sadly, the “anything” that the Gelernters seem to believe in after ceasing (apparently) to believe in God is messianic democratism.
The Pope’s restoration of the prayer for the conversion of the Jews is quite timely. Lord, have mercy.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:05 am
jsinger008
Since I’ve always liked Gelernter’s writings, I thought I would wade (knee-deep? chin-deep?) into a malestorm of approbrium and defend him on a couple of points:
1) First, I understand Daniel’s point about “esteemed Americans in our early history” not necessarily buying into the whole “liberty, democracy and equality” formula; and yet depending on how those terms are defined I don’t think it is a stretch to say those ideas animated our Founders (e.g. if you assume African slaves don’t ‘count’ as equals, then the desire for religious liberty, taxation with representation and equality before the law seem to be shared by many in the Founding generation);
2) Second, it is telling that Daniel mocks the inclusion of Greeks and Hungarians in Gelernter’s list of foreign people who “believe” in Americanism but not the Chinese. As I’m sure Daniel knows, the protesters in Tiananmen Square were at least partially inspired by certain ideas that at least in their minds are associated today with America (symbolically represented by the Statue of Liberty, which ironically was turned into the symbol of anit-Communist resistance at the new memorial in Washington, D.C.) Are these ideas exclusively American? Of course not, although it would be interesting to read whether or not this is the argument Gelernter is making. The Chinese example also makes me wonder if the Greeks and Hungarians were also similarly inspired at least partially by what America meant in the context of liberty and freedom.
3) Finally, everything I read about Israel suggests that it is a vibrant and thriving society; but perhaps Grumpy has recently returned from a trip there and has a personal horror story or two to share about his experience. I also think Gelernter is a devout Orthodox Jew, although again, perhaps Grumpy knows something I don’t.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Grumpy Old Man
Perhaps I personalized my comment too much as far as Mr. Gelernter is concerned. I know little, beyond what he has written, about his religious beliefs and haven’t delved into his computer science, which I well might not understand if I did. If I gave a different impression and turn out to be mistaken about his personal beliefs and practices, I hope he and readers will forgive me.
Like Gelernter, I’m respectful (though often critical) of American institutions and liberty and grateful for the opportunity they have afforded me and others like me. Turning Americanism into a religion and propagating it, sometimes by force, upon culturally alien and unpromising soil, does seem a bridge too far, and how treating American institutions as a religion as opposed to a convenient, historically contingent arrangement is consistent with Orthodoxy, Jewish or Christian, is beyond me.
I’ll save the autobiography for my own blog when the time is ripe, but I have found little fulfillment in any of the usual nostrums sought out by those with secular upbringings such as mine. Of all sinners, as the Orthodox liturgy puts it, I am chief.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Daniel Larison
Thanks for the additional comments. I take your points, Jeff, and I think it is legitimate and accurate to say that the War for Independence may have inspired other liberal revolutionaries in later periods. Certainly, the protesters in Tiananmen were looking to America, among other places, for their inspiration; Liberty is, however, neither an idea nor a statuesque image limited to the American context. As a personified concept, Liberty is at least as old as Hellenistic times. I would have mentioned the Chinese in the post, but I thought the point had been made. The book description, assuming it is an accurate reflection of the book’s thesis, makes an extraordinary claim. Look at it again:
“People who believe in America live all over the world. Its adherents have included oppressed and freedom-loving peoples everywhere—from the patriots of the Greek and Hungarian revolutions to the martyred Chinese dissidents of Tiananmen Square.”
In other words, the book apparently claims that freedom-loving peoples are inherently Americanists or “believers” in the religion that is America. This is simply crazy stuff. The book seems to be making the claim that you cannot love freedom without “believing” in America and that anyone who loves these political principles is inducted into the religion of America. On the contrary, there is no necessary connection between the two at all.
In Europe, the French Revolution was the far more immediate model of liberal and democratic politics, France was the source of many of the ideas embraced by 19th century liberals *and* specifically in the Greek case France was the incubator and educator of more than a few Westernised Greek intellectuals and political leaders who were important to the actual Greek War of Independence. But it would be a mistake to dub “liberte, equalite et fraternite” as “Francisme” or something of the kind and say that the Greeks were embracing “Francisme” when they rebelled against the Sultan.
These struggles are above all patriotic and local struggles. They receive a patina of Western liberal rationalisations, but they are in the end struggles of peoples to throw off those who are held to be outside oppressors. There were liberal elements to the Greek War for Independence, but there were many other participants in the war on the Greek side who were interested in Greek nationality and tradition. In the end, my greatest objection to this interpretation of Greek and Hungarian struggles for independence is that it presumes to put America at the center of other nations’ histories in a way that seems to me to violate and intrude upon these histories.
The Founders were, almost to a man, opposed to democracy. They preferred a mixed government as a way to avoid the extremes of any one of the three classic types of regime. To say that a democratic ideal was somehow present at the Founding is to read back later developments into the beginnings of the Republic and the colonial period. It’s simply not correct. You can either cheer or deplore the eventual introduction of universal suffrage and mass democracy in this country, but you cannot pretend that it existed or was fully welcome in the period before the 1820s. Equality is a bit trickier, since there is great concern to secure equal protection before the law, but egalitarianism takes on a great many forms; securing equality is, by its nature, opposed to the securing of liberty. Since men are not actually equal, egalitarianism must involve some measure of restricting the liberty of some for the benefit of others. There may even be good reasons to do this, but it comes at the expense of liberty. Gelernter’s trinity of principles as a description of actual political views of early Americans does not work. That these things later became important is more plausible, but Gelernter seems to be arguing that this trinity of principles goes back to the very beginnings. This does not really hold up. On another point, the focus on the Puritans and New England neglects a rather large part of the rest of America–this is the America that must be run down, written out and ignored if “Americanism” as Gelernter describes it can be attributed to any period before the early 20th century.