[Marxism] The Faith that Supports U.S. Violence (fwd)

[John Enyang <x03002f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Faith that Supports U.S. Violence:
Comparative Reflections on the Arrogance of Empire

by Herbert P. Bix

In the second year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq many people in the U.S.
still cling to a political tradition that confuses actually existing
American society "with the ideal society that would fulfill human
destiny."1 They tend to think of the United States not as the polyarchy
and global empire that it is, but as the incarnation of "freedom and
democracy," or at least the closest approximation to the democratic ideal
that exists. Whatever their assessment of current U.S. foreign policy,
they regard their country as the Promised Land, the embodiment of Western
virtue, the deliverer of freedom to oppressed peoples.

Many see it, too, as the only national state that wages perpetual war for
the global good. From starting a war to setting aside the prohibitions of
international law and morality, the U.S. is entitled to do, beyond its
borders, what it wants when it wants, provided the action can be justified
in utilitarian terms of saving American lives and the U.S. Congress goes
along with it.2

Whether we call this absolute veneration of "America" national
essentialism or millennialism, whether we see it as the outlook of a
superpower or the prerogative of a self-designated Chosen People, at its
root lies "the belief that [American] history, under divine guidance, will
bring about the triumph of Christian principles" and eventually the
emergence of "a holy utopia."3 Such faith in the unique moral destiny of
the United States may be held independently of Christian beliefs. Its
historical origins, however, trace back to colonial New England, and
beyond that to the Bible; and it is omnipresent in every part of the
country, even though its strongest regional base presently lies in the
South and West.

Long before the birth of the Republic, ideas of chosenness have been at
the heart of a complicated ideology of rule that has resonated powerfully
in American society.4 Both the Puritan Calvinists of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony and the Protestant millenarians of the early 19th century conceived
of the United States as an exceptional nation, chosen by God to be the
acme of freedom and to redeem humankind. As historian Ernest Tuveson
observed during the Vietnam War-era, the idea of the "redeemer nation"
through which God operates is also the foundation of the notion of
continuous warfare between 'good' and 'evil' people.5 Virtually every
politician who exploits the religious emotions of people in the U.S. for
the purpose of waging war draws on these ideas and images, embodied in
religious and secular texts.

Full: <http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=149>

Links to other articles by the same author are provided at:
<http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=341>



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism