WHAT IS AMERICA?
by Ronald Wright
THE WORLDS BEST HOPE
Some honest men fear ... that this Government, the world's best
hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself. I trust
not.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1801
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an
era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power
of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon
the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a
few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1864
The real war always has been to keep alive the light of
civilisation everywhere.... The end of the world begins not with
the barbarians at the gate, but with the barbarians at the
highest levels of state.
- Ben Okri, 2003
WORLD ORDER
THE SO-CALLED WAR ON TERROR will breed only more terror and more
war. The neglect of the world's poor will lead to chaos. The rape
of the environment will take our civilization to catastrophe. Our
only hope, as great Americans such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin
Roosevelt understood, is to build a world order in which everyone
has a say and shares the rewards. A full belly and a fair hearing
won't stop a fanatic, but they will greatly reduce the number who
become fanatics.
ONLY THE BRITISH DID IT
George Orwell once likened the British nation to a family with
the wrong members in charge. In America the "wrong members" - the
Bushes, Reagan, Nixon and others who have betrayed America's
founding ideals since the days of Andrew Jackson - seem to get
hold of the nation about once every third or fourth presidential
term, the time it takes for memory to fade and a crook or an
incompetent to mature by the glow of nostalgia into a statesman.
As Tocqueville foresaw, the great risk in a democracy is that the
voters can choose tyranny. Sometimes the enemy of the people is
the people. This risk is probably higher in the age of the sound
bite, the televangelist, Fox News and the politics of fear than
it was in the 1830s. Tocqueville may also be right that "nothing
is more opposed to the well-being and the freedom of man than
vast empires." Rome was only slightly and briefly democratic;
Spain never so. The only precedent for a world empire run by a
democracy is Britain - and Britain opted to keep its democracy
and let its empire go.
USA
Since the mid-term elections of 2006, there have been encouraging
signs that the great machine of American democracy is still
capable of repairing itself. In the caucuses and primaries for
the 2008 presidential election, the field of candidates was less
predictable than it had been in half a century. Turnout was
unusually high, especially among the young. Whatever else George
W. Bush may have done, he awakened American voters to the
importance of taking part. Republicans could choose from a
Vietnam War hero, a Mormon millionaire, a Christian
fundamentalist, or a maverick libertarian who agreed with
many on the left that the terrorist threat to America has been
caused by his own nation's foreign policy. Democrats were ready
to make history by nominating either a woman or an African
American (literally).
The Republicans settled on Senator John McCain, whose
forthrightness, courage and military background made him the
candidate most likely to draw swing voters. The Democratic
contest (still open at the time of writing) was hampered by its
embarrassment of riches. In a normal election year, Hillary
Clinton's candidacy alone would be remarkable. But the young
outsider, Barack Obama, managed to inspire a broad range of
voters with what he called (in a book title) the "audacity of
hope." His policies did not differ much from Clinton's, but his
eloquence, intelligence and liberal record - notably as one of
the few senators to vote consistently against the war in Iraqa
roused a national mood for change. Change and hope were soon on
every candidate's lips; even those of McCain, whom George W. Bush
publicly endorsed, and whose inner circle includes William
Kristol and other neoconservative ideologues close to the Bush
White House.
PRESIDENT TO INHERIT
The hope so easily aroused will be far less easy to fulfill. Much
will depend, as always, on which party carries Congress. Whether
it is Backwoods America or Enlightenment America who takes
charge, the new leader will inherit the wreckage of the past
eight years: wars that seem both unwinnable and inescapable, a
ruinous public debt and a financial crisis that may prove to be
the worst since the 1930s. Hope may be a virtue - and it can win
elections - but hoping for the best instead of learning from the
past has often led America astray.
It remains to be seen whether the count in November will be
accurate and fair; whether moderation and thought will prevail
over extremism and personality; whether the outgoing regime will
resist the temptation of exploiting a crisis such as a "terror
alert" (real or not) to throw the election its way., The latter
possibility is less far-fetched than it may seem. In mid-2004,
when George Bush's re-electoral prospects were looking dim, the
White House and the Justice Department actually discussed
postponing the general election because of the "terrorist
threat." Such a thing has never been done in the history of the
United States - not even in world wars.
No matter who wins the keys to the White House in 2008, it would
be a mistake to think that the outgoing presidency was an
aberration and that its like will not be seen again. Politicians
such as George Bush and Dick Cheney - who feed on superstition,
fear and the worst kind of patriotism - are "grounded in a
widespread cultural pattern." Their power base is one half of a
polarized nation. Roughly half the electorate may be expected to
agree with Katherine Harris, who presided over Florida's voting
fiasco in 2000, tried to disenfranchise as many blacks as
possible, and later said that "God is the one who chooses our
rulers." This is Backwoods America talking - or being talked to
(Harris herself is a wealthy banking, fruit and chemical
heiress). Enlightenment America is outraged by such statements,
which cater to a fundamentalist mindset not vastly different from
that of the Taliban, al Qaeda and other extremists whom the
"godly man" in the White House vowed to destroy.
In short, a significant part of the United States still belongs
to an archaic, aggressive and colonial culture that has drifted a
long way from the mainstream of western civilization. If this
judgment seems harsh, consider these departures from the modern
norm. The United States is the only major western nation
* where the death penalty is still used - only China and Iran
outdo America in executions; George Bush alone, while governor of
Texas, issued 152 death warrants;
(This is correct to have - Keith Hunt)
* where one person in 130 is in jail - the world's highest rate
of incarceration (about seven times higher than in Canada or
Europe);
* where automatic pistols and assault rifles are readily on sale;
* where five out of ten think the Creation myth in the Bible is
literally true;
(This is correct to think and believ3e - Keith Hunt)
* where only one citizen in eight holds a passport;
* where there is no universal health care (47 million have no
coverage).
* America also has the widest gap between wealthy and poor, and
the lowest direct taxation. Education is locally funded: poor
districts get poor schools - another problem first identified by
Tocqueville.
* In a recent opinion poll taken for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, 52 percent of those interviewed chose the United
States as "the country that stands out as a negative force in the
world." (The second choice, Iran, came in at 21 percent.) It is
likely that a similar poll taken in Europe, Australia or Latin
America would yield similar results. American prestige has never
been lower; yet, whether we like it or not, the United States is
such a military and economic power that what it does is
everyone's business. All of us, Americans and outsiders, must
live with this land of paradox: a democracy hobbled by theocracy
and plutocracy; a "peace-loving" country at war almost constantly
for four hundred years; a nation both wellmeaning and rapacious,
welcoming and suspicious, devout and materialistic, friendly and
fearful, innocent and corrupt, libertarian and repressive,
individualistic and conformist, generous and grasping, imperial
and parochial, modern and archaic.
THE USA AS WORLD MEMBER
We may still hope for progressive American leadership in the
world, but we can no longer afford the old twentiethcentury habit
of depending on it. Repeatedly seduced by atavistic impulses,
America has become an unreliable member of the world community.
Despite the sorry record of the past eight years, the 2008
elections could still go either way. Too many voters, like the
first President Bush, "don't care what the facts are"; too many
opt for the fast food of the national myth instead of the
sobering nourishment of history - even history so fresh that its
dead are not yet cold.
The tragedy of American diplomacy since 1918 has been that the
United States did learn the hard lessons of world history in the
first half of the twentieth century, and then forgot them in the
second. Over the same period - especially the last four decades -
mankind has begun to grasp that its problems have grown beyond
the purely political. The human boom set off by history's Big
Bang in 1492 is reaching Nature's bounds. The crops, metals and
"free" land of the New World gave western civilization a new
lease on life which has lasted five hundred years, the period I
have called the Columbian Age. Now the lease is up for renewal on
much steeper terms. We are still enjoying the wealthiest times of
all times, but we are eating into Nature's capital instead of
living on her interest, wrecking the very ecosystems on which we
depend." The economic "surplus" is in fact an overdraft -
mortgaged against the future of all, squandered by the few on
luxury and weapons.
QUALITY NOT QUANTITY
If there is to be order, not chaos, in the twenty-first century,
we must build a new world order strong enough to manage the
ending of the boom and make the best of what the Earth provides.
We must opt for quality over quantity, thrift over opulence,
right over might, stability instead of reckless change. These
aims will be extremely hard to fulfill: they require a new
politics, a new economics and a new demographics, all cutting
against the grain of human nature. But there is no other choice.
As the great British historian Eric Hobsbawm warned more than a
decade ago: "The price of failure, that is to say, the
alternative to a changed society, is darkness."
Many Americans, from Rachel Carson to Al Gore, have done their
best to awaken us to what we face. In the 1970s the United States
led the world in environmental standards and protection. But that
momentum has since been lost. Government regulation and
conservation have been demonized, international cooperation
undermined, and the public good abandoned to the despotisms of
the market and the military. For the past eight years in
particular, the American empire has become the problem, not the
solution, a neo-Aztec pyramid of force and greed.
THE WORLD'S BEST HOPE
It is one thing to answer the question "What is America?" with
such unflattering words. We must also ask if there are any other
candidates for the title of "the world's best hope," any better
models for how the future might be run. The former Soviet Union
seems to be returning to a corrupt authoritarianism, tossing its
short-lived liberal democracy on the same midden as its socialist
dreams. The rising powers of India and China, who together make
up more than a third of the human race, seem locked in the
embrace of globalization, repeating the worst mistakes of the
Industrial Revolution: dirty industries, exploited workers,
reckless urban sprawl. Chinese communism has mutated into a
surreal hybrid of dictatorship, state corporatism and chaotic
private enterprise.
THE EUROPEAN UNION
There is one big, bumbling, yet remarkably successful attempt to
find a new way forward: the European Union. For some sixty years
now, Europe has grown away from tribalism, fanaticism and
militarism, and towards a new commonwealth built not on the
threat of war but on its memory. The Union has gelled little by
little, expanding from six members to twenty-seven, with others
on the waiting list. More than a trading alliance but not quite a
federation, this evolving supranational organism now has more
people and a bigger economy than the United States.
The Union's political structure is adaptive, pragmatic and
uncertain. There is still no formal constitution or unified
foreign policy. Per capita income in the richest member nations
is ten times higher than in the poorest - but that is partly
because the EU is admitting the ruins of the Warsaw Pact and the
Balkans. New members with weak economies and civic standards are
being upgraded as they join what began as a rich man's club. The
European Union seems able - or at least willing - to refit whole
countries, while the United States can barely restore New
Orleans.
Europe still has considerable sins: marginalized "guest" workers,
exploitive investment in the Third World and unsustainable levels
of consumption. That said, energy use per head is half that of
the United States and Canada, while the average standard of
living is about the same. A better balance has been struck
between the interests of capital, labour and the environment than
in any other trading bloc. The greatest threat to the European
experiment is Americanization: Friedmanite pressure to weaken
social and environmental laws in the name of business
"efficiency." So far the Union is standing its ground. As Mark
Schapiro wrote recently in Harper's, "Europe is now compelling
other nations' manufacturers to conform to regulations that are
far more protective of people's health than those in the United
States. Europe has emerged not only as the world's leading
economic power but also as one of its moral leaders. Those roles
were once filled by the United States."
Early in 2008, the European Union announced a plan to spend 60
billion (some $90 billion) each year for twelve years to reduce
carbon emissions at least 20 percent by 2020. This reduction
still may not be enough - especially if diehards such as the
United States and Canada fail to join in - but it is leadership.
If carried through, the Europeans' financial commitment to
fighting climate change will rival what America spends fighting
the enemies it has made in Iraq.
Like a rehabilitated criminal, Europe seems to have confronted
the grim realities of its own past. The peace within the Union
since 1945 offers hope that peoples, like individuals, can learn
from their mistakes. Nations who had been killing one another for
centuries are now at work on a shared future. If the human race
as a whole is to avoid a worldwide catastrophe caused by its own
desires, fears and delusions, it will do so along such lines.
The Columbian Age was built on colonial attitudes: on taming the
wilderness, civilizing the savage, and the American dream of
endless plenty. Now there is nothing left to colonize. Half a
millennium of expansion has run out of room. Mankind WILL EITHER
SHARE THE EARTH OR FIGHT OVER IT - a war nobody can win. For
civilization to continue we must civilize ourselves. America,
which helped set the Europeans on their new path half a century
ago, must now examine its own record - the facts, not the myths -
and free itself from the potent yet potentially fatal mix of
forces that created its nation, its empire, and the modern world.
..........
IN THIS BOOK BY RONALD WRIGHT THERE ARE 100 PAGES OF "NOTES."
RONALD WRIGHT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE OF IN GOD, YET THIS
LAST CHAPTER OF HIS BOOK IS VERY PROPHETIC. HE DOES NOT KNOW HE
IS SPEAKING ABOUT END-TIME PROPHECY OF THE BIBLE, IN SAYING
EUROPE IS THE BEST CONFEDERATION OF NATIONS TO LEAD THE WOLRD IN
A NEW AGE OF THE 21ST CENTURY.
AND IN TIME EUROPE WILL BECOME THE GEM OF THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC
WORLD - TRADE AND MIGHT - MILITARY POWER ALSO. SHE WILL BE THE
LAST RESURRECTION OF THE BABYLON HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. A BEAST WHO
WILL HAVE A WOMAN WHORE CHRISTIAN CHURCH GUIDING AND RULING IT. A
FALSE PROPHET ABLE TO WORK MIRACLES AND A POLITICAL/MILITARY
LEADER WILL JOIN ARMS FOR A WHILE. THEY WILL LEAD THIS BEAST
EUROPE TO WAGE WAR ON THE WEATERN WORLD, AND WIN THE BATTLE IN NO
UNCERTAIN TERMS. SHE WILL CRUSH AN ABAB UNION OF NATIONS - THE
KING OF THE SOUTH. SHE WILL TRY AND DEFEAT THE EASTERN POWERS OF
RUSSIA, CHINA, INDIA, JAPAN ETC. TO RULE THE WORLD.
THE EAST WILL COUNTER ATTACK AND IT WILL ALL LEAD TO JESUS THE
MESSIAH COMING BACK TO STOP THE WAR THAT WOULD INDEED KILL EVERY
HUMAN ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH IF HE DID NOT COME TO STOP IT.
JESUS, WITH THE HOLY ANGELS AND THE RESURRECTED SAINTS, WILL
FIGHT THE WORLD'S ARMIES AT ARMAGEDDON, AND BRING AT LAST THE NEW
AGE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
THEN IN THAT AGE, THE PEOPLES OF ISRAEL (MOST OF THE WESTERN
WORLD) AND THE JEWS OF THE HOUSE OF JUDAH, WILL BE ONE PEOPLE
ONCE MORE, AND WILL BE GIVEN A NEW HEART, A HEART WITH THE SPIRIT
OF GOD. THEY WILL AT LAST BE THE LIGHT TO THE WORLD OF GOD'S
RIGHTEOUSNESS, AS THEY WERE ORIGINALLY CALLED TO BE (DEUTERONOMY
4). IT WILL BE A NEW AGE OF PEACE, WHERE NATIONS WILL NOT LEARN
WAR ANY MORE. WHERE THE LION SHALL DWELL WITH THE LAMB, AND EAT
STAW WITH THE OX. FINALLY THE AGE TO COME WILL HAVE ARRIVED,
SPOKEN ABOUT BY ALL THE HOLY PROPHETS SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN.
GOD SPEED THAT DAY!!!
Keith Hunt
