Keep Yourselves From Idols

Daniel Larison writes:

“In his Senate victory speech, Republican megastar Marco Rubio announced that “America is the single greatest nation in all of human history. A place without equal in the history of all mankind” because “almost every other place in the world…what you were going to be when you grow up was determined for you.” Almost every other place in the world? From China to India to Brazil, hundreds of millions of people are rising economically in ways their parents could scarcely have imagined, in part because their governments are investing in infrastructure in the way the United States did in the late nineteenth century. The American dream of upward mobility is alive and well, just not in America. And rather than looking at what those other countries are doing right, the Republicans have taken refuge in an anti-government ideology premised on the lunatic notion that America is the only truly free and successful country in the world.” ~Peter Beinart

If there has been one unifying theme to the GOP’s attacks over the last two years, it seems to me that the “lunatic notion” Beinart identifies is it. For the purposes of his own argument, Beinart exaggerates the extent of “anti-government ideology” in all of this, but there is no question that Republicans have sought refuge in a form of American exceptionalism that has remarkably little to do with the real America. Republicans have made a defense of “American exceptionalism” the thing that is supposed to distinguish them from Obama, and in order to make that claim they have defined American exceptionalism to mean an absurd overconfidence in the political and economic uniqueness and supremacy of America. To take pride in economic opportunity available here, they feel that they must deny that it exists elsewhere. Lacking answers for, or even awareness of, the growing social and economic stratification in their own country, they project it to “almost every other place in the world.” Rubio’s CPAC speech in February marked him as one of the strongest advocates of this notion, which he repeated again in his victory speech last night. It didn’t matter to Rubio then that the U.S. actually lags behind a great many industrialized nations in terms of social mobility, and it still doesn’t matter.

I have cited the old Chesteron quote about patriotism from The Napoleon of Notting Hill many times before, but it bears repeating:

“The patriot never, under any circumstances, boasts of the largeness of his country, but always, and of necessity, boasts of its smallness.”

The sort of American exceptionalism that has become the defining feature of Republican rhetoric over at least the last two years seems to require “boasting of the largeness” of America at every turn. This is not healthy admiration for one’s country, but an idolatry that prevents its devotees from seeing things as they are. Last night greatly empowered that idolatry.