Liberals often like to make fun of the conservative doctrine of American “exceptionalism” (and rightly so, for a lot of reasons). There’s a sense, though, in which conservatives are somewhat perversely right: America is exceptional, or at least unusual, among its first world peers. We, perhaps more than any other nation, treasure ignorance and bull-headed foolishness as something to be proud of and as our secret strategy for success. And it’s not just recent history and the rise of Fox News either.
I blame Martin Luther.
Luther’s biggest contribution to history, for good or ill, was his notion of sola scriptura, which is Latin for “You are not the boss of me.” Well, that’s the gist of it, anyway. Bound up in those two, short, italicized words is the notion that I, as an individual, reading my own Bible, am the ultimate authority regarding what Christianity teaches and requires.
That’s huge. That notion, right there, displaces the authority of the authorities with the authority of the self. Instead of the authorities telling us what’s what, each of us is free to think for ourselves and to decide for ourselves what’s truth and what isn’t. And the church, in Luther’s day, was something of an ultimate authority, not just for religion, but for science and politics and just about everything. Luther’s sola scriptura sowed the seeds of supreme authority for every individual over every area of life.
What does that have to do with American exceptionalism? Just this: all the other nations of the first world had already existed for centuries before the Reformation, in culture if not in actual borders. There were already certain constraints and customs set up, certain habits and allegiances and social mores to serve as boundaries and foundations, to guide and shape Protestant thought and practice. Luther’s influence modified and adapted existing influences, but was itself somewhat modified in the process.
In America, by contrast, there was no prior history or tradition, apart from what the colonists brought with them. It was easier, in the New World, to travel with less baggage brought over from the Old. Protestant thinking, in both the religious and the secular sense, could flourish undiluted. What’s more, frontier life rewarded individualism and self-reliance in a way that simply wasn’t available in the established civilizations of Europe. We had more freedom to make our own rules and our own authority. And that’s what we did.
Like I said, good or ill. It’s been good in that we’ve made some advances, but there’s a lot of ill there too. A lot of Americans, for example, see themselves as “skeptics” when all they’re really doing is refusing to listen to the experts. Call it sola scriptura as applied to science, or education, or whatever. And it makes them easier to exploit: just tell them that, by ignoring the experts, they’re “thinking for themselves” and “making up their own minds”—we report, you decide.
Of course, there’s a lot of other factors involved too. For example, our current educational system is fundamentally flawed, and is inherently prone to produce adults who remember the classroom competition for good grades, and who consequently have a lingering antipathy towards the “smart kids” who made them look bad. There’s only so many students who can belong to the top 10% of a class, and the other 90% are going to remember how it feels to come in second best (or worse). Sola scriptura, the doctrine that you possess a superior authority over the “official” top guys, is a powerful vindication, and an incentive to make up your own rules and expertise. And the thing is, you don’t need to be in the top 10% in school to do well as an adult.
The result is a lot of “self-made” people who credit their own worldview and resourcefulness over and above any kind of “submission” to what we might call academic authority. Being “smart” wasn’t what got them through school as kids, and it wasn’t what made them successful as adults. So to hell with being smart. To hell with the smart kids, the know-it-alls, the experts. Be dogged. Be independent. Don’t let anyone else tell you what to do, and don’t let anyone tell you what to think, especially if they know more about it than you do. Live by sola scriptura—your own interpretation of the world—and defend it against all threats, real or imagined.
That’s overly simplistic, of course, but I think it’s a factor, and I think it’s a large part of where actual American exceptionalism comes from.
“…all the other nations of the first world had already existed for centuries before the Reformation, in culture if not in actual borders. ”
Ah, yes … another American not even noticing what’s right next door. Talk about living down to a stereotype …
What, Mexico?
I rest my case.
Sorry, couldn’t resist the straight line. 🙂 But to clarify, the point I’m making is that when Protestantism came to France, France was already there. When it showed up in Germany, Germany was already there. French Protestantism was influenced by French culture a lot more than French culture was influenced by Protestantism. In Germany, Protestantism was a lot more successful and influential, but German Protestantism was still influenced by the pre-existing German culture.
This was not the case in the United States of America. There was no pre-Protestant United States culture, so Protestantism had a lot more room to grow, as it were. And you’ll point out that there was also no pre-Protestant Canadian culture either (I’ll get to the indigenous populations in a minute). So why doesn’t Canada suffer from the same problem, to the same degree as the USA? I didn’t discuss this in the original post because frankly I didn’t know what to make of it. But I’ve thought about it some more, and I think that the difference lies in the American Revolution.
The revolt of the colonists set something of an ideological precedent in the US that wasn’t present in Canada and other nations that maintained a less combative relationship with European authority. The fact that the colonists had legitimate grievances lent further legitimacy to the sola scriptura attitude of rebellion against established authorities. Rejection of authority is literally a defining characteristic of the United States because it’s the primary justification for our existence, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and fought for on US soil.
As for the nations that were already present in this hemisphere, I’ll go into detail in my response to Caode, so I don’t have to repeat myself.
I think he’s talking about Native American Nations, which would not be considered firt world nations.
“Native American Nations, which would not be considered firt world nations.”
From Urban Dictionary …
Firt
Farting during the act of flirting.
Not much of a basis for nationhood, if you ask me.
That the richest country on the planet won’t allow their people free access to health-care is depressing. It doesn’t show self reliance or individual strength, rather it shows a malaise in a society that puts profit before people. They seem to want a fairer society while demanding that nothing changes. Gated communities should be a warning sign to these exceptional sociologists.
“In America, by contrast, there was no prior history or tradition, apart from what the colonists brought with them.”
Excuse me?
Sorry, that was very sloppy of me. What I meant was that there was no prior US history or tradition. There were nations already in North America when the European colonists arrived, but the new nations founded by the colonists did not grow out of the prior, indigenous nations. They simply displaced and supplanted them. Thus, whatever the history and traditions of the existing nations may have been, they had little influence on the cultural mindset and practices of the emerging European transplants. Or in other words, the culture that was already here is not in any way to blame for the exceptional foolishness of American society.
Before he got snide, I think scottbelyea had Canada in mind, and would add Australia and New Zealand as well. And yet in terms of anti-science buffoonery, no one holds a candle to America.
#3 Holms:
You can make them fit by noticing that they stayed under European rule for much longer, whereas the US independence thing gave them an additional incentive to reject European ideas.
I don’t know if this really is part of the explanation – I’m a programmer, not a sociologist – but the logic does fit.
I’d have to agree with this. We (Canada, and I think the same goes for Oz and NZ) were content to remain a colony, continuing the mother country’s culture, and only gradually evolving towards independence. English paternalism and the RCMP, not cowboys and the frontier sheriff, guided the settlement of the Canadian West (it’s no doubt far more complicated than that, but that’s the mythology, which in terms of modern self-perception is the most important aspect). There was no clean break with England, no starting afresh with a clean slate.
Canada has also always had a thriving French culture with a progressive social conscience and a distinctly European flavour.
After Wolfe’s victory in 1759 at Quebec, Canada – almost exclusively francophone and Catholic – became a British colony under the terms of the 1763 Treaty. The US revolutionaries offered nothing better and french Canada stayed part of the Empire.
The same Royal Proclamation guaranteed First Nations rights. That drove the Donald Trumps of the era (land grabbers like Daniel Boone) against the Crown which led many Natives to fight for the British.
Loyalists in the non-revolting American colonies (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the Caribbean) were joined by refugees from the 13 revolting colonies to form Anglophone communities. These included slaves escaping Jeffersonian ‘freedom’ since the ‘judicial activism’ of the 1771 Somerset decision started the legal dismemberment of the slave trade.
Canada was confederated from these complex origins resulting in a more nuanced social and constitutional accommodation which the US was built to resist.
The grievances of the tea party of 1776 are no more legitimate than the grievances of today’s tea party; Obama is no more a tyrant than was King George.
As George Orwell noted: One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
To the extent that Indian Societies and Cultures did have an influence on the development of the USA, it tended reinforce the principal of sola scriptura. Indians didn’t have central authorities for either politics, culture, or religion. The Cherokee, for instance, were a stateless society with little in the way of a formal controlling authority. Some structure did get imposed, mostly due to pressure from the expanding “White” Nation that required it.
In Colonial America, Indians were often viewed as a symbol of Freedom and Resistance to Authority. That was why some of the Patriots dressed as Indians when then went to destroy the tea during the Boston Tea Party. The North American Indians had a lot to do creating the US as we know it by providing an visible alternative to the intensely authoritarian and rigidly hierarchical society of the old world.
@5 khms,
“You can make them fit by noticing that they stayed under European rule for much longer, whereas the US independence thing gave them an additional incentive to reject European ideas.”
Nonsense, Australia and NZ wren’t colonised by the British until after US independence, they didn’t stay under European rule for ‘much longer’ than America. Americans should refrain from commenting on subjects they know nothing about–such as the rest of the world.
Deacon Duncan,
“Rejection of authority is literally a defining characteristic of the United States because it’s the primary justification for our existence, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and fought for on US soil.”
So, the creation of a slave-owning oligarchic republic is a ‘rejection of authority’?
Of course. Should I do a follow-up article on the role of hypocrisy in defining American culture? 😉
Deacon Duncan,
“Should I do a follow-up article on the role of hypocrisy in defining American culture?”
That would be fascinating, and probably very, very long. You could start with the “Pilgrim Fathers”, did they leave England to escape religious persecution, or to create their own mini theocracy where they could persecute ‘heretics’?
@7 krambc,
I see, Canadians didn’t want to be ‘liberated’, very sensible.