American Paradox
How did a nation that fetishises freedom drift into authoritarianism?
Perhaps it is because I spent last night compiling old bank statements for my US tax return1, or because I awoke to images of the president making threats against his political opponents in front of serving military officers. Either way, I’ve been thinking a lot about America recently. My guess is that you have been too.
It is fun to criticise other people for being ‘America-brained’. You know the sort — those who can casually reel off turnout statistics for a Wisconsin Supreme Court election but would struggle to tell you a single European leader not named Merz or Macron. Who refer to gossip as being ‘inside the Beltway’ and will blurt out “It’s the economy, stupid2” at any opportunity.
The problem with this wryly cynical position is that what happens in a US state supreme court election or a handful of tight Congressional races may in fact matter more than the collapse of the Dutch government or a failed referendum in Italy.
I do not mean to discount the importance of Europe to Britain’s national security and economic prosperity. Closer trade ties with the EU are worth substantially more than anything with the US. Meanwhile, actors such as Victor Orbán in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia absolutely have the power to frustrate collective European action, especially with regard to Russia.
But the US is the most powerful nation in history, across multiple dimensions. It possesses the world’s largest economy, most powerful military, it is a cultural hegemon, an energy superpower, all while sitting the centre of an unprecedented web of alliances. When the Houthis attack shipping lanes or the global banking system collapses, eyes turn not to Beijing or New Delhi, but Washington.
So when US democracy and the rule of law teeter on the edge, people take notice. And after going through my processes (stress eating an entire bowl of grapes is only the most recent example) an uncomfortable thought occurs to me. Don’t Americans blather on endlessly about freedom in a way that would make the citizens of other liberal states blush? And not even one kind of freedom, but a whole jumble of them: freedom from government, freedom of speech, freedom as ritual, as myth, as marketing slogan.
Their president is the self-titled ‘Leader of the Free World’. Their first amendment is far more expansive in terms of speech than much of the rest of the democratic world. Notions of freedom, and standing up to an over-mighty centralised government, are pervasive and deployed to defend everything from the right to bear arms to the absence of universal healthcare, two policies that contribute to America’s distinctly unimpressive life expectancy rates.
Even the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalised abortion in the US, relied on notions of liberty. In a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — guaranteed a right to privacy which protected a woman’s decision over whether to abort a pregnancy. Other countries just legalised it without all the brouhaha about freedom.
I also reminisce about the time I spent working at summer camp in southern Pennsylvania, and how the kids and counsellors alike would recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag every morning. Every morning! And the reverence for the Constitution. The pride in the country’s revolutionary zeal. The intricacy of checks and balances and separation of powers. A government, in the words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “of the people, by the people, for the people.3”
Surely a nation that loves freedom so much it is willing to put up with school shootings and millions suffering without health insurance would be the last to fall under the thumb of authoritarianism? Or perhaps I’ve been reading it wrong this whole time, and this is a clear case of "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"?
Being far too young to remember the Cold War, I recall my Year 9 history teacher’s advice on how to remember which state was West Germany and which East. Countries with the word ‘Democratic’ in their names tend to be anything but. Maybe it is the same for nations who go on about how they were forged in liberty?
It feels painfully earnest and probably beyond parody to end on a quote by Ronald Reagan. It is the sort of thing I would snigger at in normal times. Not least when Reagan’s ideas of freedom often involved the exclusion of others, and manifested in opposition to large swathes of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society that today’s Republicans now wish to eradicate. But I’m going to do it anyway, because the man knew how to deliver a peroration:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well-fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.
At least some of us are paying for US extended deterrence
James Carville's original slogan, first written in candidate Bill Clinton's campaign headquarters, was "The Economy, Stupid", i.e. no “It’s”
Provided those people don’t ask for healthcare, gun control or student loan relief
You would have to ask why do Americans put up with shootings, reverence for the position of President, poverty, health system and then vote trump who has taken over the GOP. it’s extraordinary.