America's Second Civil War

Dispatches from the Political Center

Stanley A. Renshon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351532112
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"America has always taken a coherent national identity for granted. In recent decades that assumption has been challanged. Individual and group rights have expanded, eliciting acerbic debate about the legitimacy and limits of claims. National political leaders have preferred to finesse rather engage these controversies. At the same time, large numbers of new immigrants have dramatically made the United States more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse. As a result this country faces critical political and cultural questions. What does it mean to be an American? What, if anything, binds our country and citizens together? Is a ""new American identity"" developing, and if so, what is it? Can political leaders help us answer these questions?For the second time in the history of the United States another civil war looms. Tthe new danger lies in conflicts among people of different racial, cultural, and ethnic heritages, and between those who view themselves as culturally, politically, and economically disadvantaged versus those whom they see as privileged. Unlike the first Civil War, the antagonists cannot take refuge in their family or their religious, social, cultural or political organizations. These are the precisely the places were the war is being fought. At issue is whether it is possible or desirable to preserve the strengths of a common heritage. Some quarters insist that our past has resulted in a culture only worth tearing down to build over, rather than one worth keeping and building upon.We are in conflict over the viability of American culture and identity itself.This volume is organized into a series of intellectually grounded but provocative chapters on political leadership, the 2000 presidential campaign. Immigration, affirmative action, and other contemporary social and political issues. Renshon uses the perspective of political psychology to help us to see old issues in new ways, and new issues in different ways. His critical questi"

Part 1
Foundations and Framework

1
America Redefined?: Political Leadership and America’s Second Civil War^*

Until recently, with one historical exception, America was able to take a coherent national culture and identity for granted. Successive waves of immigrants entered a country where their ultimate assimilation was considered a desirable outcome, not a contested one. The country did not prove equally hospitable to everyone, and some groups endured enormous hardships on their way to a fuller realization of America’s grand vision of opportunity and freedom. Yet throughout, the dream of common purpose and community common propelled the collective desire to live up to it (Myrdal 1964) and provided the framework within which progress was understood and made.

Only the Civil War really tested the cultural and civic bonds that united the country’s disparate interests. That crisis confronted America’s leadership, but especially its president, with a profound but basic question: Could America share a common future without a common culture? The answer, over which the war was fought, and the recognition of which is the starting point of Lincoln’s greatness, was that we could not.

Now, for the second time in its history, America faces a real question of how to maintain a stable and effective relationship between its unum and pluribus. Unlike the first, this Civil War does not pit commerce against agriculture, urban centers against rural traditions, or North against South. Rather, the new danger lies in conflicts among people of different racial, cultural, and ethnic heritages, and between those who view themselves as socially, culturally, politically, and economically disadvantaged and those whom they see as privileged. Unlike the first Civil War, conflict is not being waged by one section of the country with another, but rather it is being waged in every section of the country. Unlike the first Civil War, the antagonists cannot take for granted, nor take refuge in, the primary institutions in their parts of the country, such as family, or religious, social, cultural, or political organizations. These are precisely the places where the conflicts are being fought.

The consequences of these conflicts are not to found in the number of killed or wounded. Rather, they are to be found primarily in the retreat from common ideals, where basic cultural values are abandoned or under siege, and institutions flounder in a sea of shrill and conflicting demands. At issue is whether it is possible or desirable to preserve the strengths of a common heritage in the face of insistence from some quarters that our past has resulted in a culture worth tearing down to build over, rather than one worth keeping and building on. The basic conflict is over the viability of American culture and identity itself.

The Decline of American National Identity

America has become the land of paradox as well as opportunity. The twentieth century has been called the American century (Evan 1998), and perhaps it is accurate to so name it. America has emerged as the predominant world power, economically, militarily, politically, and culturally. Yet, freed by the end of the Cold War from a need to focus on external enemies, America appears to have arrived at a crossroads. Even taking into account the current 2001 economic downturn, we live in a time of unprecedented prosperity. Yet, Americans continue to be uneasy about the quality of their leaders, the competence of their institutions, and the larger meaning of their lives.

Domestically, America appears to present a mirror image of its international standing. It is at once the single most powerful country in the world. Yet, it is beset domestically by fractious disagreements about its values, history, culture, and policies. Divisive issues such as affirmative action, abortion rights, English as its basic language, homosexual marriage, and many more matters of heated contemporary debate raise basic questions about the American national identity—who we are and what we ought to aspire to become.

These conflicts frame the true meaning of our “culture wars.” There are many such wars. There are the abortion wars, school wars, military culture wars, gender wars, family wars, history wars, museum wars, and the classics war—not to mention the wars over flags, statues, pledges (of allegiance at school, to our country during naturalization ceremonies), and most recently a ban on celebrating Mother’s Day in deference to children with gay parents.¹ Moreover, our politics, like our culture, has become mired in bi-partisan trench warfare, while all sides call for a return to civility as they plot the next defensive act to stymie, if not damage, their opponents. The attack of September 11 didn’t change this.

Temporarily, it pushed “normal” politics to the periphery, and the politics of unity to the fore. Yet many divisions remain. Republicans and Democrats have disagreed about the nature of the economic stimulus package (Kessler and Eilperin 2001), whether airline security should be totally federalized (Eilperin and Nakashima 2001; Alverez 2001), and the pace of a Democratic controlled Senate in approving the judicial appointments of President Bush (Dewar 2001). The splits are such that recently the New York Times published an editorial (Editorial 2001; see also Clymer 2001; Lawrence 2002) entitled, “The Return of Partisanship.”

Republicans and Democrats have also joined together against others in their respective parties on issues of balancing the need for wider government powers to address domestic security issues and a concern with civil rights (Toner and Lewis 2001). Yet when the house passed a substitute measure that was more closely tracked the bill passed by the Democratically controlled Senate, and many house Democrats complained (Associated Press 2001); Lancaster 2001). And, of course, many contentious issues still remain—on judicial appointments, military tribunals, energy policy which President Bush has presented as a national security issue and which Democrats have criticized him for doing (Seelye 2001), and missile defense—to name just four.

Meanwhile, as a sign that the more things change, the more they remain the same, in the midst of a surge of patriotism in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack, the ACLU threatened a lawsuit against a school in California that had posted a sign on the school marquee reading, “God Bless America.” Parents, teachers, and children at the school had instituted many fundraising activities to aid families of fire-fighters and police killed in the terror attack and had put up that message as a sign of their support for the country. Calling that sign and its message “hurtful and divisive” the ACLU threatened to sue in order to force its removal. As the reporter of the incident notes (Lane 2001), “The dispute illustrates how contentious the concept of national unity can sometimes be in a religiously and ethnically diverse country, even during wartime.”

Fuelled by the assertive expansion of claims for group rights and acerbic debates regarding their legitimacy and limits, the country is increasingly permeated by a deep cultural divide. Every conceivable group—some deserving, others less so—has demanded legitimacy, parity, and often preference.² Some argue that our cultural wars are over (Sullivan 2001), but they clearly have gone deaf to the shrill accusations that masquerade as public debates. Meanwhile, political leaders attempt to finesse or make use of these controversies, rather than engage and attempt to resolve them.

Nor have matters been helped by the ways in which liberal advocates and their conservative critics have framed their differences, and characterized each other. Advocates of diversity have given more attention to pressing and expanding their claims than to the requirements necessary to build a consensus that would support and sustain them. Critics of diversity have yet to explain how to accommodate satisfactorily the reality of diversity without recourse to traditional models that rarely had to consider it.

In short, while America is undeniably more diverse than at any time in its history, it is also undeniably more fragmented and polarized; war induced unity not withstanding. Moderating and, if possible, resolving the increasingly pointed demands of these groups is the fundamental domestic issue, the most basic public dilemma facing American society. Success is by no means assured. Divisive issues such as affirmative action, abortion rights, English as America’s basic language, homosexual marriage, the conflict between merit and equality, and many more matters of heated contemporary debate remain suffused with unresolved conflict. In these, as well as in so many matters, we are increasingly ill-served by the failure of our leadership, at every level, to address honestly the issues that separate us.

Former President Clinton (1997:509), for example, had said that it was necessary for Americans to view divisive issues, such as affirmative action and immigration, “through the prism of how we can preserve one America,” and warned that our growing diversity is “potentially a powder keg of problems, and heartbreak and division and loss.” He concluded that, “how we handle it (our diversity) will determine, really—that single question may be the biggest determinant of what we will look like 50 years from now and what our position will be in the world.” Three months later the Clinton administration decided against adding a “multiracial” category to the 2000 Census.³

What Mr. Clinton did allow was the addition of a number of new classification categories and the option of allowing respondents to check more than one category. Well, isn’t that the functional equivalent of having a multicultural category, you ask? Well, to some degree yes, but not really. The multicultural category would have provided a non-specific alternative to government-sponsored color-coding of the population, a goal envisioned by Clinton’s idea of “One America.”

On the other hand, civil rights groups worried that a multicultural category would dilute their numbers and thus their clout. There were, as well, reasonable concerns about the effect that such a non-specific category would have on the nation’s ability to monitor its commitment to access and opportunity; a major question arising out of these new circumstances was how, exactly, these numbers would be counted.

The answer raised more questions than it resolved. A draft Office of Management and Budget memo (2000) for the use of such numbers established that “Responses that combine one minority race and white are allocated to the minority race.” In other words, for counting purposes any person who checked the category “White,” and any other minority box would become a minority. Is an American born of an Asian and Italian mother and father a minority? Apparently so. Is an American born of a naturalized American father who travelled here from Spain who also has a mother who emigrated here from Morocco a “minority?” The OMB says yes.

This approach has the effect of adding “minorities” in need of special assistance and preference. In doing so, the administration preserved untouched for another decade at least, increasingly divisive single race/ethnicity categories. And in the process, it took a step away from helping to nurture a “group that is quintessential American—emphasizing the melting pot quality of the population rather than the distinctions” (Eddings 1977), the very outcome that the President had said he championed.

Must cultural, psychological, and political diversity lead to a fragmented and dysfunctional national identity? Some worry it might. Is the opposite of fragmentation Anglo-Western domination? Some apparently think so. James Hunter (1997:52, italics his), in his book, Cultural Wars, argues that, “cultural conflict is ultimately about domination.” The word domination implies subjugation. And if Hunter is correct, it is not surprising that our culture wars are fought with no quarter given to a state of exhaustion and stalemate.

Is it true that all cultural conflict is ultimately about domination? Not necessarily. I am well aware that the United States has a mixed, in some cases, poor historical record in its treatment of American Indians, Americans of African decent, Americans of Asian decent, women, and others. Yet, the strong and ultimately more historically successful tradition in the United States has been inclusionary pluralism, not domination and subjugation. Those who believe otherwise have the difficult task of explaining how a “hegemonic,” “dominating” elite no longer dominates.

More to the point, is it true that advocates of what we can term here “tradition” seek to dominate and subjugate those who see America differently? Do those who want English to remain our common language insist that Spanish not be taught or spoken? Do those who don’t support affirmative action insist its beneficiaries never have the opportunity to compete and prosper? Do those who think assimilation to American cultural and psychological traditions afford immigrants an important vehicle to achieve their dreams here demand that they never have meaningful contact with their countries of origin or their families who remain there? Obviously not.

A better and more useful question is not whether a society must have a dominant culture, but whether, in a pluralist democracy like the United States, it is still important to have a primary one. Is inclusionary pluralism compatible with the cultural primacy of certain core American traditions like individualism, opportunity, merit, and responsibility. The wager that this country has made for two hundred plus years is that not only is it possible, but it is also necessary.

The question, “What does it mean to be an American?” has never been easy to answer. It is much less so now. A number of elements of American national identity have been identified over the years—a focus on ideals, customs, “creeds,” emotional attachments, values, or psychologies.⁴ In the past four decades however, new, more basic and disturbing questions have emerged.

Some ask: Is there an American national identity? Others ask: Should there be one? Some worry about how we can maintain and further develop common understandings and p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1 Foundations and Framework
• Part 2 American National Identity
• Part 3 Immigration and the American National Community
• Part 4 American Politics and Political Leadership
• Part 5 Political Leadership and the Dilemmas of Diversity
• Part 6 Presidential Leadership in the New Millennium
• Subject Index
• Name Index