Hamilton

Nice words from Roger Cohen.


When I used to travel in Europe, the idea that these disparate nations could form any sort of coherent whole baffled me. I just couldn't believe it would ever happen. It was mainly a cultural intuition for me then, but Cohen lays the economic groundwork here, and I think he is right. You'll never get a man like Alexander Hamilton in the Old World, and it is likely too late to discover a viable authority over the whole EU anyway. In a funny way, it's too cravenly democratic with all the rotating heads, and such. Hamilton was loathed in his day for his federalist/monarchic streak, but in the end, it's what turned this collection of rag-tag nation states into a unified whole. (I think Schenker would have been proud.)

I've always felt that the democracy was unfit for Europe - that the slavish/monarchic impulse was yet too strong there to allow the rough-and-touble individualism that is required for vibrant democracy. And in a way, the attitude they take towards democray - and indeed most liberal ideas, from civil unions to environmentalism - have a kind of "do what you're told" quality to them, which, in a democracy is really the opposite of how it should be. The trust in authority - experts, panels, boards of scientists - is the antithesis of democracy but is the natural tendency towards laziness of the mono-cultural mind.

It is, indeed, natural that when living in a homogeneous racial group, the old-brain system of heirarchical organization sets in, and the king and the tenency towards deference to the king and his noblemen's decrees are replaced by deference towards the decrees of the polit bureau, and the (these days not even elected) group of aristocratic assemblymen who "know best." It is unaboidable so long as men live in tribes and herds to think this way, and with the sweep of democracy over the continent that followed the World Wars, a sort of sleight-of-mind has taken place where there has been a shift in appearance, and yet the underpinning authoritarianistic impulse remained (what Fromm called "Escape from Freedom").

It is the evegiving blessing of America that we are the nation of perpetual immigration, in which the mammalian impulse towards authoritarian heirarchy is perpetually - and forever - upended with each new wave of "other." "Other" nations, "other" religions, "other" orientations and outlooks will constantly upset out homeostasis and push us out of our lazy, lower brain patterns. It is this constant upheaval combined with the defintive characteristic of the American - that is one who leaves, one who rebels agains the comforts of home in search for a life of one's own - that ensures that the purest seat of democracy will always remain here - and that the hearts of men (though there be ebbing at times) will always desire to find their deepest expression of Freedom on her shores.

There is a price to pay for this, no doubt- in lack of comfort, in constant anxiety, in never-ending change. But dancing above that change, indeed trusting that that change will propvide us with the surest ground gives us the confidence to persevere throughout. And there are plenty of outlets to give the baser instincts an outlet. Local government is generally more mammalian, and there are endless religious and cultural groups where men of like mind or like heritage can share in a Euro-style experience of collective rightness with one's own people. But yet the overarching framework of the Nation will never let those groups exercise true dominion over all others as is the ancestry of our European - and indeed all foreign - counterparts.

It is why I have contended for so long that - despite their elegant manners and stunning cultural pre-20th century achievements, the modern European appears utterly primitive compared with the New Man being created in the forge of American Democracy. It is as if they have not yet caught wind that the new man will give up his localized, ancestral cultural assumptions and take each experience anew, on its face, and in its present meaning, rather than weighing it based on what tradition has dumbly handed down to him. In France I have heard it described by an American ex-pat as the "C'est comme ca sickness" in which you ask a Frenchman why something is a certain way, and he shrugs and says, "C'est comme ca," that's just how it is.

Just because someone's grandpappy said something was something doesn't mean it's true for you. How many of our grandparents have generally useful advice for dealing with the world we inhabit today? Ce n'est plus comme ca, I'm afraid. A 7 year old has a more valuable skill set for creating the future than his 87 year old grandpa. And that's just the way it is.