The Culture of Equality

America, writes De Tocqueville, is more equal than Europe, with less inherited wealth.

That was probably true in 1830 when he visited the US. Now the relationship is reversed. Many European countries, particularly in Scandinavia, have superior systems for supporting the sick, retired, and unemployed.

What De Tocqueville has discovered that is still relevant is that inherited wealth sounds inherently wrong to many Westerners, and this notion took flight in America in the 1800s. The idea has been exported back to Europe. A Swedish St. Olaf student, when I was telling him about the holes in the justification for the American revolution, said:

"Don't you think the founding fathers were geniuses?" This is my evidence that the desire for equality, which Europeans have come closer than us to achieving, ultimately originated in America.

Religion and Politics

Have you ever seen a Mac vs. PC debate? I encounter them a lot. Each side passionately believes that their operating system is superior. Each has an excellent rationalization for why their system is superior, but you can tell from people's tone that really the conflict is emotional, and that the factual arguments flying back and forth will never convince anyone.

Anyway, one of these debates sprang up during a guitar orchestra rehearsal. To get us back on track, the teacher said "Shall we end the religious debate and get back to practice?"

Strictly, preference in operating system isn't a religion, since it doesn't help explain the world. Though he may not have realized it, the insight that my guitar teacher had was that preference in operating systems is a deeply held opinion that we pick up from those around us, especially our parents, and sometimes confuse for a fact.

Cullen briefly referred the Declaration and the Constitution as America's "political religion." We learn from the OS story that a preference for democracy is an opinion that is ingrained so deeply in American culture that it may be confused for fact. No amount of logic will change anyone's position; in this kind of argument reason is a tool used to justify the party line. This religion isn't a complete religion either--it doesn't ban otherwise enjoyable activities--but this view of political systems does show that justifications from political science are ultimately irrelevant. Politics is really a question of culture.

A Lasting Impression

After visiting Europe this past summer, I became haunted by the question of what our era will leave behind. Europe has a lot of history: stone buildings, statues and artwork, literature and record books. America has lots of beautiful natural features, but little lasts that is manmade. At the time, I assumed this was because westerners had only come to America a few centuries ago. I thought there hadn't been time to build up a lot of history.

McLoughlin has insight to offer on this topic. The trail goes cold at the industrial revolution. Of all the sights that I saw in London and Paris, only Sacre Cour (surely misspelled) and the Eiffel tower were built between 1700 and 1950. Since 1700, cheap, disposable structures have prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic. The concept of building a cathedral that will not be finished for several generations befuddles our modern brains. This cultural short-sightedness is a source of efficiency and wealth, but also of climate change and pollution.

Back In the Old Days

Back in the old days, a single figure altered an existing religion. It was now highly democratic, and extolled the necessity of helping the poor. It became very popular, but lost it's initial momentum when it had expanded as far as it could and became institutionalized. So early Christianity began.

In the 19th century, a few energetic, charismatic preachers altered existing religions. They were now more democratic, and accompanied pushes for social reform. These new religions became very popular, but lost their initial momentum when they had expended as far as they could and institutionalized. So conservative protestantism began.

Set Theory

What makes a group of people? Amy Frykholm discusses the view that a group of people is made by boundaries--that conservative protestants were conservative protestants because "drinking, dancing, smoking, watching movies, playing cards, and swearing were forbidden," (Rapture Culture 23) creating a clear line between members and nonmembers. She proposes instead that what makes a group is something that most people have in common. Reading books like Left Behind gives conservative protestants something to gather around.

This issue is relevant especially to this period in American history, because of the civil war. This pushed to the fore the question of who was American and who wasn't. How can we know if "what binds us together is greater than what drives apart" if we don't know what holds us together?

Temperence

Mark Noll in his "History of Christianity in the United States and Canada" defines temperance as "liberation from the bondage of drink.” In several places he implies that the spread of religion in the 2nd Great Awakening is beneficial. He attributes this spread to successful missionary work, and the success of the Methodism in particular to it's spiritual accuracy. In general, Noll shows a bias towards religion.


Why do I associate a fear of alcohol with a religious attitude? Religions frequently include alcohol on their list of forbiddens. I may have been calling on my Puritan stereotype of portraying pleasures as sins, and thinking of my high school classmate whose Mormonism prevented her from watching R-rated movies.

Erik On Democracy

Technically, in a democracy every issue is a referendum. Officials are few and with limited power. Whitman has suggested that a political system is a merely a prerequisite for democracy, and that in a democracy literature is simple and cheery. Viewing democracy as a social condition instead of a political system is preferable for AmCon, since America is a republic and not a democracy. However, Whitman’s particular variation of this idea is improbable self serving. By proclaiming literature as the most significant art form, he inflates himself to the herald of an age of literary giants. That golden age never came; Whitman himself started writing more nuanced works after the war, including  a great deal of all the evils he say should never be mentioned in great literature. The US only became THE world leader after the cold war, that only lasted a few short decades. Our main cultural exports were movies and music—British books are at least as popular is American ones, even here in the US.

Speaking of Britain, Whitman seems to think that the only democratic nation is the US. Surely he had read the Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It is nowadays found all over the world, spread as much by European democracies colonizing as by the US.

In this cultural democracy, democracies and republics are interchangeable. Though we usually vote for representatives, similar assumptions underlie both systems. Each vote is equal. Everybody in the relevant group gets to vote. Whichever person or decision gets the most votes wins. Take the process of electing a president as an example. The vote of someone from Wyoming counts for a lot more than of someone from California. However, each voter in a district of California has equal power to elect a representative. Thus the present system seems fair enough, and it hasn’t yet been changed.                      

It is impossible to escape the assumptions of the society we are born in, and democracy is embedded in every American. The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to a Chinese dissenter, Liu Xiaobo. As westerners with democratic ideals, the prize committee sympathized with the dissenter. The Chinese government, understandably, felt that giving Liu Xiaobo the prize made no sense whatsoever. How could a peace prize go to someone who was undermining progress in a perfectly peaceable country? At worst, democracy clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing that there are other ways.

I mentioned this story in class already, but this time I’d like to highlight a different aspect of it. Pinochet offered a referendum on whether or not he should stay in power. The democratic culture in Chile was able to peacefully remove a violent dictator with military support from the US. Because we absorb democracy as children, everyone agrees on the gist of it, if not the details. Even Pinochet believed that if the majority was against him, he must be doing something wrong. The best aspect is that it provides a convention on how to decide things without conflict.

This way of deciding applies just as much to everyday life as to brand political movements. When my friends and I are debating what kind of pizza to buy, we usually take a vote. Because we all believe it’s best way to decide things, we rarely challenge the results. The Board of Regents elects the president of St. Olaf, and many day-to-day decisions are made by committees of faculty members who discuss and then vote on issues. Shareholders vote on the board of directors for a company, who elect the chief-whatevers-officers who actually run the company.

Lincoln's Interpretation of Democracy

Lincoln sees himself as continuing the democratic ideals of the founding fathers, as do our current presidents and politicians. The interpretation of those ideas has evolved significantly over time and varies greatly from person to person. If "all men are created equal," does "men" include women? Does "equal" mean equal incomes? Equal votes? Marx values economic equality; libertarians value equal rights. Even though so many claim to follow the same basic ideas, wars have been fought over how shape the ideals into a political system.