America is praised for its democracy,
for freedom, for the genius of Federalist Papers, for its
Constitution, for stability, for economic and military
power and for many other well deserved exceptional qualities. Yet
less abstract characteristics, what Alexis de Tocqueville called
'habit of mind,' may explain better its uniqueness.
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| Holocaust Museum Washington DC |
America has created a vision of nation
building without an nationalistic ethos. To be a French, or German,
or Russian, or Polish one must carry on his or her shoulders the
history, language, culture, sometimes religion, and other attributes,
without which one is not considered a full member of the nation.
America is different: by some magical process one becomes an American
the next day after getting citizenship, and without the immediate
burden of culture and history. New Americans may have taken
rudimentary citizenship 101 course about George Washington, the
Constitution and the Civil War, but they feel American not because of
that. Furthermore, usually the new Americans are more patriotic than
citizens born there.
When one becomes an American, one is
accepted as he or she is. His English may be less than perfect, it
doesn't matter. If his sense of humor is unconventional, perhaps
perhaps we could learn something new. His clothes are different? So
what? Henry Kissinger still retains traces of German accent, but
nobody cares. It is hard to imagine French, or Russian Foreign
Ministers with less than impeccable French or Russian accents
respectively. Did Bashevitz Singer write in Yiddish? Nobody
remembers. He is an American Nobel winner, isn't he? He writes about
a bygone strange world. It does not matter, we can live it through
reading his stories.
What is perhaps more important, America
welcomes the ties of new or old Americans with their previous
homelands. Those ties become somehow a pillar of American community
life. In the past they used to say that a New York politician must
visit the three i's: Ireland, Italy and Israel before running for an
office. Because of this attitude, after the State of Israel was
established, the ties of Jews to the new country seemed natural. In
fact they strengthened the status of American Jews as Americans.
Even the language issue of Spanish
American is more or less tolerated. Turkish commentator, who recently
visited Florida, was wondering how America tolerates Spanish easily
while Kurdish in Turkey is almost a sin.
When Arabs become in 'habit of mind'
Americans, they reject terror and are open to any discussions which
concern the Arab world. CAIR and similar organizations damage Muslims
not because of their real or alleged support of human rights but
because they make it harder for Muslims to become Americans.
The ability of the people of United
States to accept new Americans as equals from day one is, in my mind,
the most important quality of the “exceptional” America.
Individuals, communities and countries around the world should learn
and imitate it not as a tribute to the US, but as first rate service
for their own existence.
The hard Left will benefit too from
taking a rest from its usual agenda and take a hard look at what
their country really is.
The European concept of nation state is quite
new. Even in late Middle Age there were no modern nation states. If a
Lord of the King of France decided to shift his loyalty to the King
of Prussia, all inhabitants of his fief became "Germans" without
much ado. The rise of nationalism in the modern age created the
concept of nation state, the pioneers of which were Italy and Poland.
In this sense Palestinians and almost everybody else are "invented"
nations.
The idea of nation state maintained
that nation was, or should have been the dominant social structure of
the community, more important than any other such structure. The
nation was was somehow vaguely defined by ethnicity, language,
religion and territory. Since in all countries there were minorities
which didn't fit into definition of the "nation,"
minorities became a key negative factor in defining nationalism. They were the "other,"
without which nation was, in fact, impossible. They
were "not us," and thus a subject of prejudice and hate.
There was strong affinity between nationalism and fascism. Most of
the new nation states established after the First World War had strong fascistic tendencies.
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| Baghdad |
The Arab states came into being by
strokes of pen of imperialist powers, which defined rather
arbitrarily borders according to power politics of France, Britain
and to lesser extent Germany and Russia, and according to internal
politics of the pretending dictators, monarchs and other rulers. Those states didn't reflect the social structures that mattered to
people more than the the artificial states: tribes, religious sects and territorial
loyalties. The new Arab states had fascist tendencies because other
states had them too, and because such tendencies made life easier for
the semi-independent rulers. Furthermore, political parties
established at the beginning of the last century in the Arab world,
be it the religious Muslim Brothers or the secular Ba'ath looked at
fascist Germany and Italy as inspiring models.
The ever simplistic orientalist view of
the West presumes that Arab states are God created structures and
that "free election" will bring democracy and prosperity,
following which there will be a happy beach party. Without
preexisting democracy free elections are meaningless. In fact the
worst totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century, came about by
"free election."
Arabs will have to find by themselves
the social and territorial structure. In doing that they should rely
to their own culture and history and observe critically the world
around. Examining the success of the United States may give them some clues as to why Unites Arab States could become the future success of world
history.
