What's So Great About America

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Pericles' Dilemma, and Ours

I
n 430 B.C., shortly after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles delivered a funeral oration to the people of Athens.
¹
His dilemma was the classic one faced by free peoples throughout history: how to articulate the blessings of freedom which are usually taken for granted, how to communicate to citizens the necessity of making sacrifices—including the ultimate sacrifice of one's life—in the name of freedom, and how a society accustomed to the pleasures of private life can prevail against a more militaristic regime inured to hardship whose fighters are cheerfully willing to endure death.

Sound familiar? This is what Pericles said: “Our system of government does not copy the institutions of its neighbors. It is more the case of our being a model to others, than of our
imitating anyone.” Athens, in other words, has a unique civilization that holds itself up as a universal model for civilized peoples everywhere.

What are the ingredients of that civilization? “When it is a question of settling disputes, everyone is equal before the law. When it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership in a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses.” Equality and meritocracy are, in Pericles' view, two of the defining characteristics of ancient Athens.

Moreover, “just as our political life is free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other. We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbor if he enjoys himself in his own way. We are free and tolerant in our private lives, but in public affairs we keep to the law. That is because it commands our deep respect.” Athens is a freedom-loving society, but its liberty is within the bounds of the law. Free people choose to obey the law because they see it as legitimate and for their benefit, rather than arbitrary.

Athens is also a commercial civilization that trades freely with its neighbors. “The greatness of our city brings it about that all the good things from all over the world flow in to us, so that it seems just as natural to enjoy foreign goods as our own local products.” There is an easy traffic of peoples across state boundaries. “Our city is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or finding out secrets which might be of military advantage to the enemy.”

This liberality of mind and policy, Pericles concedes, makes Athens vulnerable to enemies who seem leaner, hungrier, and
hardier. “The Spartans, from their earliest boyhood, are submitted to the most laborious training in courage.” Even so, Pericles emphasizes that the Athenians “pass our lives without all these restrictions, and yet are just as ready to face the same dangers as they are.”

The reason is that “others are brave out of ignorance, but the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come.” Pericles calls upon the Athenians to recognize that theirs is the city that makes the quest for wisdom and the good life possible, for themselves and for their children, and he calls upon citizens to develop an
eros
for their city, a deep and abiding love that will justify and make possible the sacrifices that must be made to preserve Athenian liberty and the Athenian way of life.

“What I would ask is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her.” The greatness of Athens
as she really is.
Even as he presents a somewhat idealized view of Athens, Pericles is saying that ultimately we fight for our country not in the name of some abstract theory, not even in the name of founding myths and constitutions, but in the name of the kind of society that we live in, and the kind of life that it makes possible for us.

America today is in the position of the ancient Athenians, facing in the militants of the Islamic world a new kind of Sparta. What is needed, therefore, is an examination of the source of the conflict, of the nature of the enemy. But what is needed, most of all, is an understanding of the moral basis of Western civilization, of what makes the American experiment historically
unique, and of what makes American life
as it is lived today
the best life that our world has to offer. Only then can we know what is at stake in this war and what we possess that is worth fighting for.

America and Its Enemies

B
EFORE THE TERRORISTS DESTROYED THE WORLD TRADE Center, crashed a plane into the Pentagon, and began their campaign to bring to America the horrors of the war-ravaged Middle East, life in the United States was placid and even a little boring. The dominant issue in politics was the Social Security lockbox, an especially curious subject of dispute since no such lockbox exists or has ever existed. For diversion and entertainment, Americans could follow the Gary Condit sex scandal or watch “reality TV” shows like
Survivor
. Newspapers devoted front-page reports to such issues as road rage, a man bitten by a shark, and the revelation that overage kids were playing Little League baseball. The biggest issue in the airline industry involved something called “economy class syndrome.” Essentially this
referred to rather obese people sitting in coach class and fretting that during long flights their legs became stiff.

All this triviality and absurdity was swept aside by the hijackers. In an act of supreme chutzpah, coordination, and technical skill, nineteen men seized control of four commercial jet planes, crashed two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and rammed one into the shoulder of the Pentagon. The fourth plane did not find its target—possibly the White House or Camp David—but crashed into the woods of Pennsylvania. In a single day of infamy—September 11, 2001—the terrorists had killed more than three thousand people.

Not since Pearl Harbor, which provoked American entry into World War II, had America been directly attacked in this way by a foreign power. But even that was different. Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii, not on the American mainland. Moreover, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a military operation directed against the U.S. Navy. By contrast, the terrorists struck New York City, and most of the people they killed were civilians. One would have to go back more than a century, to the Civil War, to count such large numbers of American casualties on a single day. As for civilian casualties, the citizens of the United States had never endured such mayhem. Historian David McCullough called September 11, 2001, the worst day in America's history.

Now, amidst our grief and sad memories, we find ourselves at war against the forces of terrorism. It is an overt war, such as we saw in the overthrow of the Taliban regime, as well as a covert war, with secret campaigns to identify and destroy enemy networks and cells. It is a war that has come home to America, as people cope with fears of further attacks, including those involving
biological, chemical, and—God forbid—nuclear weapons. Moreover, this is a new kind of war against an enemy that refuses to identify himself. Our enemy is a terrorist regime that inhabits many countries, including the United States. It is made up of very strange people most of whose names we do not yet know and whose motives and inspiration remain unclear to us. And the enemy conducts its operations in the name of Islam, one of the world's great religions and a very old civilization that has somehow now become an incubator of fanaticism and terrorism.