Blame America

A Canadian-born teenager has just been convicted of threatening, possibly trying, to blow up his high school, because he hated all things American.

A friend, by coincidence, notes in his current column that

“…A few weeks ago, at … [a] conference, a speaker referred to ‘American ethics.’

‘Isn’t that an oxymoron?’ I asked.

Most of the audience laughed.”

The rest of us hate to admit it, but I suspect the long-term success of the US in the world actually has a lot to do with a higher standard of morality. Throughout history, cultures and groups with a sense of high moral purpose have tended to be spectacularly successful as a result: Islam in the seventh century, Christianity in the first, Victorian England. The US, largely thanks to its “fundamentalists,” has a relatively stronger sense of moral purpose and public responsibility in comparison to the rest of the world.

This results in a relative lack of corruption throughout the society, top to bottom and bottom to top. And, as Mancur Olsen and others have shown, the main reason the poor Third World is poor is corruption. Corruption costs hugely in efficiency; morality gives efficiency a huge boost.

If we are honest about it, there are any number of examples of the US’s high moral purpose. The US crushed Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Instead of annexing them or looting them, as the USSR did, as the British and French had done in the past, and as would have been the historic norm, the US shoveled money in to help them get back on their feet, and then (other than continuing to help with their defense) withdrew and let them run their own affairs. Same now with Iraq; despite the bad press, and although possibly misguided, it is a model of international responsibility and altruism. Such altruism the rest of the world has rarely seen, and finds it hard, in fact, to accept. This illustrates the American moral edge: the rest of the world finds it literally incredible that another country could be that honourable.

Nor is constant US-bashing morally neutral. If not true, it is the sin of slander. If true, it is the sin of calumny. And it surely leads to acts like 9/11; as directly as anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust. Just remember that Canadian kid wanting to blow up his high school.

As Samuel Johnson said, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. And the worst of patriotism is the demeaning of other nationalities. What is commonly said about Americans might be considered a hate crime if said of Jews, or Quebecois, or Africans. Try this one on your tongue: “Indian ethics is an oxymoron.”

Part of the reason I feel strongly about this is guilt. God knows, I have been guilty of America-bashing myself in my youth. I went to grad school in Syracuse, and walked around with a swagger telling the Americans, in effect, if not in so many words, how superior I was as a Canadian. Most remarkably, I got away with it. The Americans stayed my friends. I now know from experience you just can’t do that in most other countries.

It was also an American, though, in Korea, who blew the whistle on me. He pointed out that if he, as an American, acted as Canadians commonly act abroad, wearing flags and handing out pins, he would be scorned even by other Americans as an outrageous chauvinist. An Irishman in the UAE told me the same thing; he felt Canadians were over-the-top nationalistic, and unreasonably hostile to Americans.

And a Korean once floored me with the question, “Why do Canadians hate Americans so much?”

We don't, do we?

Give an American a hug today.