American Cultural Hegemony

 

Folks on the left in many lands, including Canada, loudly lament about cultural imperialism and the “hegemony” of American culture.

This is nonsensical. 

They also lament about “cultural appropriation,” of course. Which is to say, if someone else assimilates American culture, Americans are doing something wrong. But if Americans assimilate another’s culture, Americans are doing something wrong. Only Americans seem to have free will.

What is culture? It is a collection of tools for living; systems for creating the best possible life for a group of people. 

If you went to the hardware store to buy a tool, what would be the most important consideration? Would it be whether it was made in your home town?

In principle, everyone on earth should have more or less the same culture, apart from what is dictated by varying local conditions: the best of everything. If they do not, it is only because of lack of communication, lack of initiative, and prejudice.

What is American culture? 

Because it is a nation of immigrants, the United States has been able to pick and choose the best tools from many parts of the world.

When you think of American culture, what do you think of? Aside from works of individual genius, you think of pop music, with its heavy rhythms, jazz music with its improvisational style; hot dogs, hamburgers, ketchup, pizza; cowboys and the romance of the West; and the democratic ideal.

The rhythms of pop and the improvisation of jazz are from Africa, mixing with Irish and other European traditions. Hot dogs and hamburgers are German; pizza is Italian; chili is Mexican; ketchup is from Indonesia. Cowboys are from Mexican/Spanish culture, with a mix of native Indian traits; the word “cowboy” is a translation from Spanish.

The same is true, to just about the same extent, for the same reason, of Canadian or Australian culture. It is also true of British culture—not due to immigration, but because England is a nation of traders, who went out into the four corners of the world and brought back whatever they found useful. Tea from China, curry from India, potatoes from the New World.

In the end, of course, not least because they share this openness to the world and to new things, the UK, Canada, the USA, and Australia are not really separate cultures. The differences are trivial, and are diminishing daily with improving communications. 

The three things we might claim to be the distinctive contribution of the Anglosphere, not imported from elsewhere, are the concept of liberal democracy, the mechanisms to produce it, and the doctrine of human rights, one the one hand, which have deep roots but owe a great debt to John Locke; the concept of the free market mechanism and free market liberalism, which again has earlier roots, but is largely from Adam Smith; and empirical science, which we owe to Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton.

I do not think there is anything wrong, frankly, with foisting human rights, democracy, free markets, or science, on anyone. These are simply the best tools available. Not being of English ancestry myself, I do not feel oppressed by them. Frankly, I would feel oppressed by not having them.

What we have here is not “American culture,” but an expanding world culture. Its lingua franca is English, but other elements can come from anywhere. 

A world culture must have a lingua franca. Language is a tool to communicate. The best language is self-evidently that which has the most speakers; and we should all desire and promote one world language.

As our communication improves, we are seeing our world culture enriched by more elements from more lands. Fifty years ago, it would not have included anime, or chicken tikka masala, or K-pop, or tacos. Now everyone knows them, from Saudi Arabia to Santiago.

To worry about the loss of other cultural elements is regressive. If a thing is abandoned, it is probably because it could not compete with something better; and because people freely chose against it. This is a little thing called progress. Adam Smith, John Locke, or Francis Bacon could explain.