In Our Time - The American Century

Episode Date: December 17, 1998

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how legitimate it is to call the 20th century the American century. Just how benevolent has America’s impact on the world been? And how durable has American’s initial idealism proved to be? Have ideals of democracy and freedom been forged across the globe as a result of the American influence, or has American oppression made the bigger impact? Has America ignored its own inequalities whilst advocating democratic capitalism elsewhere? Can America still lay claim to the idealism which fired its founders, or has materialism, with its uncomfortable corollary deprivation, lain waste to those early ideals?With Harry Evans, former editor of The Sunday Times, now an American citizen and author of The American Century; John Lloyd, associate editor of The New Statesman and former Times correspondent in Moscow and East European Editor of the Financial Times.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, what does it mean to call this century the American century? Have America's ideals travelled faster than America's mistakes? Has America driven the century in a direction which could be called benevolent,

or is the jury still out? I'm joined by Harold Evans over from New York, where he went to live in 1984, having resigned in 1981 as editor of the Sunday Times. Now an American citizen, which surprises me considerably, he's just written a dazzling book, 900 pictures, almost 700 pages, called The American Century, which he has described as a tribute to America's, quote, triumph of its faith in its founding idea of political and economic freedom, unquote.

I'm also joined by John Lloyd, who's been associate editor of the new statesman since 1996. He was the Times correspondent in Moscow for four years, before that he was East European editor of the Financial Times. He's won many awards for his journalism, and he now writes for the Financial Times as well as for the New Statesman. Harry Evans, when I was reading this book, which is a tremendous read and tremendous look because the photographs are amazing,

I thought, well, it is the American century in one way, but in another way, it's the English, Scots, Irish, German, Polish, Jewish, Italian, African century. It's the transplanted to America century. Yes, and they've been transplanted, but absorbed, some of the ideals and aspirations of America. I often ask, why do people go to the United States? A lot of them, obviously, most of them have probably attracted

material prosperity, but a lot have gone there for some kind of sense of freedom. If you go back over the 100 years, it is obviously a country made by immigration, but also a country made by certain ideals. I think back to the Italians arriving in 1889, two-thirds of them, incidentally, a lot of the Italians went home again, didn't stay, the people who stayed with the Jews, but two-thirds of the Italians couldn't even read or write in their own language. And yet today, those descendants are obviously, you know, educated citizens,

taking part in the democracy and not, incidentally, all the mafia. Is it just convenient, though, to use the word American? Is that not, I'm asking you, you know more about my do, is that not just a papering over? Would it be more interesting to think of a stranded century, of these stranded different communities and nationalities, mainly if you're mere proof made it? Well, I'll tell you what, I worry about hyphenating the country

and having English-American, Irish-American, because the general history of the world is that societies divided ethnically break up. We don't have to be reminded of Bosnia, but there are many, many societies in the subcontinent of Asia and so on. So the idea of emphasizing diversity is to me a little dangerous,

and I'd rather like the idea of them becoming Americans while keeping some cultural contacts. I don't like the idea of emphasizing their ethnic and racial differences. Well, how have you changed since you have, to my astonishment? I mean, you're the most English person that I've met almost. How have you changed since you became an American citizen? Well, I've got a little more, I've got a little more used to American optimism,

which is something, and also American habits of increasing consumption, such as when you order breakfast at an American hotel, and you say, like orange juice, to say, what else? And I say, well, some coffee, what else? Well, about some toast. What else? Until you feel is there. You haven't to pee.

the whole materialism of the States. I've changed in those directions. I love England. I don't get me wrong. I mean, it's ridiculous, this idea that somehow, because one embraces American citizenship, one is no longer English. I feel very English, and my kids feel very English, and very patriotic. At the same time, some aspects

of English society have never liked the hierarchical, the class thing, and so on. I like the sense of optimism and opportunity in the States. Okay, let's define what you mean by the American century. I've got lots of quotations from your book here, It's better if you make them up yourself, as it were.

Just give us two or three sketches of the things that you think are great about the American century, because this is the book of an enthusiast. It's almost the book of a convert. Yes, it is. You could be critical. I mean, and I can be critical myself. In fact, I'm just trying to take a large perspective here. If you begin in 1889, you have a society which many English visitors, H.G. Wells,

Rudyard Kipling, and Americans like Whitman and Henry Adams, don't think will survive because there's never survived to have all these different races and national artists with a set of impossible ideals. And society, incidentally, in 1889, which is no by no means equal in any political sense. Women don't have the vote, blacks don't have the vote, young people don't have the vote, the power of money is overwhelming,

and the populists begin to fight against it. And what I admire about the American century is the way these acts of rebellion, saying rebellion, in the end, produce a better society after much, much agony. And when I think, just taking a game, a broad view of it, that not only become a cohesive society in their own with enlarging freedoms for individuals and groups,

but we have the situation in which belatedly, the United States comes to the rescue of the old world in 1942, 1941, and then restores to a kind of democracy that they've never known in Germany and Japan. Well, we can come to that, because I think you give them an awful lot. They come to the aid, Hitler declared war in America. I know. Bombed America.

Coming to the aid is a generous and a never way to put it. Can I turn to John Lloyd for one moment? One of the things Harry says, John, is the idea of a, quote, the idea of a free community of nations linked by friendship and ideals rather than simply the mechanisms of the balance of power was distinctly American. Now, A, do you believe that? And B, do you think that is there or is that a wish for that Harry's talking about? I do partly believe it actually, Bob.

And I'm also, though I've never lived there, I'm an admirer of America. I admire immensely Harry Evans' book. It was kind of, I think, said by one of your people that it was a coffee table book. If this is a coffee table book, you need a hell of a coffee table. Both in terms it weighs in at several pounds, but also it's hugely ambitious. I mean, the essays you write, the commentaries you write

on every decade or so are enormous. And you must, what I felt at reading it was, you must have thought when you were doing that. I'm taking on huge controversies which historians and political scientists are arguing about still, the nature of slavery, the causes and cures of the Depression, the Nixon years and so on. Yet you cleave through them with a kind of a liberal.

It's very much a liberals book, too. It's both a schizoid book in that it's half saying how awful America is, half saying how wonderful. And it's also a liberals book. What you do, one of the fine passages book is about Wilson, and Wilson's optimism about a new world, really, perhaps that quotation is from that part, or from another part in which you emphasize America's destiny, the city on the hill.

And I think, when I spent some years in Russia, looking at America, as it were, from a rather increasingly hostile perspective, the Russians, I mean. And what one got also was, which is partly in your book, but that might be a little more emphasized, is this, that other people in the world

just don't like that. You don't like what the American see is optimism they see as being not quite imperialist, but overbearing. There are a great amount that, I think many people listening to this program, and some include admire and like about America, but I want to dig into this book

of it. I mean, that's what this programme's about. I want to address this thing that you say, Harry. The glory of a people doesn't lie in their economic indices, their actuarial teables, even the fame of their designer genes. It lies in their idealism, in the use they make of their resources, and the kind of people they became amid the temptations of pride

and greed. Now, you're setting up America, as more than a city on a hill there, that's almost evangelical. These people are like no other people. And I think there's a lot to be said about that. I'm going to go to John Lloyd first. How do you take that remark? Well, I think, as I said, I think that there is in America,

and you can bring it out a bit, there is this constant theme in public life, often belied by, if you like, what happens to America, this constant theme of we can do it, can do Americans, and also that we have in some sense a destiny and a right, increasingly, actually, as a century goes on, a right to bring light to the darkness. that seems to come out of your book.

It also comes out, I think, of your take on America, you half agree with this. You're a skeptical journalist still, but you half agree with it. You've been taken over by it partly. Is that right? I think everything you said was so penetrating and correct, both of you.

Schizophrenia is right in the sense. And I was surprised when people say this book is liberal. I know what happened in the course of writing it. We're looking at the history, looking at the facts. I mean, I read 5,000 books to do it. and I became more and more radicalized when I realized that time and time again the individual fighting oppression was right

and those resisting him were wrong and so this book was a radicalizing experience from him and I came out more liberal than I expected. John's right, it's kits on your right too. This evangelical strain can get very dangerous and I've often found myself thinking how do the hell do they think they are? What kind of people do they think we are?

I mean I'm very patriotic and I've always been very defensive, of what we did in the world. In fact, in writing the book, anybody who reads it in the kind of fine way you've read will realize that I'm emphasizing throughout the British war record and things like that. However, it has to be said

that America does get resented for this evangelical streak. At the same time, I think without it, let me just put a question to you. This terrible slaughter in Rwanda and the United Nations failing. Where do you look for leadership in the world? Look to Britain, yes, but doesn't have the power.

You look to the United States, so thank God there's an evangelical streak there, wanting to do something, wanting to come to the rescue of people being murdered and genocide. Well, hold on, Harry. I mean, for goodness sake, a lot that's happening in Rwanda's to do with countries other than the States. And if you want to play the bit... I mean, America's done good things, but this is where I think your book is open to question. You could say, what did they do in Yugoslavia? I mean, more than Europe did, but there isn't a great deal done...

There's good and bad in it. I mean, what worries me is that you're more than half in hoc to idealism. I mean, the track record of America in Latin America, for instance, is not good. Now, you admit that, but then you sort of pass on very quickly. I just want to try to come to the core of it. The core of it seems to me you're saying that what's going on there is a massive, and you also think this is slightly benevolent materialism. Greed is good, and greed can be good for you.

And a lot of your tables say people are living twice as long as they did 100 years ago. you're making, five thousand as much money, eating, $20,000 as much food, and so on and so forth. At the same time, you're saying the ideals of the Republic are tremendous ideals, the ideals of freedom and democracy and opportunity, and these ideals are sustained despite all the battering that circumstances give them. And yet at the same time, there's terrible problems of educational system, tremendous problems with black people,

almost slave labor in California for the Mexicans working behind Barboyer, and so on and so forth. Now, I would like to discuss that, because that seems to me to be the core of America, core of the take. So can you address that, John, please? Yeah, it's, it is tremendous interest. You begin by the first chapter, indeed, I think one of the first pictures in the book is of legalised theft and genocide of the Native Americans. And then you end, at the very end of the book, the kind of the last essay, as it were, you say politics,

not quoting exactly, politics began under the domination of money, began the century under the domination of money and ends the century under the domination of money. So, you know, what has changed in between that? And while, of course, we no longer have that kind of assumption that the white races can simply suppress the red or the black, still, as Melvin reminds us, and as you remind us, you have kind of slave labor allowed by the state and not intervene. So you have this enormous, passionate democracy, yes, everyone's speaking all the time in different voices, and you have this enormous and passionate desire to do good both at home and abroad. and yet, some of the crimes of this past century or century and a half, I guess, on the black and red people are still there atoned for partly, but still ingrained in the society. Yeah, that's all that's correct. All that's great.

What I've never argued, and in fact at the very end of the book, I say, America is not some kind of millennia, not some utopia of the kind that the fascist and totalitarian society is constructed. America is a rough, rough, ongoing democracy full of compromise, pragmatism, full of corruption in many areas. You use this term democracy. There's less than 50% of the people vote. But they have the opportunity to vote at the beginning of the century. They didn't have it.

The movement from exclusion to inclusion of the black people, I mean, I was there in the 50s, and I saw the terrible condition. I said, we would never have any problems like that in England. I said we would welcome black people. We'd never have any racial discrimination in England. That was totally wrong, of course, because in fact, as we know, it's been a struggle to preserve the rights of black people and the dignity of black people here.

It's been on a different scale as you yourself. On a different scale, I know, and English tolerance is pretty impressive. But I saw that in the 50s what they were going through, and I've seen them come out of it. Now the situation is transformed. I live with the Indians in the West. Again, the situation is transformed. It is not perfect, and it never will be perfect.

But the point that I keep trying to make all the time is that because of the Bill of Rights and the aspirations of the society, they're always continually trying and expecting people to behave better than they often do. When I was reading this book, just finishing it, I read a review that Norman Miller did in the New York Review of Books

of Tom Wolfe's new book, A Man in Fool. And Miller, characteristically, put himself first, quoted himself as saying, and then quoted Wolf as agreeing with him, saying that American novels have never been able, like, say, Tolstoy did for Russia, I had never been able to sum up America. It was just too diverse.

It was left in a way to judge, Journalism. Miller says it was left to the loose magazines. You are, where are, a distinguished journalist. Do you feel that about America that it really took journalism, muck-raking, investigative, descriptive, analytical essay journalism, to do justice to this? And is it still doing it? In other words, is the media still doing justice to America in a way that writers can't? I think journalism, I wouldn't agree with him entirely,

because I think something like John Dos Passes, USA, or Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath, or Tom Wolfe today, fiction and literature can actually give us a sense of this great sprawling beast of a country. And I think journalism makes its contribution. I think Norman's being a little provocative there. One thing I want to say about my book, incidentally, since you're both being so intellectual about it, is it's really a book of stories.

I don't actually tell people who ought to think. I tell them hundreds and hundreds of stories about people. I'm sorry. Your essays are one of the glories of it. I mean, I think you're doing yourself in injustice. One thing is, some of your rest is say, this is what to think. This shouldn't have happened. At one point, you say, and I could have started it, but you said, this should not have happened. So you are quite polemical at times.

And you say you read 5,000 books, I believe you. I mean, there's a lot of it. Every president gets his story, and the stories of folks we've never heard of who got thrown out of the FBI for doing their job too well, who invented this, who did this. I want to get to some of the basic ideas. If we're talking about America in the 20th century, it's very interesting. We haven't got all that much time. take to a few of the ideas and see how they're tested now, okay?

Right, let's start with democracy. How is democracy doing in the States? Is it a real democracy? Is it a democracy that should transfer, can transfer, is capable of growth? Where is it? Because a lot of people think it's a bought democracy. It's a democracy in hock. It's a stunted democracy, and it's going backwards and not forwards.

I'm just playing the devil's advocate. It's certainly right to play it. I mean, I worry, as John has pointed out, quite rightly, the bookend is money, money. And the fact that they have to pay for television advertising, so they have to spend all their time between elections, raising money for television advertising. The advertising is appalling and negative.

It's a terrible thing. The fact that so few people vote is another terrible thing. The American democracy is now plagued by the system of an independent council, which is the corruption of the constitution, and is disturbing the delicate balance of power which exists. These are really serious problems. I don't, as I keep saying, wish to present

America some kind of I'm highly critical of what's happening and the English democracy is actually better in the sense of it no it's controlled money better I don't really want to run America down that isn't the point of the question

I just want to find out about it you two people spend your time looking at these things I do to a lesser extent just see where he is now I mean America is the most powerful country in the world America is the richest country of the world America is the most influential country in the world So what is it, where are it said, you will talk a lot about his beliefs.

It's one of the dry, it's the, it's the statement of this book. Now, where are they? I mean, how strong are they? What do you think about American democracy, John? I was going to invite Harry to do what he does a lot in the book, is to relate the past to the present. You constantly, it's very good. In the middle of discussing the Depression,

you then flip forward to the past and say, what does this say about government intervention? And I'd like to do that where you've finished the book really before you could grapple with Clinton. And just to invite you. to do so. One of the things to pick up Melbourne's point about where is the nature of democracy, watching what's happening to Clinton now, indeed right now, because it's now possibly going to be indicted for impeachment again, that how far is this man a victim, one of the, perhaps the first victim who's at the pinnacle of political power, but is the victim of other forces like an overprying

media? And how far does that impact on American? Or how far is he simply a helpless pawn, as many say, in the hands of the people you describe as being increasingly powerful, the lobbyists, the people with the money. I think he's a victim partly of a very dangerous undercurrent in America. And in this case, of course, the right wing has been given a perfect opportunity by Clinton's deplorable conduct in the White House in lying and sexual misconduct. And so that's enabled people who resent his welfare capitalism, his interventionist capitalism, to attack him on moral grounds.

they're really one of attacking them on economic grounds because they do not like it. But actually the bigger point, what does it say about American democracy? I mean, does it say that American democracy is actually the fig leaf of idealism? And behind it is this sort of fist of power. That the fist of power is money

and the power of the great corporate. I'm being very crude, but I'm trying to come to the point here. I tell you one thing which is very important about American democracy, which is the freedom of the press that I've gone on about in this country for a long time, calling it the half-free press. Maybe you're three-quarters free now. And although it's true, as you indicated,

that in Clinton's case, he's been hounded by a prurient press, nonetheless, the freedom of the American press is very important. It's a central part of the democracy. It's something that is held to task. And the press generally, although I've really got a lot of problems with the television, does tend to hold the country up to the ideals of that Bill of Rights.

That comes back time and time again. are we being true? Are we life, liberty, quality, the pursuit of happiness? And that constant reminder, I think it's very useful. But you make the same point, you see, I mean this is what of the interesting things about the book. You say that, but then post-Watergate, as John Lloyd indicated, I don't like him to take this up. The press does hold up the ideals, even your American television, which you're suspicious of.

They constantly remind America of its ideals, and it's very moving if you're a British person, because we don't hand on heart in that way. We maybe take it too much for granted. But at the same time, post-Watergate, the press has become so intrusive, if your word, so demanding of the private lives of people concerned, and perhaps so in pawn to the great corporations because the press don't come out of the political nowhere. They are owned. Are they the guardians, or are they the predators, John Lloyd?

I think this is what I was trying to get at. And actually, you are a tremendously good man to talk about this, since you had your fight with Rupert Murdoch. Now, Rupert Murdoch is a great deal more powerful than he was in Europe. Yes, exactly right. And perhaps less intrusive in a detailed way, but a man who can now move governments, allegedly like our own here, who can decide whether or not China gets free information or not.

I mean, he, in a corporation sense, the media is hugely important. And as Melvin says, they have abolished private life. Certainly for the chief executive, and if it's for the chief executive of America, then it's for everybody else. I'd implore that. I really deplore that. Yet it's in the name of freedom.

And it's in the name of free... So what does that say about your free press? Well, it says, you know, I believe that it will have to control itself voluntarily. If you look now at the... Isn't that happening? Yes, because if I started now, we've never get through the program, if I name the number of distinguished editors and journalists who are expressing concern about it.

And out of this, I think, will come some self-reform. I think there'll be a self-correction. That of them happens in America. America, as I've said somewhere, has volatile gusts of opinion. It's going forward but lurching left and right and this kind of like a giant fight its way through a maze, you know, and I think that will occur with the press. I really deplore what's been happening.

It's very hard to go into private life. Now, the slightest indiscretion from the past, maybe you put a 50-piece stamp on it should have been a dollar stamp, and that was found out by some surveillance method, and so you're now exposed as cheating on the American government, or maybe you winked an eyelid at some woman 25 years ago. That is all liable to be. brought up and deny you public office.

Who wants public office when there's no money in it and all you get is embarrassment? I think that's a really serious danger for America is the quality of leadership that's emerging. Goddows, the British press can't be exonerated from that kind of journalism. Indeed, in some ways we're worse. And we haven't got the corrective, I think,

the American press have, which is a very strong investigative tradition, which continues, and which here has been quite gravely weakened. One of the things both of you talk about. You volunteered it, John, and it's in your book, Harry, is the American can-do will solve, will make better thing. But that's not happening, is it happening? Tell me.

Is that happening in any way as it should, with large sections of the population, the 11% plaques, the increasing percentage of Mexicans, and so on and so forth? Well, I think they've all come and they have inherited that can-do spirit. And I think things are going to change dramatically with the web. You know, America, one of the reasons I think America is going to flourish in the next century, too, is the prolixity, density, and fix. of the information systems and the web and the net. And it's making a curious kind of new kind of democracies emerging with that.

Everybody's joining in. And don't forget, America's going to be the first country in the world, I think, in which everybody will be in a minority. There's going to be no white domination, no black domination, no Mexican domination. And the 11% Mexicans, or whatever percentage you chose there, I think still identify with the aspirations, not just with the material prosperity. One of the things you say there

and one of the things you referred to it partly before is that you hate this thing of everybody being in their ghetto and liberals, you say, from the 70s onwards, intensified that by making everything a matter of quota. Now, do you think that one of the great things about America was a melting pot, is it going to melt again? Well, I think that's very, I think one of the dangerous things which is happening

is minority preference because now, in the old days, if you're an Italian, a German, or Russian, whatever it was, you wanted to identify with the community speak the language and so on and so. And you had to do it because there was a real penalty if you didn't. Now, if you maintain a minority status, you get preference. So you've just come in, let's say, from Guatemala. You now get the minority preference ranking that was won by blacks through years of ordeals.

That minority preference was awarded because of past discrimination. There's no pastures. So these people have an incentive to stay apart and not melt. We're coming towards end the program, unfortunately, and I just want to sort of get back to one or two of them. If it's the American century, What is it giving to the next century? What is it the model for? Well, I think it's a model, and there's again some tension here. It's certainly a model for economic libertarianism, which nobody can deny has been an enormous success.

But it's also a model for political idealism as well as economic libertarianism. The tension between social conservatism and economic libertarianism is being worked out day-to-day argument-to-argument. I think it's very fascinating. What do you think is the model for, John? I think it is part of that. I think it can stand as a model of freedom in every sense. What I hope is that it will export it less, if you like, promiscuously, by which I mean, I think, that you can't impose,

and we've seen this in the last decade, if you like a post-communist decade, you can't impose a model of economic liberty on countries which are struggling to get out of decades, indeed some cases, centuries of photography. I agree with that totally, because the Russia is now going, is back for the capitalism of 1889, unregulated capitalism. But let's just take a wider view of the world.

Where are we going to get leadership against dictatorship, against exploitation, against genocide? And the United States is immensely powerful. Let's hope it stays looking out on the world and not retreat to isolationism. We haven't time to explore this, but often, Harry, America has been on the side of dictatorship. Of course, I've been on the side of genocide. America began in genocide, unfortunately. I've explored all that, and I've really highly criticizes.

of what happened in Vietnam and the CIA coups in Chile, Pinochet and Goethe Malah. But your book is optimistic. Let's finish on an optimistic, and not a childish note. There's nothing cherish about the book at all. But you conclude that, quote, Americans best understand the paradox

that if anything is to be preserved, it must change. It's the possibility of reasoned change that gives life to democracy. Obviously you believe that. Can you see it happening now in the America EU, of which you are to my astonishment a citizen?

Well, I think you keep coming back to that point. The point is, I suppose the English answer would be, my doubts, and I suppose the American answer would be, I'm sure it will happen. John Lloyd, what show you on the? I think, I agree with you. I hope it will happen. I also hope it will happen. I share with you the view that we Europeans have so far,

I hope it changes the next century, have so far not lived up to our latent power. Now that is we haven't taken enough of a hand in running the world for freedom. It's down to the Americans with all their faults and all. we'll brought you. That's a really good thought. When it brings us back at the beginning of the program, because actually we Europeans have, but we've decided to do it in America up to now.

Maybe we'll do it in Europe in the next century. I love the complexity. We have the European culture and the ideals of Europe to flourish and triumph. As John said, they've not been cohesive enough yet. I'm looking forward to that day when it happens. Thank you very much, Harold Evans. His book, The American Century, you need to do precepts to hold it, but it's very well worth the holding. And thanks to John Lloyd next week, my guest,

will be Susan Greenfield and V.S. Ramachandran, and we'll be discussing developments at the cutting edge of neuroscience as we approach the end of the century. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.com.com.