In Our Time - The American Ideal

Episode Date: June 1, 2000

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American Ideal. The Twentieth Century has been called the American Century, and you don’t have to look very far to see the evidence of its enormous success. In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson said; “Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world”. America is the world’s popular culture and its centre of the expensive higher sciences and scholarship. Its riches would make Midas weep in disbelief. Its contradictions grind the molars of intellectuals, critics within without. But its imperial, seemingly unassailable fortress is swollen with many treasures and open to many weaknesses.What is the ideal that underwrites that idealism and how has it driven the phenomenal influence that the USA has gained culturally, economically and diplomatically across the globe? And was it ever ideal and is it ideal any longer?With Christopher Hitchens, writer, journalist and author of No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton; John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Westminster and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy; Susan Sontag, cultural critics and essayists, and author of the novel In America.

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 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the 20th century was called the American Century, and you don't have to look very far to see the evidence of its enormous success. In 1999, sorry, President Woodrow Wilson said,

sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way of it. I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world. What is the ideal that underwrites that idealism and how has it driven the phenomenal influence that the USA has gained culturally, economically and diplomatically across the grove?

And was it ever ideal and is it ideal any longer? With me to discuss the nature of the American project in its future in the 21st century is the American writer Susan Sontak, whose new novel in America is published today. We're also joined by Christopher Hitchens, the writer and commentator on American Affairs who's recently published

No One Left to Lie to, the triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton and Professor John Keen, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Westminster University and the biographer of Thomas Payne. If you're looking for American idealism, Christopher Hitchens, do we start with the US Constitution

and the Bill of Rights? And the Declaration of Independence, I'm glad. Yes, the extraordinary thing about the United States is that it's a written country. I mean, there was America before there was the US, there was... There was the pilgrims, for example. And there was America before the pilgrims.

And there was an America before the pilgrims indeed, which has sadly been obliterated. And there was a Spanish America, the people didn't really know about it. There was Sir Francis Drake. But America, America, the USA, is attested to in documents. It's founded on paper. It's being written still. It's a work in progress. The most interesting thing about that constitution is its tale, it's Bill of Rights.

the number of amendments to the number now, I think, of 22, that constitute the rights of Americans that are still being argued about and that are a living presence in politics and the law and journalism every day. Do you think that this informs the ideals in the sense of the serious psychological makeup of ordinary American citizens? Oh, certainly, I do. I mean, it's also one of the reasons why, if you approach it from the more demotic level,

why the courtroom is probably the great American arena these days. more than, very often more than in Congress and more than in any other public assembly, it's in the courtroom, especially before and under the great roof of the Supreme Court, that big decisions and big principles are argued. And these are always by reference, not just a hermeneutic reference, but a serious daily reference to the Constitution. So how did you live in the States? I should give you an example, I suppose.

I mean, well, it was, the feminist movement a few years ago was arguing there should be a special amendment guaranteeing equality for, women. It was a big movement and it nearly got enough states to endorse it to carry, but it didn't make that because the contrary argument was this constitution actually implicitly already guarantees that. You don't need a special amendment. Very fascinating way of arguing the point. The most common allusion to the Constitution present is to the amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms, about which, as you know, there's a huge controversy. But you live in the States now, based in Washington and right for American magazines and so on,

so forth. Do you think that the ideal of America is something which plays a really important part in life, not in people's sorts, but is the way they live that life, or it's something that is a nice and easy bit of icing and covers up for what they'd get on with doing anyway? Well, I'd have to say it can sometimes be amusing to hear people refer quite unironically to things like the American dream. They refer to it with a straight face. This represents our dream. because the suggestion is that that's some kind of hallucination. And the one that amuses me the most is the reference that you get about once a year to the American loss of innocence, as if this sort of giant, enormous, powerful, slightly vulgar society ever had any innocence to lose, let alone could regain it and then lose it again.

I've heard the loss of innocence attributed to the Spanish-American War, the assassination of President Kennedy, assassination of President Kennedy's brother. the war in Vietnam, the disclosures made at Watergate, to the discovery, which is in Robert Redford's movie Quiz Show, that the quiz shows in the 50s were fixed. That was apparently a great American loss of innocence. And on the front page of the New York Times, when he died in the obituary of Frank Sinatra,

the idea that Frank Sinatra's songs represented the loss of innocence for America. Well, it's wonderful to live in a country that can discuss itself in this way, I have to say. There is obviously a temptation of danger of self-regard and narcissism in that. Susan Sontag, do you find what Christopher Hitchieffin says rings true with you as someone born and brought up in the States? Is I think from Christopher's born, born, brought up here, educated here, then fled. For the better climate of Washington, D.C. Better targets for Christopher. Yes, everything that Chris is.

Christopher says, and Christopher, I think, is absolutely not only one of the most brilliant commentators and writers around, whatever subject he touches, but I think he has a very deep understanding, wonderful, ironic, and informed understanding of the United States. Everything he says, I do agree with, and yet, of course, I see it from another angle. words that he uses almost dismissively like the American project resonate for me because I think at the heart of the United States is the notion that the country is a project and people think of their lives as projects and when he speaks of the American dream

he says people use this quite straightforwardly as if saying in a field that they live in part, according to standards that are hallucinatory, I don't have that experience at all. I hear these words, but I hear them differently. The American dream, I think, is really people believe in it. People believe there is a dream.

Now, what the dream is, the dream may be the dream of being able to make a lot of money. I remember a conversation with the taxi driver, and everybody who lives in America will tell you about taxi drivers as a sort of Vox Pop. And he was Russian. He had a Russian accent. This was years ago before the suicide of the Soviet Union. And I said, where are you from? And he said, Russia. And I said, do you like it here? And he said, yes, yes, yes. America, free, free. I said, yes, yes, I'm sure it's, you're free, thinking he's certainly free compared to what he was, that the system he was living under before he was allowed to get out. yes, much freer than the Soviet Union. He said, America free, free to make money.

So that freedom, that license, means something, it can mean everything, it can mean everything to people. That's what I was hinting at with Christopher. I wonder if you, I wonder if this idea of American idealism, just attest it, which is extremely attractive, and it's been dreamt of in this country of America, up with Coleridge and the image of the Pantysocracy going to the States. And we have

dreamed of going over there, British people, to exercise and practice the dream. And many Europeans have, we know, but I wonder whether it isn't now a stalking horse for the same old stuff that people want to get on with anyway, you know, power, money-making,

different sorts of survival and triumph. But I'd rather think it is. I think I do agree with you, Melvin, but then again, I also feel I was very amused at what Christopher said about how grotesque it is to speak of this country the United States having lost its innocence I mean one can't imagine a debate

or a feature of ordinary conversation being the British loss of innocence or the Scottish or English or Irish loss of innocence or any other country but I think it's true I think there was innocence in America Was it false innocent? Innocence call it amnesia, call it naïve, They call it the isolation of a truly continental country.

But I know I'm old enough to remember when everybody or virtually everybody did believe the government did good that the United States was different and virtuous. And then there was a moment when you realized it wasn't so. And there were turning points, absolutely. The difference between the spirit of the United States in the 1940s and the 1950s and the 1950s. and the early 60s and now is immense. It's not the same place, and that is, I think, correctly called something like a loss of innocence. Can I ask whether, though, just to get this bit over with,

because I don't think we can talk about it any further about talking about this bit, is the loss of innocence and the idea of innocence side is based on a colossal denial of the fact that when Europeans, a lot of them Brits, went to the states in the first place or near the first place, they did away with most of the people who were there when they arrived. So it is based on that denial. Having got over that,

if one who had anything to that, John Keen, do, if not, can you talk about, from your point of view, this idea of revolutionary zeal and visionary zeal that the founding fathers brought to the States? Well, I have the impression that many Americans

were born drunk and they remain drunk. They're intoxicated with the champagne of Philadelphia. and the spirit of Philadelphia. That's in Susan's on top. The kind of spirit that was in that crowd, which gathered in pouring rain in Philadelphia

to hear the Declaration of Independence read out. I think we agree that this Philadelphia spirit was Republican. It was a federation. It was an experiment in doing something that nobody else had done to produce a two-tiered federation, what James Madison called a compound republic. and above all, it had coded into it the mistrust of concentrated power. And its dislike of hubris, I think, is in that spirit,

is one of the reasons why there is an ongoing declaration of the loss of innocence. It is part of the American project to dislike popish, aggressive, pompous, miserly power of the kind that the Redcoat symbolise. This is the good side, I think, of the American ideal, and it explains why there has been an ongoing emphasis on rights, on the importance of public virtue. Money making has not always been revered in the American spirit, and it's permanently contested.

And it explains, I think, why the American ideal, the spirit of Philadelphia, has had a cosmopolitan effect. It affected the French. It appeared in Turkey, in China, in 1989. It's part of the Australian Constitution. And it explains, I think, why Americans, of course, are confident. They believe in themselves. They believe themselves to be superior.

They never carry umbrellas, as I think the old joke has. They're too self-righteous. They're too serious about themselves, not a good sense of irony. This is a confidence that comes from that spirit of Philadelphia. But the other side of that cosmopolitan confidence, I think, is arrogance. And we need to talk about power, the power of these ideals. I think it was Emerson who said that America symbolized opportunity, freedom and power. And power, it does symbolize.

At home, the belief in unity, the necessity of believing in America. America is a tune. It must be sung together, e pluribus unum, and abroad the power to dictate agreements. and if necessary to use violence. Are we then, Christopher Jins and Susan Hondike, Susan Sontag, Christopher, I'm having trouble with words this morning, there's Susan Sondack, are we talking about an old-fashioned empire,

a Roman empire, a British empire, writ for the late 20th, 21st century, and idealism is the extremely attractive banner behind which it chooses to march? Well, I don't know, I worry a little about the word idealism, because there's so many, I'd like to unpack the idea a little bit. There's the loyalty to the new.

Loyalty usually means loyalty to the past, and Americans are brought up to be loyal to the new. America is founded on an enormous amount of denial, as John Keene was just suggesting, like the genocide of the inhabitants of, of North America, when the European settlers arrived. There's denial, there's amnesia. But there is above all, and we can say from the outside,

it's idealism, but I don't think people normally think of it that way. The notion of perpetual self-reinvention. I mean, that's very much what my novel is about. It's about people, in fact, coming to America in the 1870s from, as it happens, Poland, but it could be another European country, led by a woman, an actress, famous actress, who's decided to give up her career

and form a utopian colony on the model of Brook Farm. Of course, it doesn't last, and she does go back on the stage and has a great career, and my novel becomes, after a part that's about the fate of idealism, it becomes a theater novel,

and it's about sort of portrait of an artist. as a 35-year-old actress. But, above all, it's the idea that you can shed your skin, you can become a new person, you can become transformed. We might call that idealism,

and it's certainly, I know it appears very naive and strange to Europeans, the notion that you can remake yourself, you can become someone else. Just a second, I mean, you've said that in various interviews, and it's very much part of your novel.

And I would, it's not for me to speak, you three are bought here to speak, but I would dispute that, and people have been reinventing themselves in Europe for centuries. I mean, people have, their class system in Europe seems rigid and stratified, but in fact it's been pervious and porous all the time.

People rushing up and down, tumbling off and climbing up. Being mobile isn't what Susan was talking about. No, I'm not talking about that. There is mobility, is a sure thing socially, and in America, of course, and coupled with geographical mobility and the idea of the frontier in Susan's book, they marvel at the thought, having just got to America,

that so many people who are ready in New York are thinking of leaving for California, because even America has its America, as they put it. You know, metaphysical poets in England used to use the term America just to mean... John Dunn? Yes, the... Most famous.

That which is to be desired and possibly attained, but you couldn't have in English literature, I think, someone's saying, as Fitzgerald said, so wrongly, there are no second acts in American lives, when in fact, people keep correcting him and saying, With luck, you can get three or four. But let's just try to pin this down a bit more.

I mean, you may be right and Susan may be right, but I'd just like to take it. One of the characteristics, we're trying to find out what is unpacking, to use Susan Sontag's word, the idea, the notion of idealism. We've been brought up the idea of reinvention. I say reinvention can be said to have happened in many European countries, including this,

not just mobility, reinvention of people. I could cite people all around as people, you and I and Christopher all over the place. Now, so I'm wondering. want to know, is this idea of, because all empires claim special qualities and virtues for themselves, and all outside empires, we're now outside the empire, we look at America say, what's special, what makes it special? We want great things to make it special because it's different. They did that with the British about 100 years ago. And sometimes actually things are just invented for the sake of it. And I think this idea of reinvention may be an invention. I think Melvin is right. There are different modes of self-invention. And what's specific about the American mode is, Jefferson put it well, equal rights for all special privileges for none. Freedom. Susan began with that taxi driver anecdote.

The belief that the ideal, the process of self-invention of peoples is encoded within a constitution within a spirit that is a living spirit. It's modernist. It's full of zeal for freedom. And if necessary, it's prepared to burn the flag for that. I think it's also true that Americans, I think they're committed to innovation. There's a prestige. And of course it makes the country very good at desecration, very good at destruction.

The famous American vulgarity, and that's a reality, is sort of cocking your snooped at... Very good at creation, too. I mean, Silicon Valley's creation on quite an extraordinary dazzling Florentine scale. Exactly. But the love of innovation, the admiration for triumph, for achievement, for success. Americans love success and they admire people who are successful. I find also that's rather different from other countries, where when people are successful, say, here in Britain,

I feel often the impulse of many people is to try to knock them down. It's not true in America. Not just for innovation, though, but for the massification, vulgar word, I know, of those innovations. In other words, that if something can be made that's a new breakthrough, the next struggle when it comes very hard upon is to make sure everyone can get hold of it, the personal computer or the automobile. From the Ford motor, yes, from the Ford onwards. Mass production goes with these innovations.

And that expresses a great spirit of generosity, I believe, and then even if you take, as we must, that the counterpart of innocence and its loss is original sin, and you mentioned the destruction of Native America. And one could add that in the Constitution, when first written, forced immigrants, African Americans, the regional African Americans, could be held as property and denied citizenship. Big constitutional argument about that.

And Asian Americans would deny the possibility of having citizenship. Chinese Americans would deny that. Many decades. If you ask me what's distinctive about the American Empire, I would say is it's internal internationalism, if you like. that if you're born in the United States, you're an American, even if your parents have just crossed the border from Guatemala

or have come from any number of countries. I mean, Susan is, what, two generations from Poland? Three. Three now. Sorry. But I mean... Well, I mean, it's very radical. The actress in an America, my novel,

she comes to America, the commune fails, she goes back on the stage, Polish accent and all, she has a great success. She then comes, thanks, Well, if I can make it in America, of course, this is the late 19th century, the height of bardolatory. I'd rather go to London. She comes to London, and of course, she's, you know, that's very nice, thank you very much. She's a poll from America.

She can never become an English actress. She can become an American actress. It's fascinating, but I'm still not quite convinced that it's much different from Kiways Americano, some is different from, you know, I am a Roman citizen, world citizen, because I am a Roman citizen, because I'm Roman or I am a world citizen because I'm British at the time of our empire. But can we move on to this idea of the pursuit of happiness, unless

you have something urgent to say Christopher, would I stand in the way of a juggernaut? Right, fine. Can you this idea this pursuit of happiness, which is such a tantalizing and mollifluous and wonderful notion, life liberty in the pursuit of happiness? Now,

Jefferson had trouble getting that through, didn't he, John King? He did, and in the draft process of the Declaration of Independence. The record is very clear that Jefferson wanted the phrase public happiness to be inserted. And there were his opponents ganged up. And they included what were called at the time men of wealth. These were men who thought that the pursuit of land, of the acquisition of land, of animals, of capital was what the Philadelphia spirit was about. Jefferson meant by public happiness, I think what Rousseau and earlier Republicans

had meant, which is the joy of self-government, this ability of citizens, male, white, slave-owning, to be sure, to gather in their various forums to decide how they would govern themselves within the rule of law. And the happiness that comes from that is, as anybody who has been to a good public meeting knows, is joyous. It was struck down. And we're stuck, the American ideal was thereafter shackled with this word happiness that can mean, of course, that, as Jefferson meant it, but it can also, and has become mixed up with money-making, with property, with acquisition, with consumption. And this is one of the enduring legacies, I think, of the Philadelphia spirit.

In which case I think it's a very fortunate mistake because it certainly is taken to mean as well that happiness means liberty and space and the right to pursue it. And the pursuit itself is a pursuit. That it's almost an occupation, not just an ambition. It's true. Bad government brings on happiness. It brings in a big question of money. in your novel, Susan Sartag,

said that 10 years after the Civil War, the time of the height of the carpet baggers, and we have money on the rampage. We're seeing money on the rampage. I believe it was Frick. Frick was around that time, wasn't he? Yes. With his private armies, slaughtering workers, literally slaughtering workers, if they got in his way,

and then ending up with one of the most wonderful museums in the world. So we think the little halo around Frick said, that that juxtaposition is very interesting. Do you think that the license to go for money in the way that has been, given in the United States. I'm not saying it's a devil competitor other countries, just it is the interesting empire

at the moment. Do you think that has actually gone against democracy, the ideals, and more importantly, has often used the ideals to cover its baser activities? Well, I would say what's happened in the United States, two things I want to say.

In one way, it is so surprising to me, let's say reading the greatest book ever written about the United States, by French aristocrat, Tocqueville, writing around 1830, a country which consisted largely of immigrants from British Isles and a lot of African slaves and a very, very tiny population. That's 170 years ago.

You think of all the demographic changes, for instance, for the last 40 years. I mean, 90% of immigrants to the United States are not from Europe, before 90% were, now 90% are. not 10% only or from here. What immense changes, and yet the country that Tockville describes, the place that Tockville describes, of course he was a genius,

but still, if it's 1830, is recognizably the United States, 170 years later, the prejudices, the ideals, the peculiar vulgarity, the peculiar and extraordinary freedoms. So one thing is continuity, the other thing is rupture,

the other thing is immense change. I mean, people now are, one says, money-making, and of course there is sort of the total victory of Thatcherism, the global victory of Thatcherism, that is to be taken into account of a view which says, in her legendary words, there is no such thing as society, there is only individuals. There are a lot of people in the United States who believe the rule of law, the constitutionally guaranteed rule of law, precisely. allows them to ignore society and say there are only individuals. And yes, there's pursuit of money, but what obsesses people, I think, they're dying of a sort of overkill, whatever you want to call it, of entertainment and entertainment values? And then on the other hand, they think about health.

Lots of talk about health. This is profoundly asocial. Including spiritual health. Yes. Can I get at this? Do you think Christopher Hitchens that there's a collision course? Well, your question was to plutocracy. Yeah, it was, yeah.

And you used the, you've done a, you did a piece on the Great Gatsby, which seemed to me to bring these two together, this idea of a great deal to do with the American ideal together, crashing against and failing against the idea of class and money. So can we, I'm going to use Susan von Wienzberg as unpacked that again. The class-like empire is one of the two terms you can't really use in the United States. They don't have a class system, okay, and they don't have an empire, and they want you to be absolutely sure about that.

But somehow, a lot of people do seem to be very rich, and a lot of people seem to be very poor, and there do seem to be American military bases all over the place and this kind of thing. All over the world. And they seem to be able to determine the price of some of their imports as well, and the rate at which people will be paid to labor to make them. So there's a lot of teasing out. But there's a nice way of wrapping it with our earlier discussion, if you like.

It is an open secret in the United States this year that politics is for sale. It's an open scandal. All the candidates agree about it now. They just wonder at what point they're going to swear off doing this. They're going to swear off having a plutocratic politics and the domination of politics simply by donors. I mean, the buying and selling of influence and of politicians and party programs. You cannot run for any public office in the United States without having the support of the plutocrat.

I mean, if you look back 50 years, think of, I don't know. Harry Truman. Think that the Republican Party nominated in 1940, a man totally forgot now, named Wendell Wilkie, who had nobody behind him at all except a bunch of politicians. He had no money. He ran a respectable campaign against Franklin, Delano Roosevelt, of course he lost. But it's inconceivable that someone like Wilkie or any of the figures of the of the 40s, 50s, 60s, could even be nominated now.

It costs countless millions of dollars to run even a campaign for Congress, not to mention. So where does this leave by the deal? Well, but there's a beautiful bit, which I'll quickly come to it, which is this. Money was recently held by the Supreme Court to be a form of free speech. In other words, the test case was a test case was taken to the Supreme Court saying the First Amendment to this Constitution guarantees free speech. If you deny me, the defendant's name was Buckley, I believe, you deny me the right to spend my money on any politician I like. To any amount that I care to contribute,

you are abridging my First Amendment rights as an American as a holder of free speech rights. And never mind, that money is totally corrupted the political process. So that would be quite secondary. The Supreme Court held, and that's at the moment the law of the land, that money is speech, and that the right to spend your money on politics is protected by the Constitution, and that to abridge that would be to amend an American freedom.

So it's absolutely fascinating the way in which the vulgar, the material and the crass have sort of bled into and melded with the great literary phrases which define the Constitution. I think we're in danger here of doing what a very long tradition of observers of the American ideal has done, which is to see America more and more as plutocratic, as a culture of narcissism, soda-sipping, ice cream licking, cut-off wearing narcissism, individualistic,

the right to be yourself, the right to make a load of money, to be pseudo-sophisticated as pseudo-sophisticated as a California Republican, or to be utterly cynical about equality, as I think the man with a muckrake to my right here has correctly pointed out. Nobody knows that Christopher Hitchings is on your right. The man with a muckrake, who is. who correctly has pointed out that Bill Clinton... I'm on your left.

Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has done everything in the name of defending women and blacks and gays and Latinos to dismantle the ideal of equality that's originally in that Philadelphia spirit. And I want to say that this charge against the American ideal, that it has mucked with money, and it has undermined its original thrust, which was the defense. of the rights of citizens against hubris, against unaccountable power, that theme is a very old one and it goes back to the time of the revolution. Rich men make bonnie traitors, said Tom Paine, and that had a great resonance in the early republic.

Men of selfishness, politicians with shabby morals. One can see this criticism of the original American ideal and its degradation in the kinds of conflicts around Silas Dean, the first great scandal, which Christopher Hitchens, has helped to repeat, so to say, around the Clinton administration. I don't know which point you're driving towards. The point is that the American ideal speaks with a forked tongue. It speaks of the right of individuals to be themselves and in that sense becomes complicit with the material consumption that we know well.

But on the other hand, the right of equality, the 14th Amendment, is embedded in that original Philadelphiaan ideal. And it explains why Tocqueville was impressed by the capacity for group association. There's a very old roots of a welfare state in America going back to the civil war. The governments address the needs of soldiers, widows, the non-partisan league of the 20s, the periodic election of socialist mayors in places like Milwaukee. I mean, there is this ongoing tussle within the American ideal in favour of equality. And one could mention the case of the First Amendment controversies about commercial speech. But for every judgment of this kind, there is a large body of legal opinion in America that says that commercial speech should be restricted.

And campaign funding is controversial. This is interesting. The University of Westminster, on my right, John King, is challenging the Grub Street of Washington, if you don't mind. You wouldn't mind that. No shame in that. No shame in that whatsoever.

And the intellectuality here on my left of Sunday. In other words, John Gein is saying, come on, it isn't as bad as all that. Well, it couldn't be worse than my... I don't really think the domination of politics by money could be any worse than it is at the moment. But it is true that the Buckley decision will probably be overturned.

But as you've often observed, But the politics is as small and rather hermeneutic activity in the States. It isn't the whole of the state. It isn't the whole of what America is about. It isn't the whole the way America lives its life, is it? No, that's true. And I think that the case being put by John Keen was that, hold on, you're wiping out all that America stands for because of this undoubted anxiety and corruption in that particular, though it is a limited area. No, one of the charms of the United States is the extent to which you can lead in unpolitical life, not really caring who your senator or congressman is, not much, much, much, much.

what the government is up to, large areas of autonomy permitted. The problem with that is that huge decisions may well be taken without even knowing about them. And that also, by the way, applies to people who are not Americans, who are about to be influenced hugely by American decisions taken. I mean, the best current example would be the Clinton Gore decision to go ahead with building a Star Wars missile defence. That's going to affect everybody in the world. Very few people have a say in how it's taken.

a large amount of military industrial money spent by very few people has had much more influence than any voter on that decision. Well, that's absolutely right. I think a couple of hundred people at most are making these decisions. It's not wrong to also speak about the very deep strain of anarchism in the United States.

After all, the country was founded on a tax revolt, and it's probably the only country in the world where people actually feel somewhere deep down that taxation is illegitimate. Do you think they nicked it from our civil war which is based on a tax revolt? It was the first, the Philadelphia revolt and the revolution that succeeded

was the first and only successful English revolution. Well, whatever. Yes, I'm sure Thomas Paine was influenced by John Hamden, if that's what you mean. Yes, but the point is that that the... actually the government is very far for most people. The largest contact that people have with the government is taxation. They have to pay taxes,

and they have to apply to a government agency, as it were, to get a driver's license. And pretty much that's it. You could actually live your entire life if you didn't break any laws without any further contact with the government or any further interest in the government. In the meantime, the government,

that is the plutocracy, that elects the government, business interests, are making decisions which affect everybody on the planet, and most people don't know, most people don't care. Can I just shift it in the small time I have left? I mean, clearly we could talk until tomorrow morning, but we have a novel at the centre of this in America, your novel says on target,

and in that there are ideas about art, and I know you are not responsible for what your character say in the novel, but nevertheless, at one stage somebody says, Marina in a letter when she writes out of the home, she says Americans when it comes to art, this is 1875, are surprisingly devoid of patriotic self-confidence.

It's assumed that performances of quality come from abroad. Can you tell us why you wanted to play with that idea and where that idea has gone to over the last century? Well, again, I think it is still true. I think the country is more self-confident,

quote-unquote, than it was in the in matters of art. I mean, Tocqueville, in 1830, and everybody has always said the Americans are really not good at art, but they're too practical-minded. They want to move on. They have contemplation, rumination, the creation of art. I mean, there were people, Hazlitt, I think,

said Americans could never write novels because, well, they don't have the culture for it. They're too extreme. They're too... They're scotch. They're too extreme. too hysterical. He actually says that too hysterical, too violent, too morbid

mind. It's very curious and very brilliant essay about why Americans can't write good novels. Now, I think well again, to go back to the idea that everyone can become an American, America is an anthology country. There are

in the borough of Queens, in the city of New York, 187 languages are spoken in the public school system. We have children for the And I know London has people from all over the world, all great cities do now, all great cities are world cities. Nevertheless, America is founded on that idea. And then you go into a museum, for instance, say, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, not founded by a robber, barren, Lachwick, and so on. But that is the way that the rich in America cover up their crimes by endowing great foundations or building museums or public libraries. Attempts to cover up their crime. Yes, exactly. Conscience money.

Anyway, you go into a museum of 20th century art, what we used to call modern art, and you see Marcel Duchamp, and the date of his, born, Paris, died. He may even died in Paris, I don't know, but he became an American citizen, American artist. Now, Marcel Duchat, French, French, I had the privilege of meeting him a few times,

heavy French accent. He's an American. He's an American in five minutes. But we claimed Handel for English. These things go around and come around. The idea of America... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no, no, but I do think it's different.

I don't think you become English in the way that you become American. You become American by choosing America. By choosing to be there. It's a settler country. There's a difference between a settler country. When you said, interesting, that America was founded on 180... You said Queens, 187 languages, and I was about to say, I know a primary school in the east end of London

which would they teach in more than 40 languages and it's doing very well has now got up to a national average and so and so forth that doesn't matter but you said it was founded on this it wasn't it was founded by a number of white, European largely British people

who as Christopher Hitchens pointed out accepted slavery denied citizenship or existence to people from Asia and so on so forth so that was founded on I'm just trying to I'm just trying to I can rub this idea that it is, there's always been this great melting pot. I don't know whether it has been about it.

The words that are on the Statue of Liberty, the Emma Lazarus poem about the tired, the hungry and the poor, and the wretched refuse of the teeming shore and all that are not taken from the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, no. But I think they are a plausible extension of the elegant misreading of the pursuit of happiness. But I don't, I'm not saying that the country was founded with the idea that it would be, it would include people from literally every country and community in the world, which it does. But it was a settler country, and a settler country is different. Now, the really interesting thing, which I puzzle about, is why is the United States not like Canada? Why is the United States not like Australia?

I mean, there are other major settler countries. And leaving aside the question of a population, of course, Canada has a very small. population, immense geographical surface. The actual spirit, the sense in which they experience their identity as a country now also of immigration is very different from the United States. It may not have been founded that way. It may not be part of what John Keene calls the Philadelphia spirit. But certainly it became that way.

Let's call the Civil War, the great turning point. My novel takes place 10 years after the Civil War. From the Civil War onward, it was a country that... everyone knew. For better and for worse, Henry James came back to the States, having chosen to live here in England and London, and was absolutely appalled at what New York had become at the turn of the 20th century. But that's what it was. It was a country that received people from all over the world, who became Americans simply by going there, and they really were Americans.

Short statement, John Gain. We've not mentioned religion. I was just going to say that very thing. Visit a prayer breakfast. and you will see that all that we've been discussing is interlaced with the belief in God and the belief that God is on the side of America. This needs to be taken into account. There's the story of Billy Graham. He was an Englishman, Elic, I'm going to.

Billy Graham sweeping into President-elect Nixon's suite and saying, we did it, we did it. And everybody around there, by all reports, was puzzled. Was he referring to Billy Graham and Richard Nixon, or Billy Graham and God or all three. This is a subtext of the American ideal. Finally, Christopher Hitchell. Well, I too was just realizing we had not left enough time for religion

and for the idea of manifest destiny in America as having a special providence to guide it, but just let's close on the thought that the Pilgrim fathers, the men who went to Plymouth Rock, it was said of them that they went to do good and they ended up doing well. And thus may it always be. for all those who pass the Statue of Liberty.

In my novel, I have a religious bigot who breaks it on the actress and says, why are you an actress? You should be a preacher. You should be a preacher. She says, what happened to my art? What happens is we've got four seconds, Susan. Thank you very much, Grisovich,

John Keene, Susan Sontike. 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. forward slash radio four.