Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. In his remarks, he lauded “states’ rights” in the same county where three civil rights activists working to register voters had been murdered in 1964. Many saw Reagan’s words as backhanded praise of the post-Reconstruction tactics that had shut African-Americans out of the South’s political and economic mainstream for a hundred years after Reconstruction. Whether he was just tactless or meant to be patently insidious, his words certainly made Rosalynn Carter’s characterization ring particularly true: “He makes us comfortable with our prejudices,” she said.
As times change, so do the code words. For example, it’s become fashionable to attach the adjective “Judeo-Christian” to a variety of political nouns, such as “values” or “country.” But what are the specific Judeo-Christian values relevant to governing the United States that a non-Judeo-Christian would take issue with? For that matter, what are the specific values that are shared by Judeo-Christians that are not shared by other pious, law-abiding non-Christians or non-Jews?
Of course, there aren’t any serious answers to these questions. If you pressed, I’d bet that you’d hear “freedom,” “liberty” and “life” cited as examples. But aren’t these values more accurately characterized as “universal,” or perhaps “natural”? What we’re really witnessing is the emergence of a new set of code words coldly calculated to appeal to those Americans that are uncomfortable with the churn that continually redefines the nation’s demographics.
Those that choose to give these sentiments a stage are turning their back on a unique bargain. America’s refusal to differentiate between ethnicity and nationality has always attracted a special breed of immigrant. These men and women are driven by a fierce patriotism and entrepreneurial spirit that can only be bred by the lack of opportunity and liberty in the rest of the world. But rather than embrace and strengthen this compact, some politicians and cable news ratingsmongers divisively insist that America was founded as a “Christian nation.” Oddly, Thomas Jefferson didn’t seem to agree:
“…[A]n amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," [but] the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”
To make use of these new code words is to also be at odds with the case that the Founding Fathers were trying to make for a radically new type of government: one empowered by the People to defend universal ideals of life, liberty and property, rather than one created to serve a King who believed himself to be divinely empowered to rule. They also purposelessly sow meaningless divisions at a time when the United States faces a laundry list of intractable challenges. Is the desire to control the spiraling costs of healthcare a uniquely Christian idea? Just imagine all those Hindus, who unlike Judeo-Christians must get a huge kick out of endlessly circling above a perpetually congested LaGuardia! And you know that Osama’s sitting in his cave, hating us not just for our freedom, but for our national parks as well.
I remember an argument with a kid on the school bus, who insisted that I wasn’t “really” American because my parents had immigrated from India. My third grade reasoning not yet of Jeffersonian caliber, I tried to explain that if someone is born in the United States, he or she is automatically granted American citizenship. But what I didn’t understand that he wasn’t arguing about the law—he was challenging the principle behind it. We went back and forth a bit, until the bus driver jumped in: “Nihal, you’re an American, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”
We drove on in silence, American exceptionalism neatly encapsulated into a single sentence.
