The American Exception

262 Pages·2017·2.033 MB·English

by  Frank J. Lechner

the
american
exception
volume 1
Frank J. Lechner
The American Exception, Volume 1
Frank J. Lechner
The American
Exception, Volume 1
Frank J. Lechner
Department of Sociology
Emory University
Atlanta, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-58716-9 ISBN 978-1-137-58717-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58717-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957035
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
On page 154 a table appears that was originally published in the book The American Illness
edited by F.H. Buckley (Yale University Press, 2013)
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To my parents-in-law and fellow immigrants
Gordon Arthur Webster
and
Audrey Molineux Webster
P
reface
When I decided to move from the Netherlands to the United States for
graduate study in 1979, I asked my main advisers, Hans Adriaansens and
Anton Zijderveld, to suggest books I should read in advance. As I recall,
they mentioned Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Max
Lerner’s America as a Civilization. I enjoyed reading both, but they did
not quite serve my purpose, as I naively looked for a single source that
could tell me how contemporary American society worked. After I had
lived in the U.S. for several decades, teaching at Emory University, I
decided to try and write the book I did not find all those years ago. This is
it. I hope some current versions of my younger student self, from Tilburg
to Shanghai, will find it useful.
The book did not turn out exactly as I had envisioned then. The
reason is simple: no one text could satisfy the kind of curiosity that
led me to move to the U.S. in the first place. But while the book that
follows does not try to explain how all of American society works, it
does contain a fairly detailed portrait that covers many facets of its sub-
ject, from religion to law to foreign affairs. The portrait is deliberately
selective, sketched from the vantage point of a particular question. As
the title suggests, that question is: what makes the United States an
exceptional society? More than just a starting point for historical and
comparative study, the question touches on issues Americans have long
thought about as they discussed their national identity. In those discus-
sions, Americans (and some outsiders) made definite claims about what
set the U.S. apart and why that was significant, sometimes turning their
ideas into an ideology of exceptionalism. This book examines a variety
vii
viii PrEFACE
of those claims, both to assess their empirical substance and as a way to
gauge the evolution of American national identity.
Apart from helping to get a grip on a big subject, the question mat-
ters to me because answering it may shed light on an issue in my previous
work, namely how people define their identity, and countries determine
their place, in response to globalization. World Culture: Origins and
Consequences (with John Boli) and Globalization: The Making of World
Society focus mainly on globalization as such, but The Netherlands:
Globalization and National Identity addresses the interplay alluded to in
the subtitle. While charting the paths Americans have followed in building
their institutions, this book also tries to show how they have positioned
themselves in and coped with the presence of the wider, now more closely
connected world. Of course, that is not merely an academic issue. In fact,
national identity is a hot topic around the globe, as many people in many
countries argue, or even fight, about how to define and preserve it. In
the U.S., American exceptionalism has helped to galvanize such concerns
about national identity, especially on the part of conservatives for whom
it has become a kind of rallying cry, a way to proclaim the importance of
old values in opposition to forces that threaten to undermine them. The
American political left, by contrast, treats the notion more critically. This
book does not intend to take sides on the merits of exceptionalism, but I
suspect it will come across as more sobering than conservatives might like
and more sympathetic than progressives would prefer.
Many people, too numerous to name individually, have made this book
possible. Above all, I would like to thank the students in the Freshman
Seminar I used to teach at Emory under the heading, “What Makes
America Special?” They responded to my ideas and some early drafts with
insight and good humor. Teaching them was a pleasure, and I have learned
much from them. I hope other students who read the finished product
will share my gratitude. Since encountering Tocqueville and Lerner back
in 1979, I have happily discovered the work of many hundreds of schol-
ars, across several fields, who together explain much about how the U.S.
works. My portrait is in a sense a composite based on those prior studies.
American society may have its faults, but the literature about it is incred-
ibly rich. If nothing else, this book tries to convey some of that intellec-
tual wealth, aiming to show that the theme of the American exception
pervades scholarly discourse as much as public debate. Because so many
people well beyond my own professional circles contributed to this book
through their inspiring work, I hope the extensive citations will serve as
collective thanks.
PrEFACE ix
I am grateful to Patrick Allitt and roland robertson for their help-
ful comments and good advice. At Palgrave Macmillan, Mireille Yanow
got the project going and Kyra Saniewski saw it through. I thank Emory
College for a sabbatical leave that helped me to complete the manuscript.
As always, my immediate family—Jennifer, Suzanne, and Philip—gave
me their loving, and patient, support. I dedicate this book to two fel-
low immigrants, my parents-in-law Gordon Arthur Webster and Audrey
Molineux Webster, who welcomed me into their family and did so much
to help me feel at home in our adopted country.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Identifying the American Exception 3
1.2 Questioning the American Exception 8
1.3 Studying the American Exception 12
1.4 Agenda 17
References 19
2 “A Shining City”? Perspectives on the American Exception 23
2.1 Americans and the American Exception 25
2.2 Tocqueville and the American Exception 37
2.3 Socialism and the American Exception 50
2.4 Anti-Americanism and the American Exception 59
References 70
3 “A Sea of Faith”: The American Religious Exception 77
3.1 Megachurches and the American Religious Exception 78
3.2 Evangelicalism and the American Religious Exception 87
3.3 Civil Religion and American Identity 101
3.4 Exporting America’s God 114
References 125
xi
xii CONTENTS
4 “Equal Justice under Law”: The American
Legal Exception 133
4.1 Capital Punishment and the American Legal Exception 134
4.2 Adversarial Legalism and the American Legal Exception 142
4.3 The Constitution and American Identity 160
4.4 The U.S. in International Law 172
References 182
5 “Almost an Island unto Itself”: The American
Sports Exception 189
5.1 Baseball and the American Sports Exception 190
5.2 Football and the American Sports Exception 201
5.3 Race, Sports, and American Identity 216
5.4 America in Global Games 229
References 240
Index 247