A rchive Date
[ 07-08-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_london.html
A republic/empire that shakes the world
By SALIM MANSUR - For the London Free Press
August 7, 2002
For most of us who make a living by employing spoken or printed words, summer is for catching up with new readings or turning to old favourites.
This summer unfolded inescapably under the shadow of Sept. 11. Consequently, reading and reflection have been, I surmise, for many as for myself, about the current state of the world, or about the war on terrorism, or about America. America as a subject for reading is as baffling, absorbing, frustrating and huge, as is the country in size and diversity.
There is one thing certain about the terrorists who launched their evil assault on America - and those, who for any number of reasons continue to sympathize with the terrorists - they did not read and reflect about America striding the world as a colossus, with none from the past comparable to its power and its wealth.
Mexicans humour themselves, the story goes, by telling each other how far they are from God and how near to America. In a world of instant communications, the Mexican condition has become universal.
For any serious student of American politics and society, Alexis Tocqueville's Democracy in America is mandatory reading. The author, a French aristocrat, was not quite 30 when the book was published in Paris in 1835, and acquired the reputation, that time has not eroded, of being the most insightful account of America.
Americans ask themselves, following Sept. 11, why do so many around the world hate them?
The question is perplexing, urgent, and relevant for non-Americans as well, and Tocqueville is innocently silent on the matter.
There are, however, a number of books that provide in various degrees clues to the question above.
William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's The Ugly American is an unusual novel published in 1958, and made into a movie with Marlon Brando playing the lead, before the Vietnam war tore American society apart.
The authors felt so strongly about their fictional narrative providing insight into why American diplomacy was deeply troubled in Asia and elsewhere, they appended a "factual epilogue" to their work as instruction for American policy makers.
The Ugly American is a useful reading - as is Brando's movie suggestive - about why America's good intentions and generosity have so often been counter-productive.
Then there is Tocqueville's compatriot, Jean-Francois Revel, publishing in 1970 Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun.
Revel was ahead of his time, almost prophetic, and ignored by his peers. Revel's opening sentence was Marxian in its brashness: "The revolution of the 20th century will take place in the United States."
His second sentence was even more provocative: "It is only there that it can happen."
Revel explored, in defiance of the prevailing liberal-left consensus in France and America, shaken by student rebellion and the anti-war movement, why American democracy as future-oriented makes the country the most open and innovative society, hence revolutionary, in history.
But the most sensitive commentator on America since Tocqueville was Octavio Paz (1914-98), the Mexican essayist and poet awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990.
Paz's most famous work is The Labyrinth of Solitude (1961), an incomparably incisive, yet haunting, meditation on Mexico and its relationship with America as the other.
His most recent book, Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey, was published posthumously in 1999.
Paz explained America as a paradox, being simultaneously "a republic and an empire, whose "slightest movements shake the whole world."
In belonging to the New World, Paz identified with the American revolution representing modernity and change. He wrote, "The American lives on the very edge of the now, always ready to leap toward the future." As a Mexican, Paz understood how America is seductively troubling, even dangerously confusing, to others.
Sept. 11, an assortment of the troubled and confused, raging against modernity, assaulted America.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Wednesdays. Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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