I have often wondered why America is more right-wing than some other wealthy nations. In particular, among the original G7 nations, Canada, France and Germany have all operated decisively to America's left over the past three decades. America's ideological status compared to Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom is much more debatable.
The question is only relevant as a recent historic development, too. Until Nixon took office, it is possible that America was the most consistently progressive nation on Earth for its entire history. Sure, we were far from perfect, but we were less imperialist than European nations, we were a republic far earlier, we were a relative haven of religious freedom, our social safety net was comparable or superior to just about all other wealthy nations, we were moving toward universal suffrage quite quickly, the death penalty was illegal, we were at the forefront of the early environmental movement, we founded the U.N., and we were, by far, the number one destination of people around the world who were seeking freedom and opportunity.
What happened over the last forty years? In most of the categories I listed above, we have now fallen behind other nations. How did our rate of progressive development slow to a relative crawl compared to many other wealthy nations? I can think of three reasons, one of which can be done away with, possibly permanently, if Obama wins the Presidential campaign. I explain in the extended entry.
The Cold War. Our heavy engagement in the Cold War opened the floodgates in the federal government to the military industrial complex and also created paranoia about left-wing politics in the United States. Our excessive military spending is acting as a long-term drag on social investment projects, and it began because we decided to engage the Cold War so intensely. Whether or not that was a good idea is debatable, but I don't think the effects of that engagement can be debated. In the span of only a couple of decades, we shifted from being an isolationist nation with virtually no military spending to a nation that allied itself with right-wing totalitarians around the globe and which dumped 6-8% of our GDP into military spending even during peace time. It pulled us to the right, big time. This won't really change much under an Obama administration.
Intense Religious Belief. Compared to other wealthy nations, America is a vastly more religious nation. This is at least partly due to our lack of a state religion, as the direct attachment of religion to states in most western European nations probably helped to discredit all religions in those countries. Religion was often a propagandistic, officially oppressive force in those states in a way it just wasn't in America. In fact, many of the progressive reforms in the United States, from abolition, to suffrage, to civil rights and the anti-war movement, came from religious organizations. However, overall, the greater connection to religion, especially the better organizing of conservative religious organizations of late, has been a socially conservative force in this country.
Our Apartheid State. This is the big one, and perhaps a more important cause than the previous two combined. The truth is that while America was the most consistently progressive country in the world from the 1790's through most of the 1960's, we were also an apartheid state in respect to our largest minority, African-Americans. Our greater income inequality, our lack of effective opposition to rising corporatism, our relatively smaller union movement, our lack of universal health care, our suburban car culture, the one-third of our public schools that perform very poorly--all of these are directly connected to our apartheid legacy. What's more, the movement to end the apartheid state caused a huge backlash against other aspects of the progressive agenda from many white working class quarters. The net effect was to create a conservative plurality in America that has largely governed, and retarded our progress, for the past forty years. Certainly, gains were made, but not nearly as many as in other wealthy nations.
This morning, as I saw John McCain pull even, or possibly slightly ahead, of Barack Obama in the presidential campaign, I was thinking about these three causes. It occurred to me that by electing Obama, we could strike a major blow against the third cause by defeating the conservative backlash coalition and ending electoral reliance on socially conservative whites. This wasn't a new thought, as I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in The Nation and for much longer than that online, but it did occur to me that striking this major blow against right-wing America was going to be far more difficult than I had previously appreciated. This election will turn on identity, and progressives haven't won an election like that in at least 44 years. If we pull it off, it means that the third major cause of America's right-wing slide will have been defeated, but clearly it isn't going to come easy.
