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Civility and Defense
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11408 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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11 / 1986 |
3,877 Words |
| Author
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Philip Gold
Philip Gold is senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery
Institute and a frequent contributor to the Washington Times.
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History is the realm of what must have been. Events acquire a patina of interpretation; interpretation comes to be accorded the status of fact, and finally retrospective synopsis attains the level of truth. History cannot be written any other way.
Some synopses come a bit too easily. Something of this nature appears to have happened with the assessment of American history in the late 1960s and 1970s, especially in the realm of foreign affairs. In what may be termed the "standard assessment" of that era, the United States "lost its purpose in the world" a purpose that was presumed to exist until the Vietnam trauma. The initial result of this loss of "national purpose" was paralysis in the world arena. The paralysis was rendered all the more debilitating by what Norman Podhoretz once called "deliverance from debate" the long national silence on the meanings of Vietnam. After a few years of unopposed Marxist successes and a growing recognition of the new Soviet military threat, plus the national humiliations of 1979 and 1980, a nation unwilling to look either inward or outward has found its attention marvelously reconcentrated. The result, according to the standard analysis, was the Reagan victory, which in turn generated a new activism in world affairs and at least a partial revivification of the "national purpose in the world."
The problem with this synopsis is not that it is wrong per se, but it begs a vital question. How may "national purpose in the world" be measured or even proven to exist? Except in the most extreme situations, such as World War II, how is it possible to speak of a coherent, uniform intention to effect some accomplishment beyond national boundaries?
Where may this "national purpose in the world" be found? Surely not in the polls. Few, save the pollsters and their clients, would suggest that opinion polls that ultimate confusion of the statistical and the normative, the learned and the ignorant, the passionate and the indifferent possess any binding quality. For six years now, and with some justice, President Reagan's lopsided victories have been dismissed as personal popularity, not sanction for particular policies. His "lonely landslides," as they have been called, reflect "national purpose in the world" less than they reflect affection for a genial, lucky, and not that bad chief executive. In any event, Mr. Reagan's foreign policies have not exhibited the forceful consistency once expected by those who speak most easily of the "national purpose in the world."
Nor can such purpose be found in the barbs
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