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Paine's Failed Vision of an Exceptional America

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Paine's Failed Vision of an Exceptional America Paine’s Failed Vision of an Exceptional America I Thomas Paine began his rallying call for the independence of the American colonies, with the message “the cause America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.”1 This was a statement intended to mark America as both, intimately connected to the rest of the world and at the same time set apart and exceptional. America was for Paine the “asylum for mankind”, the place where freedom, which had been expelled from every other part of the globe, could make its stand.2 This imagery, conjured by one of the revolutions most influential pens, has remained central to American identity. It can be seen echoing through the imagery that some of the United States most prominent leaders have used to define America’s place in the world calling it an “empire of liberty”, the “last best hope of Earth”, a “shining city on a hill”, and the “indispensable nation”.3 In this sense Paine’s vision for America seems to fit with Stephen M Walt description of statements of ‘American Exceptionalism’ which “presume that America's values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration…” and imply that the “United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.”4 Paine’s vision of an exceptional America however, was not simply one of American greatness, there had been many great nations, empires and civilizations but America was to be different. This idea of America as different and set apart from the rest of the world is at the very heart of much of the American Exceptionalism literature from Alexis de Tocqueville through to Seymor Lipset. Paine argued that by realising both the spirit and principle of liberty the American peoples were going to establish a new kind of political community that would be an example to the world. The clearest image guiding Paine’s vision of America was not what America would be, but what she must not be. America must not be just another nation; she would not be part of the European inter-national system, which he described as America would not be just another nation “too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace”.5 While Paine was not the first or the last to express the arguments central to his revolutionary pamphlets Common Sense or Rights of Man, his style of writing and use of imagery made them some of the most widely read political tracts of the time.6 At the time George Washington described Common Sense as “working a powerful change in the minds of many men”, and John Adams complained about it being the ‘Age of Paine’.7 Subsequently Common Sense has been described as “the most immediately influential political or social tract ever published” in America, and with the exception of Marx Paine has been called, “the most influential pamphleteer of all time.”8 As Eric Foner argues the power and prominence of Paine arguments in the American Revolution 1 T. Paine, ‘Common Sense’ [January 1776], The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine: Volume I, (ed.) P. S. Foner (New York: Citadel Press, 1945), 3 2 Paine, ‘Common Sense’, 30-31; Paine, ‘Rights of Man: Part First’ [1791], Complete Writings I, 354 3 S. M. Walt, ‘The myth of American Exceptionalism’, Foreign Policy, November 2011; He is refereeing here to Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Regan, Madeline Albright 4 Walt, ‘The myth of American Exceptionalism’ 5 Paine, ‘Common Sense’, 21 6 J. Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995) , x 7 G. Washington quoted in W. D. Jordan, ‘Familial Politics: Thomas Paine and the Killing of a King, 1776’, The Journal of American History, 60/2, (1972) 8 H. laski, quoted in B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Enlarged Edition, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1967),286 has meant that he “contributed too much to the image Americans had of themselves and to the language in which they expressed their political and social aspirations, to be completely forgotten.”9 Paine has continued to be a controversial figure in American politics with presidents like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson all admires10, but he has generally been a maligned figure with prominent figures like President Theodore Roosevelt describing him as a “filthy little Atheist”. More recently Paine has been invoked by both Republican and Democratic presidents. Ronald Regan in his 1980 speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination as president evoked Paine to say that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again” and George H W Bush also referred to him on various occasions while president.11 Barak Obama in his inaugural speech also found a prominent place to quote form Paine’s Crisis Paper I, showing the continued influence of Paine’s voice in American political consciousness. This paper explores the parallels between the vision and arguments Paine put forward for a new political community in America and the arguments of American Exceptionalism which have been identified by people Lipet12 and Ian Tyrrell13. I argue that Paine’s imagery played an important role in shaping this idea of America, but that the American exceptionalism that developed was not the exceptional America that he intended or envisioned. Drawing on Walt’s five American Exceptionalism myths consider to what extent America became the kind nation Paine hoped it would not. I consider the foundations of Paine’s vision of a new form of political community in America cast against the image the European inter-national system of which it has subsequently become the leading member. Finally I ask whether gaining a better understanding of Paine’s foundational image of an exceptional America can help us appreciate the values embodied in our present way of life and offer any insights into the problems which face us today. II The idea that America is exceptional first and foremost refers to the notion that there is something qualitatively different about America compared to all other countries. While a number of critics and advocates have taken this to also mean that America is in various ways better than other countries, Lipset stresses this is not what most have meant when using the term exceptional to describe America.14 At the heart of American Exceptionalism argument is the idea that what Michael Foley calls the ‘American credo’ has led to the creation of society and system of government that operates differently from other nations and in particular from European nations.15 The intention here is to highlight the parallels between Paine’s augments and the central tenets of the American Exceptionalism and suggest that Paine’s revolutionary imagery was an important in the initial development of the American identity which has “allowed the United states to establish a self image of exceptionalism.”16 Central to arguments of Exceptionalism is the act of comparison, such a self image becomes established only in comparison to others. A key component of the American exceptionalism 9 E. Foner, Thomas Paine and Revolutionary America, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 269 10 Foner, Thomas Paine and Revolutionary America, 269; H. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 183 11 Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, 3 12 S. M. Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword, ( New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996) 13 I. Tyrrell, ‘American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History’, The American Historical Review, 96/4, (1991), 1031-1055 14 Lipset, American Exceptionalism, 18 15 M. Foley, American Credo: The Place of Ideas in US Politics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 16 Foley, American Credo, 3 literature has been those who have come from outside America, and in particular form Europe, and observed that America is different. A key member of this ‘foreign traveller’ literature is de Tocqueville, who Lipset credits with being the first to refer to America as exceptional, in the sense of being qualitatively different both socially and politically from Europe.17 But it should perhaps not be so surprising that people like de Tocqueville noticed such a clear difference from Europe, as it was against an image of Europe that those who established the case for independence like Paine made their arguments. The starting point for most arguments of American exceptionalism is that America’s revolutionary origins mark them out as exceptional in the course of human history. As Lipset describes it America was the “first new nation”, and only the second colony to become independent, and this made it something new and different on earth.18 Tyrrell in his study of the role of American Exceptionalism in accounts of American and international history, highlights that while the focus on the nation-state has been a feature of historical accounts around the world for the past two hundred years. But he observes in no other country has the nation-centred focus been as strongly embraced as in America. He argues that “the idea that America was a “special case “outside” the normal patterns and laws of history runs deep in the American experience.”19 This has lead many writing on American history form a “liberal world view” to portray American as being able to avoid the “class conflicts, revolutionary upheaval, and authoritarian governments of “Europe” and presented to the world an example of liberty for others to emulate.”20 The idea that the establishment of an independent American political community was a special moment in history is a central aspect of Paine’s argument in Common Sense and his Crisis Papers.
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