The Affirmative Spirit - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 77

appropriately, perhaps because he has never been able to contrast his current situation with
one of true content. Happiness for Aristotle, as for Hegel and Marx, is a matter of flourish-
ing, which in turn is a question of how far you can freely realise your powers as enjoyable
ends in themselves. You may think you are doing this, but you may be mistaken. You may
not be in the right social circumstances to do so.
The Rhetoric of Hope
The upbeat mood of America goes hand in hand with the explicitness of its ideology. To
keep the nation on its toes, you need to keep reminding it of its dynamism and special des-
tiny. The right to bear arms, for example, must be proclaimed from the roof tops, though
some scholars now consider that this is a misreading of the American Constitution. What
it actually guarantees is the right to bare arms , but a smudge on the original manuscript
has obscured this fact. The British tend to see this ideological upfrontness more as a sign
of anxiety than assurance. When Union flags start appearing on the streets of Northern Ire-
land, one can be sure that the Protestants there are feeling insecure.
The British tend to believe that ideas work best when they have been dissolved into the
bloodstream of society to the point where they become second nature. Ideally, it would no
more be possible to question the institution of monarchy than it would be to question the
fact that one had kneecaps. Like breathing, ideas are what give life to a civilisation, but
like the lungs they are in full working order only when we are unconscious of them. It is
preferable not to drag such ideas into the light of day, where they can be wrangled over and
contested. Perhaps they will no longer work if we become too aware of them, as juggling
does not work if you think about it too much.
America, by contrast, tends to wear its ideology on its sleeve, which for the British is
where it is least effective. Even some of its place names are ideologically charged: Hope,
Zion, Providence and the like. Even “New England” is an article of faith as well as a name,
meaning among other things better than the old England. Perhaps there is a town in Nevada
called Market Forces, or one in Michigan called Nukecuba. The United States has not had
as long as Britain to bed down its ruling ideas in everyday experience. This is one reason
why it has to keep proclaiming them so loudly. It is also because some of the ideals in ques-
tion are so sublime that they are hard to attain without constant exhortation.
De Tocqueville believed that general ideas were more prevalent in America than they
were in Britain, which is one reason why Americans can speak of concepts like God and
freedom less shamefacedly than the British. When the English generalise, he observed
tartly, it is in spite of themselves. Those who have tried to circulate cultural and political
theories in England can testify to the justness of this judgement. Aristocracies, de Toc-
queville considered, tend to think not in terms of general humanity but in terms of specific
families, places and traditions. Democratic societies like America are more likely to think