Always Going Forward, Always Looking Back?

Exerpted from Financial Times Deutschland by way of WatchingAmerica.com:
"For the people of the United States, respect for their own heritage is undoubtedly a source of strength and stability. It helped them endure the upheaval of four dreadful years of civil war which cost the lives of three percent of the population. It also kept the United States from succumbing to darkness in its domestic affairs, even during those times that the authority of the Supreme Court was ignored. In the 220 years of its history, the American republic has not always been a model - but it overcame break-downs like the Great Depression in the 1930s without succumbing to the temptation of totalitarianism; it overcame McCarthyism in the post-war era; and it will overcome the damage that the present President has done to its basic values and fundamental rights.

And while it is a pillar of American democracy, that healing strength that is founded in the cult of the founding fathers has a rather peculiar consequence: The intentions of these political actors of two centuries ago are the ultimate touchstone for conditions in the United States today; and to this day it is this backward-perspective that to a great extent influences America’s perceptions of the rest of the world.

Americans are hardly conscious of this, and since they never discuss it, the phenomenon is hardly registered in Europe. But anyone who listens to the way Americans discuss themselves is surprised at America's implicit self-comparison, less with real foreign countries than to another, mythical, abroad...It appears that the abroad against which the United States established and still defines itself is none other than the England of religious persecution lead by King George. Not: “We are no dictatorship” but: “We are not a monarchy,” is what editors and commentators tend to write whenever they condemn President George W. Bush’s excessive use of authority - and even then the emphasis is on the first word of the phrase. This raises the question of whom and what this refers to, and the answer points again and again to a past that serves as a point of departure for America.

In America, the collective image of foreign countries is a mythical one, preserved as if in formaldehyde, handed down from the time of the founding fathers with the Kingdom of England circa 1776 unconsciously serving as the main point of reference. This allows the United States to persist in describing itself as the freest country on earth, although by nearly every objective criterion, most European nations are more liberal and free than the United States. One only has to recall the repressive American culture of prohibition and punishment.

It is in this way that the tradition-arrested Americans protect themselves against the pressure to compare their own achievements and social structures against real foreign examples. Thus the myth and collective emotion stabilize society. But this happens at the expense of critical thinking and lessons learned. It is a double-edged phenomenon that has worked its way into every aspect of American public life.