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Americans
love to argue. In fact, we would not be Americans if we didn't.
So says
journalist Howard Fineman in his book, The Thirteen American
Arguments: Enduring Debates that Define and Inspire Our Country.
Arguing, Fineman says, is what we do and who we are. "We are
the arguing country, born in and born to debate," he writes.
"We are an endless argument."
Fineman
is Newsweek's senior Washington correspondent and columnist,
and he's a news analyst for NBC and MSNBC. By his own account,
he has covered every presidential campaign and major candidate
since 1983.
In
The Thirteen American Arguments, Fineman taps into his
decades of experience to find perspective on the American
experiment. He looks not at petty partisan bickering and political
posturing but rather at the larger, fundamental questions
Americans have wrestled over since the country's founding.
"To
understand our nature, and to sustain it, we need to appreciate
the lucky mix of accident and intention that made us who we
are," he writes. "We have been debating our very identity
from the first days of our existence. Was this to be a Christian
New Jerusalem, a Dutch speculation, or an English shire?"
Those competing views in many ways still jockey for dominance,
he says, but the most important thing is the tug-of-war balance
that has resulted.
In that
same way, America has defined itself through thirteen ongoing
arguments that, in various combinations, pit the State, Church,
Tribe, Market, and Academy against one another—with individuals
caught in the middle. The tug-of-war balance that results
from the arguments themselves "define, inspire, and ultimately
unite us by bestowing legitimacy on hard-fought deals," Fineman
says. "Arguing keeps us moving fitfully forward."
Fineman
arranges his arguments into what he calls "concentric circles"
that ripple out from the individual to the world itself and,
finally, to the abstract ideal. For instance, who is a person,
who is an American, and what responsibilities do Americans
have toward each other? What can Americans be told to believe
in matters of faith? As a country, how do we define money
and manage debt? How do we balance centralized versus decentralized
government? What is the relative strength of the president
"in a federal scheme dedicated to find the midpoint between
monarch and mob"? What is our place in the world and what
is our relationship with other countries? What roles do trade,
diplomacy, and war play in those relationships? Does the environment
belong to the current generation to use and exploit or is
the environment something we hold in trust for future generations?
And what does it mean to have—and what do we have to
do to achieve—that "more perfect Union" our Founding
Fathers envisioned?
Don't
expect to find the arguments articulated in a civics book.
As packaged neatly here in a convenient and catchy list of
thirteen, they are Fineman's creations, but the debates themselves
are certainly as old and as vital as Fineman suggests.
Fineman
explores each question from historical as well as modern perspectives,
taking great care first to ground each question by drawing
on contemporary events. As he explores "Who is a person,"
for instance, he starts on the steps of the Illinois state
capital as Barack Obama launched his presidential bid. Fineman
draws parallels between Obama and Lincoln, "the Great Emancipator,"
and from there examines a number of facets to the question
of personhood. He looks at the old debate over slavery (were
slaves people or property), the current debate over abortion
(when does a fetus qualify for "personhood") and the not-too-distant
questions that will arise in the future over genetic experimentation.
If Fineman
had his way, Americans would argue more. "Rather than argue
too much, which is the conventional wisdom's critique, we
in fact do not argue enough about the fundamentals," he says.
The Thirteen American Arguments, he hopes, is one
more way to encourage continued dialogue—a dialogue in
which everyone has a role.
"If
arguing is our saving grace, everyone must feel they have
a voice and a chance to be heard," he writes. "Do they?"
And the
argument goes on.
(September,
2008)
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