Along with millions of others, on January 20 I watched Mr. Carter’s inauguration on television and was mesmerized. Since I am not a big fan of American politics, I wasn’t sure why. What was the fascination? As with all commencement exercises, swearing-in ceremonies exhibit the dominant religion of the times. What makes America tick in 1977? What is its self- image? My second reflection came when I heard some allegedly avant-garde critiques of Mr. Carter’s address. When the political radicals dismiss such public utterances, there tends to be a pseudo-profundity that masks how much we all share in common assumptions.
Basically, Mr. Carter announced that after the catharsis of Watergate (an easier crime to purify ourselves of than Vietnam), the United States can return to its moral leadership in making the history of the world progressively better. Those in the know have already ridiculed this liberal myth of progress and hasten to point to the contradictions between the rhetoric of individualism and the realities of American capitalism. But where do most radical thinkers stand on belief in human progress?
In fact, they have not rejected it; they want to speed it up. The commitment to creating the Kingdom of Humanity, in a radicalized form, still undergirds the condemnation of capitalism. Almost all social readings are permeated with the unstated premise that our age is an improvement over all others. Then some move to the argument that we can cooperate with the forces of history to bring about a stage higher than the present shallowness and brutality. After all, Karl Marx was the prophet of progress.
So what? What is wrong with the conviction that we are actively working with history to build the best of all possible worlds? If nothing else, I think it leads to a distorted reading of the past and a misleading analysis of the present.
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