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| February 9, 2010 | January 23, 2004 |
 Calendar People Research & Teaching Notables CUA in the News
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 People
America the Virtuous?
By Warren Duffie
Over the past two decades, many students have told CUA Professor Claes Ryn that his politics classes profoundly affected their education. But he never dreamed he would intellectually influence a former American head of state.
Over the next few years, Ryn says, the pair developed a strong friendship. Ryn often would visit Nixon for dinner at the latter’s home outside of New York City or they would meet in Washington, D.C. They would discuss politics and history for hours. Even now, the professor has a manila folder crammed with correspondence with Nixon, who died in 1994.
“Nixon actually quoted some of my writing in his book Beyond Peace [which came out in 1995],” Ryn says. “He was a fascinating, intelligent man, and we had some wonderful discussions.”
It’s reasonable to assume that Nixon would be pleased by the friendly dialogue that could be stirred up by Ryn’s latest books — America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (Transaction Publishers) and A Common Human Ground: Universality and Particularity in a Multicultural World (University of Missouri Press) — both of which were published at the end of 2003. The first analyzes and critiques President George W. Bush’s current foreign policy, its effects on America’s image abroad, and how the United States can avoid a negative international backlash. The second is a philosophical exploration of the moral and cultural requirements for peaceful relations among nations.
Ryn is a “learned, insightful and courageous scholar who ably explains the ideas that are destroying our country,” wrote syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts in a review of America the Virtuous.
Virtuous Empire? Ryn, who chaired CUA’s Department of Politics from 1979 to 1985, has a unique perspective on American politics. A native of Norrköping, Sweden, who came to the United States in the late 1960s, he combines the objective, appraising eye of a man raised abroad with the appreciative attitude of someone who sought and found greater academic freedom in this country.
In America the Virtuous, Ryn asserts that a small but powerful group of intellectuals and political activists — many holding prominent positions in the current Bush administration — has embarked on a moralistic, uncompromising mission to promote America’s influence worldwide. These “neoconservative” individuals — whose ranks include former Secretary of Education William Bennett and columnists Michael Novak and Charles Krauthammer — claim that America has special responsibilities to transform the world because of its military and economic might and its commitment to “universal principles” such as democracy, freedom and equality.
“These people claim to stand for American values and believe that America is a virtuous country that should spread its values across the globe, and that people are awaiting those values,” Ryn says. “Governments and people that resist are considered backward or tyrannical.”
President Bush’s speeches and interviews claim that American values are “God-given values … not United States-created values,” says Ryn. The implication is clear, the CUA professor writes: “To spread American values is to be on the side of God; to resist them is to defy God.”
But Ryn is quick to point out that he isn’t chronicling an ideologically uniform and tightly organized group of followers, but rather many individuals who agree upon a common neoconservative principle — aggressively spreading American virtues and democracy worldwide, no matter what kind of resistance is encountered. Actually, the professor says, “neoconservative” is a misleading label. Historically, conservatives have advocated that America keep to itself. Many of the Founding Fathers, George Washington chief among them, warned against the dangers of foreign entanglement.
Ryn calls many influential neoconservatives the “New Jacobins,” a reference to the French Jacobins who used the virtues of equality and democracy to spark the French Revolution. The Jacobins claimed to be on the side of freedom and right, called for the replacement of the ruling class and declared that France’s earlier history was irrelevant. Similarly, Ryn says, neoconservatives claim to represent democracy, hope for the toppling of regimes they deem oppressive, and believe that America’s early path of avoiding foreign affairs is impractical and against democracy’s mission.
Ryn writes that the neoconservative ideology arose in the United States right after World War II. Many influential academics — such as the late Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind — believed that America, having played such a dominant role in that conflict, should assume a greater mantle of influence in the world, especially as the Cold War raged. Over the next 30 years, many of these professors’ students — including future Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — entered business, journalism, politics and various think tanks, soon gaining prominence in the Reagan and first Bush administrations.
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks gave the New Jacobins a new opportunity to spread their ideology, Ryn says. Thereafter, President Bush cited America’s superior character in working to "rid the world of evil.” The United States could not be satisfied only with protecting itself and its allies: It had to make the world better. The president now reserved to the United States the right to strike preemptively against possible threats, Ryn maintains. “Either you’re with those who love freedom or you’re with those who hate innocent life,” Bush said at the time.
The professor agrees that America should play a prominent role in world affairs. After all, with great power comes great responsibility, he says. But he fears that the path currently followed by the Bush administration will plunge the United States into perpetual war, inflame already hostile Muslim nations, breed international resentment and widen existing cracks in relationships with European allies.
“Just look at the war on terror,” Ryn says. “We first went to Afghanistan and now we’re in Iraq. We attacked Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction. When those weapons weren’t found, the war was said to be about ridding the world of a terrible dictator.
“I think that America the Virtuous will become quite well known and controversial because it undercuts the designs of those now dominating foreign policy and challenges very powerful interests,” he says.
In his second new book, A Common Human Ground, Ryn argues that to avert what could become a century of bloodshed, it’s important that American leaders find common ground with other nations. This will require more than military or economic might and more than the ability to broker deals with governments. What’s necessary is a respect for the cultures and histories of all nations, many of which are much older than the United States.
“Unless there is a cultivation of common ground on a cultural level,” Ryn says, “we are likely to enter a period when power seekers on both sides fight it out at the expense of us all.”
The Pre-eminence of the Humanities Ryn’s research is reflected in his work at the National Humanities Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, of which he is chairman. The institute is dedicated to promoting the humanities in universities and schools, which it does by publishing books, articles and journals.
One of the great illusions of today, Ryn says, is that politicians shape America’s future. Actually, he maintains, democracy can be compared to an 18th-century cathedral: Fiery speeches and raucous campaign conventions make up its stained-glass windows and magnificent frescos, but its foundation comprises teachers, artists and writers — those who create and share ideas.
“It’s important to foster an atmosphere of learning and independent thought, because the ideas being discussed in classrooms today could end up being tomorrow’s campaign platforms,” he says.
In the late 1990s, the professor’s articles and books attracted the attention of scholars in China, who in 2000 invited him to Beijing University as a “Distinguished Foreign Scholar.” There he gave a three-part lecture series about how nations can pursue peaceful relations. The lectures became a book titled Unity Through Diversity, published in Chinese by Beijing University. An English translation is in the works.
“What I’m trying to do through my writing, especially America the Virtuous, is change the way people view the current political situation in America,” says Ryn. “A critical re-examination is necessary to head off enormous problems lurking over the horizon.” |
