Discussion question: is The American Experiment a failure?

Great Debates
201

No. Until that day we’re an experiment-in-progress. No “successful” about it.

Experiments are declared a “success” when they come to an end.

As @Exapno_Mapcase has said, and this is his profession, unlike yours or mine, history does show obvious social progress on many fronts. And yes, a bunch of intermediate backsliding has occurred and will continue to occur. Such is the human condition IMO.

How much the USA has served since 1776 as an attractive model for other countries to partly emulate, or as a bad example to be avoided is a very interesting debate, but not the one we’re having here. I will suggest the overall tenor of the last 300 years of history has been away from hereditary royalty. Which can only be good. The Declaration of Independence and the esnsuing war was the first significant crack in that wall that has since turned into a wholesale collapse of the dam of the old royalty-led world. Whether the e.g. Australians eventually cast off their King because of, in spite of, or with no regard for, the sweep of US history is also debatable. That they will do so in the next 20-50 years is all but certain.

Read narrowly, the AE is “Can we build a society not based on political and economic serfdom?” The answer seems to be a resounding yes.


My own sorta bottom line runs about like this.

Conservatives / Reactionaries are satisfied with their society as long as there’s another worse one they can point to. E.g. Russia or China or NK currently.

Progressives will never be satisfied as long as their current society falls short of an imagined Utopia.

With the result that to Conservatives / Reactionaries, current reality is a glass 90% full and to Progressives it’s a glass 90% empty.

IMO you’re so stuck on your perception of 90% emptiness that you can’t see how much less empty it is today than it was when your grandfather was your age.

202

So it’s impossible to answer “is the American Experiment a failure?” with a Yes?

Fantastic question, then.

203

You complain the question of debate (which I did not compose) is an absolute unanswerable mess, then you also complain when someone proposes an answer. I would say, as Chinese premier Zhou Enlai famously maybe said: “It’s too early to tell”.

We self-evidently have not arrived at Utopia (by anyone’s definition). We also have not (yet) been cast on the ash-heap of history. We always have been, are now, and shall continue to be, a work in process wobbling unsteadily into a better future.

As a Progressive myself I agree that we are performing far below what I believe is our current (much less maximum) potential. I don’t / won’t label that situation “failure” with all the finality that word entails. Less patient people might.

204

But you could, fairly, make an argument of, “from the POV of (X), the American Experiment seems to be failING and we need to start doing something different”.

205

When we end up on that famous ashheap, will you admit that you were completely wrong, and beg me to accept your apology?

Uh, no, I think you and I are going to be long putrifying somewhere in the middle of the ashheap. (I think the word you’re looking for, btw, is “dustbin.” All we are is dustbin the wind, dustbin the wind.) So you will never admit you are wrong, if wrong you are, and yes, the question is a botch.

206

Or … (dons pink glasses) … when the current US Constitution is thrown out and replaced by something that more clearly enshrines basic human rights and establishes a better model for a working government in the post-industrial world. Then a new experiment begins.

207

…as per the thirteenth amendment, an exception for slavery still exists, as “punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” See here, for example.

I think that when an experiment has been running for over 200 years I don’t think that it’s unfair to reach a conclusion. And based on what I posted earlier:

https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/sixteen-months-to-sumter/newspaper-index/new-york-daily-tribune/the-american-experiment

I think its clear that the experiment has failed. The only point of contention IMHO is “without either hereditary or self-appointed rulers”, but I think the fact that America has a two party system, where the average age of a senator is about 58, where there have only ever been 11 Black people who have held office in the Senate, I think shows that a “ruling class” exists, even if it wasn’t exactly as originally envisioned.

America isn’t seen by much of the rest of the world as the “shining beacon of democracy.” It’s seen as fundamentally corrupt at every level, from the police to the healthcare system to the overflowing prison system to its system of government.

208

Agreed. At that point we could call the current experiment a qualified success in that vNext was better, not worse. It demonstrated the correct direction, if not the best route to get there.

Learning occurred and we got better. If that comes to pass.

I’ll suggest that if the US’s fate is to be like the cautionary tale It Can’t Happen Here*, then after that occurs sober historians will try to find the apex of our trajectory before the fall. Which may well be at different times for social, political, and economic aspects of our society. And yes, it’s possible that at least one of those apexes is already in our past here in 2023. And yes, I expect you and I will both be dead before the question is settled.

If your perspective is that the US eventually ending in failure means every minute from 1776 to then is also a failure, well we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I find that perspective shallow and uninformative.

And if our future fate is otherwise as @Akaj just suggested, or even if we overcome our current insanity and simply continue under the current Constitution read in a more enlightened progressive matter, what then? Is that a success? Can you articulate what you think would be a “successful” conclusion (or outcome if you prefer that term) to the experiment? And if you can, by what date must it happen to qualify as a “success”?

From a practical personal perspective, whatever happens after your / my death is moot to us. But in the alternative, to decide that the result must obtain within your / my own lifetime to qualify as “success”, raises the accident of your / my birthdate and death date to be pretty significant events in US history. That doesn’t seem right to me either.



* See:

209

I choose to be optimistic (and I believe optimism is a choice, and the necessary choice in order to make beneficial change happen) - America has not come close to it’s best ideals, but the story isn’t over yet, and we can still improve.

210

Tell it to the Marines.

211

Maybe they will listen. Unlike some people…

212

Well some of our issues like slavery were started when we weren’t even a country. When we were colonies reporting to a king. Then we rebelled against that and formed our own country. Now some of the colonies still wanted to continue slavery, others did not. The choice was to still band together and fix the issue, still band together and table the issue, or go ahead separately. The third one had a chance of the colonies being defeated overall by the British due to lack of unity. The first one had an issue with some of the colonies wanting the third one if that was the only choice. So the compromise was the second one. There were certainly costs to that as we have found out. But maybe that was the only way to us becoming an independent country. And it’s entirely possible that us doing so paved the way, made for more freedom, for those colonies not willing to own up and declare their own freedom. Who won’t take on that sort of responsibility, but who feel free to throw stones at those who do.

We’ve taken more chances than you, are braver than you. You may choose to throw stones. I consider the source. There’s plenty I could throw back that way.

213

I don’t find that editorial to be overly impressive or authoritative, personally. I don’t think there’s a solid, objective definition to be had in this discussion, especially with the standing army distraction.

214

…but you’ve been a country for centuries now. Why does an exemption for slavery still exist?

What does that even mean? How is “bravery” measured? How does “bravery” relate to the American Experiment?

I mean, if we don’t start with an objective definition, then what even is this thread all about?

Lets start with the basics. What is an experiment?

We can’t retrofit the hypothesis to fit the narrative we prefer. The experiment had to start at some point. I think that 1860 is as good a place as any to begin. It was well over 100 years ago.

If you want to use a better measure, then go ahead. But it can’t be something we invent for the purposes of this thread.

215

Here’s a thought experiment for your consideration:

Is Putin’s Russia a successful experiment?

I’m happy calling it an abject failure, but its defenders would object that blablabla…basically, all the defenses you’re offering for the U.S: give us time, we’ve made some progress, humanity is not perfectable, we’re trying, yada yada yada/

216

The USA used to be colonies and part of the British Empire. Slavery existed in the British Empire prior to the creation of the USA. Therefore the British Empire bears responsibility for slavery. They got rid of it too late and there should be no tolerance on this issue. Therefore the British Empire was a failure, and consequently all commonwealths are also failures.

The above is IMO the sort of argument used to justify a failure narrative. If something can be a success or failure there need to be objective criteria in order to have any sort of meaningful discussion.

217

The full text of Section 1 of the 13th Amendment reads:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The placement of those commas is critical to the interpretation of the words. The intent is that “Slavery shall not exist.” “Neither shall involuntary servitude, except as a properly tried jail sentence.” There is nothing existing regarding slavery. It vanished in 1865. There is no exception for it. To my knowledge, no one has ever tried to argue for its continued existence so there is no case law. It’s not necessary.

Those trying to nitpick that the wording applied to chattel slavery as they knew it would have had a difficult time because that wording had been taken from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted:

The next sentence allowed for fugitive slaves to be “lawfully reclaimed,” extended in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the law affirmed in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The 13th Amendment also killed those laws. The drafters in both cases knew exactly what they were prohibiting.

That’s why all the other cases that nibbled at the limitations of the Amendment and have been adjudicated do not refer directly to slavery. Peonage (indentured servitude) is also illegal. The draft is not. And so on and on. A good concise article is available on FindLaw.

It’s true that some states did not bother to formally remove state laws allowing slavery until recently. Lots of obsolete laws remain on the books in states. They are entirely irrelevant. Under modern U.S. jurisprudence (since Grant v. Lee) the federal constitution supersedes all state law.

218

I feel like there are a lot of different threads being followed here, but I’d like to tug at one of them: that “equal” democratic representation is a requirement of a “successful” Democracy (or the ill-defined American Experiment).

Limiting participation to land-owning white men is no good, nor is gerrymandering designed to keep political parties in power. However, protecting minority interests from the tyranny of the majority is a central interest of a stable Democracy. And, systems that accomplish that are almost by definition disenfranchising for the majority. This is the core conflict at the heart of Democratic governance, and one that I don’t believe can ever be resolved. However, swings in one direction or another are not indicative of failure… they represent the unachievable nature of a pure Democracy that is safe for all members.

tl;dr … Democratic ideals can in fact be dangerous to minority members of a Democracy, and so “equal representation” is not the yardstick for successful government that some would hold it to be.

219

Indeed. Some have argued that in this thread already: that there’s not an objective definition extant/possible, so this discussion is already starting on its back foot. I’m not sure yet, but I’m mildly inclined to agree.

220

I’ve always taken the original idea of the American Experiment to be an experiment in political structure, not about egalitarianism or civil rights. The question was, could a democracy be a stable form of governance?

From that standpoint, it seemed mostly successful, and many other countries copied and improved on that success.

OTOH, other countries copied and improved on that success. We haven’t really done improvement part of that as much.

From the standpoint of egalitarianism, we have come a long way. However, not only do we still have a long way to go, we aren’t assured of continuing in that direction. Those who say two steps forward, one step back are assuming that we will be taking two steps forward again before we take another step back, and I don’t know that that is a valid assumption.

It really is a war between ideologies, that of nationalism and supremacism vs equality and civil rights, and right doesn’t make might. It is a war we can lose, and the last few battles have certainly caused a significant amount of momentum in the “wrong” direction. We are supposed to fight these battles at the ballot box, rather than in the street, but even that veneer of civility is beginning to break down.

I certainly wouldn’t rule the US a failure, but I would certainly note with concern a large and growing contingent of our fellow citizens who root for it to fail, and success in overcoming them is not assured. Democracy requires vigilance, and too many who are supposedly invested in the success of our government are also complacent, too much of a “It can’t happen here” mentality.

Will it succeed, or will it fail? Well, that’s up to us, just as it has been the past 247 years. If that terrifies you, good, it should. If it doesn’t, you haven’t been paying enough attention.