Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Captious Than That Of The English 11-7-2010

 Jingoism has a long history in this country. It would get worse after 1831. Manifest Destiny would soon kick off (if it had not already), and before 1850 the country would get almost all of what would make up the Lower 48. The slavery issue started to burn hotter when people saw slavery's expansion tied to the Mexican War. Read Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs on that issue.

But we still thought we were the best and touchy about criticism.

All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to praising themselves. It would seem as if, doubting their own merit, they wished to have it constantly exhibited before their eyes. Their vanity is not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant nothing, whilst it demands everything, but is ready to beg and to quarrel at the same time. If I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one, “Ay,” he replies, “there is not its fellow in the world.” If I applaud the freedom which its inhabitants enjoy, he answers, “Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.” If I remark the purity of morals which distinguishes the United States, “I can imagine,” says he, “that a stranger, who has been struck by the corruption of all other nations, is astonished at the difference.” At length I leave him to the contemplation of himself; but he returns to the charge, and does not desist till he has got me to repeat all I had just been saying. It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it. 

Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Captious Than That Of The English

I read Morton Horwitz's legal history of the early American republic while in law school [The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy sch 11/5/2023.]. Horwitz is a Marxist, and I remember thinking there were equally valid conclusions to be made, and here I think de Tocqueville finds another. I will call it the psychological. We may need material goods - food, clothing, shelter - for life, but psychology tells us what kind of life want.

When, on the contrary, social conditions differ but little, the slightest privileges are of some importance; as every man sees around himself a million of people enjoying precisely similar or analogous advantages, his pride becomes craving and jealous, he clings to mere trifles, and doggedly defends them. In democracies, as the conditions of life are very fluctuating, men have almost always recently acquired the advantages which they possess; the consequence is that they feel extreme pleasure in exhibiting them, to show others and convince themselves that they really enjoy them. As at any instant these same advantages may be lost, their possessors are constantly on the alert, and make a point of showing that they still retain them. Men living in democracies love their country just as they love themselves, and they transfer the habits of their private vanity to their vanity as a nation....

We puff America because we are Americans. Some see Barack Obama as an attack on American exceptionalism when I see him as proof of our exceptionalism. I will admit we are not perfect, but will you? I can still get annoyed at foreign criticism, albeit not as much as did Mark Twain in his Life on the Mississippi. For example, de Tocqueville dumps a huge load of criticism on our heads with which I cannot disagree.

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