This is an era when the great certainties that ruled American life for nearly three generations are being questioned more deeply, more widely and more seriously than at any time in decades.
When the Communist Soviet Union in 1939 agreed to a pact with Nazi Germany, an English diplomat remarked that “all the isms have become wasms.” So it may be in the United States, where the Donald Trump movement has raised many of the difficult, searing questions that, until recently, remained just below the surface of American life — though many of them seemed so settled that to raise them was imprudent and impertinent. No longer.
Even Americans discomforted by the fact that these questions are raised at all may concede that a fresh evaluation of established notions might be overdue, and might even fortify rather than undermine conventional views.
Here are some of the questions now being contested in the United States:
What is the role of a university in American society?
The word “university” grew out of a Latin phrase meaning “community of teachers and scholars,” and while such enclaves of learning have thrived since medieval times, the United States added two special elements to the institution with its worship of the liberal arts and its archipelago of small undergraduate colleges. Today, universities are research powerhouses, training scientists and engineers and providing breakthroughs in medicine and technology.
The question of the hour is whether the federal funding that helped fuel this sort of research and helped underwrite teaching in the arts and sciences in institutions that are the envy of the world should be free of political bias — but also free of governmental interference. The resolution of that question will determine the future, and the value, of American higher education.
Are there constraints on freedom of expression in the U.S.?
The First Amendment, which enshrines this honored and controversial right, is not a blank check; the 1912 maxim of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes about cries of fire in a crowded theater remains a prudent guideline. But at issue today is whether dissent, the very instrument of the colonists’ rebellion against the British crown in the late 18th century, should be constrained. Several once-extreme views, expressed by radicals of the time — the rights of women to engage in legal action or to own property, of individuals of different races or the same sex to marry, even of an income tax — have been seamlessly incorporated into conventional thought. We curb dissent at the risk of curbing innovation and progress.
What are the restraints on presidential action?
This is one of the hardy perennials of American life. It has been an issue since the John Adams administration, it flared during the Andrew Jackson years, it leaned dangerously into peril in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, it was a major issue during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and it was revived during Richard Nixon’s years in the White House.
Is “soft power” worth keeping?
Let’s define the term, originated by the Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye Jr., who served in the Defense Department in the Bill Clinton years, as good will, good intentions and generosity of spirit. It is the ultimate expression of the Clausewitz notion of “war by other means” — the use of values and magnanimity as a lever of persuasion. In the case of the United States, it involves acting with munificence. This notion can be dated to World War II, when a government advisory argued, “By dropping small gifts of hard-to-get commodities, you can strengthen [a] bond of friendship” so civilians in occupied territory “will help American airmen who are forced down in their neighborhood.”
In his 1995 book “In the Time of the Americans,” the late Boston University professor David Fromkin wrote about how the country’s post-war leaders transformed the United States from a bit player on the international scene into a force for good globally. Among the tools were foreign aid and medical assistance, but above all, infusing national self-interest with a strain of selflessness. Selflessness itself is under assault today, and the strategy of employing what World War II strategists called “paper bullets” has been devalued.
What is the global role of the United States 80 years after the end of World War II?
During and after the war, American financiers, diplomats and politicians became architects of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and NATO — all created out of enlightened self-interest, but they also resulted in eight decades of great-power peace.
From time to time, American presidents have thought out loud about NATO and the broad extent of U.S. bases and military installations across the globe. Jimmy Carter, for example, wanted to withdraw American troops from the Korean Peninsula. Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama trimmed the number of troops and installations abroad. In his first term, Trump would have withdrawn 12,000 troops from Germany if Congress had not blocked him from doing so.
“Large permanent U.S. bases overseas might be necessary for rotational forces to go into and out of,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during the first Trump administration, “but permanently positioning U.S. forces I think needs a significant relook for the future.”
Few economic and military nostrums last more than three-quarters of a century, but one far older than that, and which has served the country well, is a good-neighbor policy — the term has roots in the FDR years, aimed at Latin America — that now is in jeopardy. Trump has declared economic war against both Mexico and Canada, two major trading partners whose residents have strong and long-standing family ties with Americans.
Epilogue: These unresolved questions are the national analog of the “location, location, location” rule that governs real estate. When it comes to national purpose, it is values, values, values.
David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
