Yesterday I talked about "Reversionism," the purist and or fundamentalist social/political approach to current American problems, which calls for a return to "simpler times" and while certainly evocative, fails as an ernest methodology for solving problems.  

Today I want to explore this a little more, and discuss a growing trend in populism today, which can essentially be boiled down to wrapping oneself in patriotism, and using nostalgia to evoke emotions of American Exceptionalism.  

I need to start by defining some terminology, and first and foremost is understanding nostalgia.  The word itself is derived from ancient Greek, nostos meaning "a return home" and algos meaning "pain, suffering."  and the contemporary definition is "a longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness" or "a bittersweet yearning for things of the past."

Nostalgia was described as a medical condition, and the term was coined in the 17th century  to describe the homesickness of Swiss mercenaries in lowland areas, pining for the mountain homes.  It was later used as a pathological term to diagnose soldiers, even up through the 2nd World War.

To truly understand nostalgia, however, you have to understand its ties to Romanticism, by which I mean the 18th century artistic and intellectual movement.  It doesn't hurt that the movement influenced American writers in the early 19th century, the era of Manifest destiny and the shaping of modern America.

Manifest destiny survives today, in the feeling of the importance of spreading American ideology, which smoothly segues us into the idea of American Exceptionalism.  

The word "exceptional" itself does not necessarily imply "greatness,"  a more prosaic view of the word reveals it to mean only "rare instance, unusual."  However, it can also mean "unusually excellent, superior," and it is in this more romantic notion that we can come to understand what American Exceptionalism is really all about.  The idea that the United States occupies a special niche in the world is as fundamental an idea to American patriotism as there is, although it is a crucial element in the ceaseless battle between those that veer towards jingoism and those attempting to offer a more sober analysis.

It is of course the most commonly demonstrated reversionist tactic to swing to the jingoistic end of things, and in terms of domestic policy to evoke Romantic Nationalism in a form of circular logic as proof of how we have become "lost" as a nation.  The radio and TV personality Glenn Beck has garnered a significant following by extolling these virtues and claiming that progressivism and social/political evolution have corrupted the country too far away from what the Founding Fathers ever intended.

On the surface, these arguments are compelling, particularly on an emotional level, but one need not dig too deep into the logic to reveal the fatal flaws in this philosophy.  Most clearly, Constitutional scholars have long argued that the U.S. Constitution was intentionally left short and open-ended so as to allow laws and interpretation to evolve and change as need be.  The other obvious argument is that evolution is a natural process in any entity, organism, or organization, and that which has stopped evolving has begun dying.  

Let's put aside for the moment the definitions and just concentrate on what history means, in an abstract sense.  We have all heard the phrase "those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it," and this seems particularly apt here.  The reversionist view of history is to take a snapshot, and evoke the proud emotions of a time when great men with great ideas got together to found a great nation.  That's all well and good, but history is a continuum, and when you isolate a snapshot it is far to easy to lose context.  In the continuum of history things change; this seems like pretty remedial logic here, but this simple element apparently gets overlooked quite a bit.  As things have changed and evolved, so has the nation.  I mean, for crying out loud, people, the original Constitution allowed for slavery!

Have we drifted away from the essential principles laid down by the Founding Fathers?  Perhaps, but this argument isn't resolved by looking through the rosy lenses of nostalgia.  American Exceptionalism as an idea, is just that.  It will not or should not serve as a justification for the People not allowing the Government to solve current issues.  There is no fucking way that any man in history, even the wisest and most influential, could possibly foresee the practical issues 220 years in the future.  To sit around and offer up starry-eyed longing for romantic ideals is not a workable solution for very many problems, save the possibility of organizing a 4th of July parade.

 If you really think America is a golly-gee shucks swell kind of place, than that means you must be involved in looking forward to keep it that way.  Banking on dubious historical perspectives gets us nowhere.