He is a vietnam veteran and a life long aficionado of books, maps, chicago sports, and music. This afternoon, he will be speaking on his latest book, the tragedy of u. S. Foreignpolicy, how americas civil religion betrayed the national interest. [applause] thank you very much. It was a wonderfully brief introduction, except you left out my doctoral dissertation. [laughter] mr. Mcdougall i thank you all. The turnout is fantastic. I will try not to let you down. , this is a homecoming, or would be, if the Woodrow Wilson center had not changed so dramatically over the years. I was a wilson fellow in the early 1980s and rose most of my pulitzer prizewinning at the wilson center. Was in those days, it the Smithsonian Castle building, presided over by jim billington, his assistant, and sam wells. Is sam wells still affiliated . Yes, he is. Mr. Mcdougall god bless him. Back in those days in the Smithsonian Castle, there was virtually no security in the building. Those were the days, right . Today andhat readers certainly in the future will assume that the author of this book intended it to be a swansong, the somber reflection of an aging historian about his nations ascent to great power and glory only to see that sacrificed through hubris and nemesis. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never intended to write this book at all. [laughter] mr. Mcdougall following publication in 2004 and 2007 of two lengthy narratives on the american founding, then the civil war era, i expected to complete a trilogy with a volume on the progressive era that would. The United States through its maturation as a world power carry the United States through its maturation as a world power. Instead, harpercollins discontinued the project on the grounds that my books were critical success. [laughter] mr. Mcdougall i acquiesce, mes had those two to warned me out, so i decided to lie fallow for a few years and then write a revised edition of a previous work. Not that it needed correction. On the contrary, that book had proved prophetic, even mark by cassandras curse, for in it i urged americans to return to the foreignpolicy principles of our less isest republic, halfcentury of emergency mobilization as a crusade to state destroyed forever its original identity as a Promised Land. Instance, i wrote, this is in 1997, everyone agrees that bad forhussein is or can we presume to chinese to tell how to be better chinese. If we try we can only be poor americans. No wonder i felt to revisit the themes following the terrorist attacks on 9 11 and the hyperbolic u. S. Response to them. The publishers of that via also showed no interest in a book that had not been a bestseller to start with. ,hat left me in a quandary because i had already arranged for sabbatical in 2012 and got in and outside grant to help fund it. I had to write something, but what . That year i spent catching up on 15 years of new scholarship on the history of u. S. Foreign relations, i was clueless about where the research might lead, if anywhere. Mentor,h, a friend and i call him my personal owl of minerva, came to my rescue. I had gotten into the pleasant profitable habit of lunching once or twice a month with james kirk, a professor of Political Science emeritus. He also happens to be a shrewd psychologist. He listened to me agonize for months about my dilemma before choosing the right moment to make a suggestion. About, rightu know what truly expresses walter mcdougall, he said. Answered,i haltingly american civil religion . Exactly, he said in his indomitable way. He had heard me speculate vers about may be reinterpreting u. S. Foreignpolicy through the lens of civil religion. Toike to call it american medic history in the metaphysical mode. He knew i would be offering a seminar entitled in search of the american civil religion. Is timing was perfect yes, i said, such a book would not only be important and timely, but also, i foolishly thought, fun and easy to write. [laughter] mr. Mcdougall moreover, the topic would give me a chance to settle some scores. [laughter] mr. Mcdougall by rebutting a writer whose book, dangerous nation, was to say the least rather tendentious. Indeed, it seemed to me an extreme example of the fallacy known as per lapses, essentially reading history backwards, because kagan claimed that u. S. Foreignpolicy had always pointed to a messy calling to redeem the whole world, therefore the bush doctrine and freedom agenda in the middle east was as american as apple pie. Kagan even had the temerity to publish an article declaring George Washington was a neocon. [laughter] mr. Mcdougall the purpose was from all to purge Foreign Policy discourse the socalled conservatism of realist like George Kennan and implicitly the author of Promised Land, crusader state. So it was for reasons of professionalism, personal that i setnd peak out to deconstruct our evolving civil religion and trace its influence on foreignpolicy. As weeksscovered turned to two months turned two years was, this is a really difficult book to get right, which is why it took five anxious years. But, here at last is the result. My original, i thought edgy,itle was american heresies civil religion and foreign but thein 1776, aleketing mavens at y rejected the word heresies and even balk at the phrase civil religion. They said we dont even know what those words mean. Well, a war of ittrition and soon and settled for the title, the aagedy of u. S. Diplomacy and subtitle, how american civil religion betrayed the national interest. Which i understand is a glaring ,xample of the pathetic fallacy and down in animate objects or inanimate concepts with human qualities. The american civil religion did not betray the national interest, the purveyors of various forms of civil religion national interest, but that got lost in translation as well. What is civil religion . Jeanjacques rousseau introduced the concept in the social contract. Fateant to describe that that combined citizens together in a republic, citizens who have thrown off the altar, but reality, thrown an altar are two sides of the same coin because every regime has claim some sort of spiritual legitimacy as well as secular authority. Think about the godkings of antiquity, the mandate of heaven of east asian dynasties, the sultans of islam, the patron saints of renaissance city states, the divine right of kings and early modern europe, and indeed the statecontrolled protestant churches of early modern europe. The most obvious example was postreformation england, indeed the religion of which american civil religion is a republican variant. Here is a neutral definition that i brought from sociologists ellis west, a civil religion is a set of beliefs and attitudes that explained the meaning and purpose of any given Political Society in terms of its relationship to a transcendent spiritual reality. Are held by the people generally and are expressed in public rituals, myth, and symbols. That transcendent spiritual reality is what distinguishes civil religion from idolatrous ideologies, such as fasteners fascism or communism. They recognize that if men were angels, no government would be necessary, but since it was axiomatic that human beings are flawed, the framers of the constitution carefully checked and balanced the powers of government. No, americans do not worship the government. They worship the deity whose theology was a rich amalgam of ism andants i enlightenment realism, a new order for the ages, and who bless their undertakings to quote the let and phrases inscribed on the great seal of the United States. Over 200 years, americans to call that for granted, so much so that even as they practiced a divine right republicanism as i like to call it, they never acknowledged that civil faith 1967, which incidentally we are now celebrating the 50th anniversary of the article by robert bella, whose essay called american civil religion revealed this truth to the American People. Decades, theof article inspired a rash of books and articles that unearth the rhetoric and impact of civil religion over time. I missed out on that. When i was young student, a graduate student, i was studying european history for one thing. My own consciousness of an american civil religion didnt emerge until i was researching, Promised Land crusader state, especially my 2000 four book, freedom just around the corner. It was then i came to see the war of independence really was a because the colonial patriots risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in the believe a were actors in a play scripted by the author of history. Who was that author . Churched americans assume the god watching out for the country was the same when they worship on sunday, but the american god had no name or 100 baker unitarian names, from washington to andrew jackson, the president s referred to him as the father of lights, supreme architect, almighty being, invisible hand, patron of order, falcon of justice, infinite power, or just providence. And for a surprising percentage of the founders, he was also the freemasons god whose name is geometry whose watchful eye oversees the unfinished pyramid that appears in the great seal and the reverse of our one dollar bills even today. Had ever formed the identity of their national god, the union might not have survived, so the constitution was silent about religion, not because the revolution was secular him up but because it was civil religious, so the no establishment clause of the First Amendment in fact did establish what i call the classical american civil religion, whose gospels include the declaration of independence, constitution, and washingtons farewell address, and whose thetolic epistles included president ial inaugural addresses and other prominent speeches. Origins of this . We baby boomers were taught by perry miller and a host of textbooks that John Winthrop keynote was the 1637 with the keynote address of American Political Culture that laid out the unique notions of american exceptionalism and heavenly mission, and that of course was conventional wisdom during the cold war when americans needed to be persuaded by their elites to make global commitments. Today, we know better, or some of us do. Thanks to the rhetorical archaeology of historian richard gamble who sadly obscure book in search of the city on a hill, the making and unmaking of an american myth has proven the civil religious trope derived from winthrops sermon was in fact a 20 century invention, an artifact of america the crusader state. It was not an archetype of america the Promised Land. If you are curious about that, you can asked me during the q a, but meanwhile, i had begun to trace the acr to its real source, which not surprisingly was british civil religion, painfully crafted over 175 years of tudor stuart history. First thing that came to their church by placing the monarch at its head, then they tamed the monarch in the glorious establishing 1688, parliamentary supremacy, then they embarq on their stunning career of imperial expansion in butte with four spirits imbued with four spirits, commercial capitalism, rabbit anticatholicism, and aggressive imperial expansion, and a right of Eminent Domain over lands occupied by indigent people like the irish or north american indians. No one imbibed those four spirits more deeply than the settlers of the 13 american colonies. But following britains conquest in france, quebec, crown and parliament adjusted it to their new imperial responsibilities by enacting new taxes, new restrictions that appeared to the colonists to violate all four of their imperial spirits. The british were choking their own offspring and their growth in the new world. The british had become heretics in their own church. So hotheaded patriots come and not just the new england puritans, but quakers in the delaware valley, planters of the chesapeake, and scots irish boardman on the frontier, they all rebelled, or enough of them rebelled, and those cradle cultures so lovingly examined expressed various definitions of liberty, but also patriots had cause to resist british war ofty, and after the independence, all four cultures collaborated on a constitution that accommodated in remarkable fashion the puritan notion of ordered liberty under law, the quakers live and let live freedom of conscience, the cavaliers aristocratic notion of hierarchical liberty, and the wild libertarianism of the scots irish. However, thelicy first and greatest high priest of the classical acr was George Washington. It is sobering to revisit the precepts of his farewell address and recall that americans once upon a time held them sacred. ,ashingtons model was moses whose farewell address in deuteronomy promised the israelites they would thrive and their land of milk and honey if they obeyed the lords commandments, but they would be cast out and become at by word that they worshiped other gods, likewise washington gave his people commandments. Jealously to preserve individual liberty and national unity, two, cultivate religion and morale of the, three,. Herish the public credit we have forgotten that one, big time. Four, observe good faith, piece, and harmony with all nations. Five, avoid in federate antipathies or attachments to foreign countries, and six, shun political alliances abroad except in times of emergency. So long asprophesied americans he did those precepts, their nation would grow and prosper beyond measure, but you know what robert kagan claimed about that . He claimed washington didnt really mean it. He claimed that washington really meant those rules might be followed for maybe just one generation of americans, by which time the u. S. Would be so mighty as to dictate terms to the outside world. And that laid the basis for kagans further claim to the effect that John Quincy Adams to not mean it when he told abroads america goes not in search of monsters to destroy. The proof text he employed to buttress that edo syncretic inument is in 1817 letter which adams writes, the universal feeling of europe in the gigantic growth of our population and power is that we shall if united become a very dangerous member of the society of nations. Well, i researched, parsed the context, studied the timing of that letter from every angle, decided it meant the opposite of what kagan claimed. If americans remained true to washingtons precepts, they would soon provide so great an example of liberty and prosperity that europeans themselves would come to question the legitimacy of their harical institutions. If they allowed sectionalism to tear their nation asunder, they would become dangerous to themselves. Strifese sectional continued to build, not least because of that explicitly civil religious movement dubbed by the jacksonian editor john osullivan, manifest destiny. He identified the United States as that church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. He identified the United States as the bearer of a heavenly destiny. Well, and reality, of course, the u. S. Manifested its destiny through hardball war and diplomacy, while the mexican cession of 1848 revived the prospect that slavery might the expanded westward, and that in arn provoked or exacerbated sectional conflict that escalated into secession, civil war, and a schism in the acr just 12 years later. Coursecisive outcome of ratify the institutions come at coming and eschatology of the republican party, which amounted to the revised orthodoxy, which i term neoclassical acr. Neo, but still classical, because u. S. Foreignpolicy did not change, not for another generation, despite massive itself,n the society urbanization, immigration, rapid industrialization. Numerous historians have anfidently claimed, again in prophetic way, that lincolns rhetoric and war mobilization prepare the United States for its later career as the worlds liberator. It just isnt so. Reassertdid congress its authority over the executive branch vigorously during the gilded age, not only did congress cut budgets to the bone during the gilded age, and veto or reject foreign initiatives by the executive branch, but the voluminous works of Abraham Lincoln themselves contain nothing at all about foreignpolicy. In fact, his ominous warning, he shall nobly save for meanly lose the best less hope on earth , expressed lincolns real concern, which was not extension of liberty everywhere, but the survival of liberty anywhere, and in his final words in the second inaugural parade that americans will do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and all nations. Words. Ere washingtonian they hardly suggest that lincoln was a crusader searching for monsters to destroy. Was it however that u. S. Foreignpolicy displayed such remarkable continuity from the 1890s . O the because i think it was self contained by four prudential checks. First was the doctrine associated with the james monroe, but drafted by John Quincy Adams, and indeed implicit in the writings of almost all the founders, which declared the new and old worlds to be worlds apart, separate spheres, and to keep european powers from mucking around in their neighborhood, americans had to refrain from mucking around in their neighborhood. Was one. Nroe doctrine containment was westward expansion, precisely because no american, no sane american, wanted to risk the nations manifest destiny by picking fights with overseas powers. Third, with the Lessons Learned from the collapse of republics both ancient and modern. , at leastry americans the elites, new their classics, new them very well, and they caesarn fear of a julius or a cromwell or robespierre in their midst, and so they fiercely guarded their constitutional checks and balances. And forth was the classical acr itself, which was based ultimately on a kind of residual christian anthropology that reminded americans their human nature was imperfect and in cordial. 1897, president wim mckinley restated William Mckinley restated creede, our faith teaches us that there is no safer reliance than upon the god of our fathers, who has so singularly favored the American People in every national trial, and who will not forsake us along as we obey his commandment