Why has America become a target?

Steve Chapman

Published September 13, 2001

Americans aren't yet sure who carried out the atrocities that shocked the nation and the world this week. What we do know is that there is no shortage of people with a motive. Plenty of our fellow human beings around the world despise us, our system of government, our economic order, and our way of life--and some of them have so much hatred that they are ready to kill and to die.

The reasons for the animosity are not so complicated. Some of the hostility stems from geopolitical differences. But much of it comes from a divide in our basic assumptions.

America's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is not just a historical relic concerned with grievances against George III. It's a radical manifesto whose relevance has not diminished in 225 years. What makes it so important, then and now, is its exaltation of the "unalienable rights" of every person--including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

That reverence for the freedom of each individual is what distinguishes our revolution from other revolutions, and what distinguishes us from much of the rest of the world. It was a novel thing in 1776 to treat people as ends in themselves, not as the instrument of some higher purpose. In many places, it still is.

As a rule, Americans don't subordinate individuals to grand and noble causes--we let them decide whether to subordinate themselves. We don't force them to submit to the interests of the workers, or the will of God, or the purity of the race, or the advancement of virtue. We do something that our enemies find incomprehensible: We let even the humblest men and women live their lives as they see fit, not as others command.

Our deference to the pursuit of happiness exasperates critics who see it as frivolous and shallow. They think life is meaningless and even wicked unless it is devoted to some cause greater than yourself. We dare to think that there may not be a cause greater than yourself.

What drives many people crazy is that Americans don't just assert the right to seek happiness--we take it for granted. We assume this is how life is meant to be. We may see ourselves as cheerful, confident and optimistic, but others regard us as selfish and spoiled.

Even some pundits in this country share this dim view. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, a columnist in The Washington Post almost gloated that Americans have lost the "safe and coddled life" they have enjoyed. Others noted with seeming satisfaction that we will come to understand the ordeals of Israelis. "Do you get it now?" demanded a New York Times columnist.

It is true that American history, particularly in recent decades, has been comparatively devoid of tragedy. You might think that's a good thing. But in some minds, there is nothing so healthy as suffering or so ennobling as sacrifice. So we must be sadly lacking.

Largely untouched by war, immune to political upheaval and blessed by fortune, Americans are guilty of untroubled affluence. Our detractors see us losing ourselves in the quest for material gain, personal fulfillment and mere pleasure, and they are deeply offended.

The 18th-Century English writer Samuel Johnson believed "there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money." More common, particularly outside the Western world, is the biblical notion that the love of money is the root of all evil--an adage that makes America's centers of commerce, such as the World Trade Center, look like pits of iniquity.

It's not the love of money, though, that has spawned the great crimes of humanity's past and present: religious war, ethnic hatred, violent fanaticism, mass slaughter of innocents. The worship of power poses a much greater threat to civilized values than grubby acquisitiveness ever did.

But our achievements, being geared to the needs and wishes of ordinary people, often seem obnoxiously mundane. Europe's blood-soaked kings and popes gave us palaces and cathedrals that inspire awe across the centuries. Pharaohs built majestic pyramids with the sweat of slaves. And what does our economic system erect? Disney World, McDonald's and Hollywood. Those institutions exist for only one reason: the free choices of large numbers of people.

Freedom and openness are the most conspicuous and admirable features of our society, but they infuriate those intent on exerting control over their fellow man. To them, nothing can be more dangerous than letting people think for themselves.

It was bad enough when democratic freedom prevailed on our shores. But today, it is the aspiration of billions of people around the world. Tyrants and terrorists see our way of life as a mortal threat to everything they hold dear. To our credit, it is.

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E-mail: schapman@tribune.com

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