Which Way America: -1776 or +1776
Do we want a society based on Hammurabi's Code or Jefferson's Vision?
I believe in America.
“I believe in America,” Amerigo Bonasera’s voice says from a darkened screen at the beginning of The Godfather. So do I.
So do most Americans, but there are two radically different conceptions of what “America” means. One is a magnificent set of ideals to which we have tried to live up. To distinguish it from the America that has so often been opposed to its founding principles, I’ll italicize the vision of 1776 as America.
For work I am doing on my next book, I have belatedly been reading Yuval Noah Harari’s wildly popular Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. (He writes in a very engaging style and I am learning some thing I hadn’t known, but I think he is mistaken in some of his conclusions,)
Harari sets up two contrasting views on humanity and proper social organization, using the Code of Hammurabi (which he dates at ca. 1776 BC for symmetrical effect) and the American Declaration of Independence.
The laws handed down by Hammurabi were based on a belief in inequality. The laws make clear that all humans do not have the same value. Society is divided into two sexes and three classes. Everything is based on a hierarchical order and where someone is in that order determines what rights and worth (literally) he or she has or does not have.
The rebellious American colonists who gathered in Philadelphia in 1776 adopted an opposite view of the proper relationship of humans, which Thomas Jefferson expressed in the Declaration’s most memorable lines:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …”
That is a genuinely revolutionary concept based on the principles of equality for all people and that government should be from the bottom up, not the top down, as was accepted in almost all of Europe before the Enlightenment. That is the America in which I believe. It is the America that has inspired the world and led millions to want to come to the United States.
Democracy and the equality of all humans upon which it is based are ideals that are obviously beneficial for categories of people who have been excluded from power—such as women, various minority groups, refugees and other immigrants, and those without substantial property or inheritance.
It is, then, entirely appropriate that the promise of America has inspired even—really, especially—those people who have been excluded from it. African American poet Langston Hughes may have said it best in 1936:
America never was America to me
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
(Italics added.)
But that vision of America has always been countered by those who benefit from inequality, which included Jefferson and many of those who signed the Declaration. They were enslavers. The great paradox of America is, of course, that this land of freedom was also a land of slavery.
The hierarchical view of society, which was expressed by Hammurabi and countless other rulers throughout history has always existed in the United States alongside the vision of 1776. That is 1619 America, the horrible legacy of enslavement that has never fully gone away.
The battle for the soul of America can be expressed as 1619 vs 1776.
Using Harari’s date for the Babylonian law code, it could also be expressed as:
1776 BC or 1776 AD?
–1776 or +1776?
Negative 1776 or positive 1776?
Negative 1776 is also a useful term because it can refer to the reality of the time, as opposed to the ideals of Positive 1776.
Today, so-called Republicans side with Hammurabi and Negative 1776, as did the Confederates. Today’s Democrats believe in the vision of Jefferson’s Declaration, Positive 1776.
The former seek to make America America again; the latter seek to make America America again.
The struggle continues.
Amerigo Bonasera is a name that can be taken to mean Buonasera America (Good evening, America)
If those who have aligned with the Hammurabi view of humanity and social organization were to prevail, it would be Buonanotte America for the ideal America that was proclaimed 247 years ago.
NOTE: My times they are a-changin’. I have just retired after teaching for, they tell me (I’m thinking of demanding a recount), a half century, at Millsaps College. I’ll miss the classroom and stimulating discussions with students, but my life won’t change that much, as I have for decades spent most of my time writing and that will continue.
One thing that will change, though, is our income. Without my teaching salary, I need a new source of revenue. A patron or group of patrons establishing a fund to support my writing would be nice, but that’s not in the cards. Accordingly, I have decided to start taking paid subscriptions to my Substack essays. I don’t want to keep anyone from reading them without charge, but for those who can afford a paid subscription, I hope you will do so. There will also occasionally be a premium essay that is only available to paid subscribers.