On Exceptionalism, Or, Towards an Inclusive New England

   I was recently having a good natured, but spirited, argument with a friend of mine over the Facebookismo. She is part of that large portion of humanity who evidently find Boston and Bostonians insufferable. And so we got into the nitty gritty of a debate over New England, both of us adducing our reasons, with varying degrees of intellectual veneer (n.b. mostly from me), why it -- or rather, Boston, for I did point out that Boston and New England are not one and the same -- is either great or horrible. And we both went back and forth, for a long time, both of us making points, mostly good, a few not as. But it was a good time. She is a smart as a whip, a great arguer, and on the right side of History, and that made it a lot more fun of an experience than it would be were I engaged in my prior habit of fighting vicious moron libertarians and NeoConfederate freaks.
    But it got me to thinking several things:
                                 
                                  I.
   The joy of argument, the thrill of verbal combat: it is a mighty thing, a deeply intoxicating emotion: like kissing or wine, it flushes our very cheeks; and for that reason is to be all the more suspected. I'm trying to go with the actual Epicurus and his moderation in all things here, not the hedonic caricature of Epicurus drawn by decadent Restoration Stuart types. I hate those jackasses. Nor the grim Calvinism of a world-hating Christianity (St. Francis, you're okay!).
                                  II.
      In thinking about the exchange with this person, I began to think more about the idea of Exceptionalism. Frequently we hear this word in connection with the phrase "American Exceptionalism". Now, we frequently get the Right's version of this, the idea, both anti-humanist and at odds with certain scriptural verities ("the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike"), that America represents a force that transcends human history, imbued with a kind of holy immanence, and that Americans are not subject to the same prostration before inscrutable Fortune that is the common lot of the human race. This is the strain that believed we could ride out a fascist world on our own Continent, that believed with Lindbergh in "America First"; it is the same strain today which believes that the immutable laws of physics do not apply to America, and we need not worry about our warming globe.
       Now, there are of course, some New England origins of this exceptionalism, John Winthrop's belief that his new settlement at Shawmut (Boston) would be "as a Citie on a Hill"; but I do think it's notable that before the City on a Hill, in 1630, there was an older, more republican idea, from a smaller, more heterogeneous society: The Mayflower Compact, which affirmed that the Saints and Adventurers in Provincetown Harbor in late autumn, 1620, would "combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic...." And here is a different, and older, New England political genealogy than the rather unctuous self-regard of the City on the Hill: it is a deeply civic and communitarian tradition, one linked to what J.G.A. Pocock has called "the Atlantic republican tradition," which he traces to Machiavelli and other Renaissance Florentine thinkers, who would certainly have been read by the leaders of the group, especially Cambridge graduate William 'Elder' Brewster. It's also important to note that the Saints, or Separatists, don't have the same wildly inflated theological view of themselves as Winthrop and the Puritans. They just want to get away from it all, they're convinced Europe is screwed (and with the Thirty Years War coming and Civil War in Britain and Ireland, you can't say they're entirely incorrect) and it's time to get out. Thus, alongside the arrogant self-regard of the City on a Hill strain in early New England political thought, there exists, at a lower frequency, a deeply civic strain that is seen in operation through the quotidian doings of the Town Meetings, which are, for their time, the most democratic form of government in the Atlantic world (who can vote? Male freeholders, i.e., property owners, who are most males over 21 in the 17th century. This changes to an extent in the 18th century, with increasing tension and landlessness leading to a lack of the franchise until the introduction of universal white male suffrage in the early republican era).
      But I do let the love of my homeland drive me to digress; and this perhaps is the very point I am making. The 'exceptionalism' of our relationship with anything -- with America, with New England, with the University   of Michigan or the Red Sox -- lies not in the existence of this relationship outside the realm of those exigencies of fate and contingency which are the common lot of human beings at large, but rather in this relationship being one of a deep, profound, and personal kind of love, the love of parent for child and child for parent, of brothers and sisters for one another, a love, perhaps, prior to romantic or sexual love: a deep mammalian love, a kind of love we feel when we regard our dogs and kitties and their beautiful little snouts. And this, then, is why our exceptionalism, predicated upon deep loves, is actually Unexceptionable: for in loving some ones and some places and things more dearly and deeply than life itself, we engage in that habit which we share in commonality with all our fellow human beings (indeed, with the puppies and other mammals as well).
      Thus, while we are all engaged in relationships that are almost ipso facto exceptional, in the sense of totally singular -- there shall be no other mother-child relation than the one between your mother and you -- we see that this kind of exceptionalism is the common lot, and often the common misfortune, of mortal humanity. It is, as President Obama wisely put it: of course he believes that America is exceptional, and the greatest country in the world; but he also knows that Britons believe that about Britain, the French about France, and the Greeks about Greece.
        Why do I say misfortune? It is because, while my attempt at a Left and Love-based understanding of Exceptionalism is all for the well and good, the nasty right-wing version, the version that includes belligerent Nationalism and rapacious Imperialism, the Tea Party and la Mission Civilatrice and Francisco Franco, has bigger battalions and more money. And it is in the habit of appealing to the worst in that exceptional relationship of a priori Love, a willingness to see the extraordinary character of one's own love, and one's fears for the preservation of that love, as a kind of moral blank-check to engage in the most wicked and barbarous disregard for the singular and exceptional loves of our other fellow creatures. Thus, I think it is important, at least in the will-o'-the-wisp world of Internet Publishing, to make a move towards taking those underlying feelings of exceptional love, and moving them towards a politics that, while cleaving to its love of Patria or Motherland, acknowledges that this love is a common feeling of all peoples for their homeplaces, and in no wise entails the normative justification of economic or political or otherwise violence and domination. That while we all (or most of all of us) love our parents, we all also know that our parents, being human beings, are not perfect. And yet we still do love them.

                                                              III.
    Thus it is, that in the course of the conversation with my friend, that I found out that some ignorant piece of trash from the Town of Boston spat on this brilliant woman, with her brilliant sparkling sense of humor, her wisdom and her decency, when she was in Town because of the color of her skin! What a fuckin' asshole that guy was; wish I could get 'ahold a' him. But I got to thinking more. And so, as I thought: if my Father spat on someone because she looked different than him, of course that person wouldn't like him -- and she would be in the right! And my City-Father, Boston, spat on her! So of course she dislikes Boston, and has every right to do so! And it made me think: what do you think, beyond your love for your native places -- what do you think should go into a New England-based politics of what I'll call Inclusive Singularity (rather than Exceptionalism)? A politics that both acknowledges what is singular in a place, but then allows that singular quality to be accessed in an equal fashion by all who seek it, regardless of birthplace, race, class, creed, or any of those other poxy artificial distinctions by which we render humanity alien to itself.
       So what are these principles, these rather creedal than mere accident-of-birth elements of what it ought to mean to be from New England? These will both overlap and be, in some cases, beyond the bourn of traditional Anglo-American legal rights. Let me propose a few of these principles, based on my own understanding of New England history, and my own judgment as to what may be worthy in that history; they are premised first of all in my belief -- my firm and passionate belief -- that the land of any one place is what makes it unique (or rather the land and waters), and that this land is at the heart of any place's singular, original quality:

        I. The Preservation, Regulation, and Maintenance of the Commons -- of Wood, Water, Marshes, Meadows, Swamps, Sky, Fields, Fish, Fowl, and Game of the Several Towns and Cities must form one of the chief ends of Government. These common resources must be available to all citizens regardless of artificial distinctions of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed, in proportion to what the ecosystem may bear.
        II. Where practicable, government shall be by Open Town Meeting, with each legal voter capable of bringing motions, debating them, and voting on them. The Government of the Cities must be made as directly democratic as is practicable, with the Mayor engaged in a kind of Prime Minister's Questions once every Season of the Year from the City Council. Town Meeting Day and Election Day shall be legal holidays, and citzens shall be legally enjoined to vote.
       III. The education of the young and the training of a wise and able citizenry being one of the chief ends of civil government, the establishment of public schools, with education equally available to all, regardless of artificial distinction, must forever be established and enforced.
        IV. Each Town, and in the Cities, each Neighborhood, must establish a Free Public Library for the use of its citizens, equally available to all, regardless of arbitrary distinctions.
        V. Public Order being essential to the Public Liberty, no citizen shall be suffered to carry a gun any more powerful than a hunting rifle or fowling piece outside of the regulated and duly-established militias of the several Towns and Cities, under the command of the Governor as Chief Magistrate of the Civil Power.  
         VI. New England must forever abandon and eschew military adventurism abroad. We shall go to war only if we are attacked.
       VII. This being a wealthy country, the right of all New Englanders, regardless of creed, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other false and invidious distinctions, to a healthy subsistence shall be the duty of the Community and the Civil Power.
       VIII. The Civil Power of the Several New England States shall be responsible for the preservation of those oceanic fisheries beyond the bourn of any one Town or City.
         IX. Corporations are not citizens or legal persons. Legal personhood may attach only to animate, corporeal beings.

   Those are my first nine that I can think of. Let me know if you have some you think ought to be added. And apologies that this essay comes to a rather -- inconclusive? -- conclusion. But it's late-early, and I have some Jimmy Cliff to listen to.