Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: the Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism.

by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003); 392 pp with notes and indices; $34.00 cloth.

Beginning where their 2002 book, The Myth of the American Superhero, leaves off, the authors of this new work summarize and then expand upon their previous argument that superhero tales--ubiquitous in popular cinema, television, literature, and other entertainments--express antidemocratic values. Authors Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence add that, in expressing such values, these tales help foster "a civil religion that seeks to redeem the world for democracy, but by means that transcend democratic limits on the exercise of power." They argue that the United States is a nation with "a mythic addiction to stories of community impotence and superhero redemption" which renders Americans amenable to "surrendering personal responsibility to savior figures." This Captain America complex, as they term it, shows itself in the way Americans "so often feel chafed by the limits of the Constitution" and are thus willing, for example, to hand tremendous war powers over to a president who promises to use those powers selflessly in an ongoing global and domestic crusade against "evil."

In this connection, the authors remind us of the decisive objections Karl Popper raised in 1950 in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper declares that we shouldn't be asking "Who should rule?" as this question "presupposes we can identify the 'good ones.'" Rather, we should ask, "How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?"

But Popper isn't popular. The American public--conditioned by certain biblical ideas retold as "secularized dramas of redemption" in a variety of media--has other ideas. The overwhelming influence of such widely disseminated entertainments far outstrips the limited value-shaping impact of sporadic participation in patriotic celebrations, civic action, or even the brief interludes provided by traditional religious services. Today's popular entertainments "respond to current events with mythic scenarios," teaching children and adults that turning to selfless superheroes will lead to the "regeneration of a helpless democratic society." The administration of President George W. Bush has, in the wake of 9/11, effectively played upon this longstanding American outlook in a power grab coupled with a doctrinaire pursuit of a violent foreign policy that repeats mistakes of the past.

In my review published in the May/June 2003 issue of the Humanist, of their previous book, I conclude that the authors, while making valid observations, somewhat overstate their case and express exaggerated concerns. Stories of vigilante heroes don't necessarily promote fascistic beliefs but may simply provide catharsis as well as "renewal and inspiration" for tackling in a fresh way the frustrations necessarily built into democratic institutions and family life. The authors, however, beg to differ. Anticipating such a view, they respond in their latest book as follows:

   We would like to believe in what might be
   called "the holiday effect." Since excessive
   work yields diminishing returns for tired
   workers, they often return from holidays
   with renewed zest and vigor for their tasks. It
   would be reassuring to discover that the fascist
   strand in the American monomyth has a
   similarly cathartic influence that invigorates
   the democratic life. Unfortunately, we find no
   evidence that this is the case in our civic
   experience. The American monomyth seems,
   in fact, to be the ritual life of zealous nationalism....
   We suspect that there is an
   American monomythic fantasy cycle here, in
   which the interplay between entertainments
   and political threats pulls us away from our
   democratic ideals.

Jewett and Lawrence then go on to make their case. Though I don't find they succeed in proving that popular entertainments have such robust propaganda power, I do think the authors have shown how American political culture, for one reason or another, has long been influenced by zealous nationalism, ultimately inspired by biblical notions of righteous zeal (a concept similar to Islamic jihad) and wars against "evil."

Looking into the Bible, the authors identify two contradictory strains which they maintain run throughout. The strain of zealous nationalism is to be found in the first few books of the Hebrew scriptures, most clearly in Deuteronomy, as well as in the later books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Joel. The authors tell how ancient Israel, in the thrall of fanatical ideas about cleansing the world of evil, behaved with violent self-righteousness and suicidal arrogance, ultimately launching irrational holy wars against superior powers until Israel's own Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom were defeated and destroyed. During this time, a new counter doctrine, which the authors call "prophetic realism," emerged. Advanced particularly by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Amos, it counseled against zealous nationalism and called for tolerance, peace, and a more realistic, non-doctrinaire view of personal and political life. Adoption of their outlook might have saved ancient Israel, but these prophets were ignored.

Jewish zealotry emerged again during the Roman period in Palestine. The voices counseling against this zealotry, warning that those who lived by the sword would die by it, were Jesus and then Paul. Since that time, however, their prophetic realist message has been "interpreted by posterity in the light of Deuteronomy, of Daniel, and, worst of all, the Book of Revelation." Jewett and Lawrence are most forceful on this point. "Revelation," they point out, "stands triumphantly at the end of the canon, submerging the strand of prophetic realism--including the message of Jesus--under a grandiose flood of zealous images and ideals." As such, it encourages "a foolhardy optimism concerning the outcome of history."

I find all of this biblical analysis fascinating and potentially useful. If nothing else, it helps explain the blatant contradiction between Isaiah 2:4 and Joel 3:10, where we are alternately told to beat our swords into plowshares and beat our plowshares into swords. But many Humanists will conclude that Jewett, who is a New Testament professor, and Lawrence, who is a philosopher, give the Bible's good side more that its due. The authors claim that

   the Enlightenment, although it has historically worn secular
   dress, owes much of its wisdom to the strand of
   prophetic realism in the Bible that has always run side-by-side
   with the impulses of zealous nationalism. Ideals
   respecting conscience, encouraging compromise, relying
   on nonviolent means of conflict resolution, and
   removing religion from the jurisdiction of state power
   had religious roots before they were adopted by reason.

They also go so far as to argue, in a section entitled "The Need for Modest Zeal and Jihad," that "to deny the necessity of zeal and to eliminate it from American morals would open the door to indifference or nihilism; without zeal for some righteous purpose the American moral sense could disintegrate." Others, of course, could counter that such "modest zeal and jihad" were the very foot in the door that led us into our present crisis.

So the authors aren't Humanists. But in excellent skeptical fashion they provide a well-stated case for the harmful role that mythic politics has played throughout U.S. history. They show how it has underpinned manifest destiny, imperialism, civil liberties violations during World War I, the massive bombing of civilian populations during World War II, the anticommunism of the Cola War, the failure of the United States to extricate itself from Vietnam, and the justification for nearly every military action since.

The authors also expose the political role played by the most dangerous form of religious zealotry we know: the belief in and even hope for Armageddon. Former president Ronald Reagan was influenced by this view for a time, labeling the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire." It took a "confluence of many movements in the 1980s," both religious and secular, to exert "an important influence" on Reagan until he finally began "distancing himself from Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other Christians who relished the prospect of Armageddon." It was only then that he "traveled to Moscow in pursuit of an arms agreement." But today, this ominous millennialist outlook appears to be occupying the White House once again.

A central element of zealous nationalism is the notion of a grand conspiracy. This has led to numerous mistakes in American politics. Before and during the Civil War, for example, Northerners believed Southerners were trying to impose slavery on the entire nation, while Southerners believed Northerners were trying to impose rule by blacks in the South. Neither perception was true. In the case of the Vietnam war, exaggerated notions of an international communist conspiracy led U.S. policymakers to mischaracterize Ho Chi Minh's nationalistic aims as part of a coordinated Sino-Soviet effort to take over Southeast Asia. AS a result, "for the most part, intelligence reports" from the field "simply reflected the myth itself, overlooking evidence to the contrary," and thereby reinforced erroneous initial ideas. In a similar vein, J. Edgar Hoover's red-under-every-bed paranoia caused him to misunderstand and thus wrongly direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's response to the major social movements of the 1960s.

Overall, Captain America and the Crusade against Evil offers an insightful look into the blind religiosity and doctrinaire thinking that underlie absurd political views of past and present. The book also exposes the emotional strings common to American mythical thinking that are so easily strummed by clever politicians.

Unfortunately, the credibility of the authors' analysis is marred by their creation of the corny sociological term Captain America complex to label the mythic outlook they analyze. This usage gives too much credit to comic books as shapers of the American ethos, as if it is necessary to overcompensate for scholars' past failures to even take this medium into account.

The authors also seem to assume what they don't actually prove, that the content of many popular entertainments are a cause or leading transmitter of American mythic thinking rather than, perhaps, a reinforcement or symptom of it. The evidence provided in this book actually makes a better case that the harmful influence of certain readings of the Bible has been infused into the national consciousness and maintained in U.S. history through many different avenues. What we are actually seeing is a common theme so woven into the culture that it is impossible to single out cause and effect.

I therefore find the exposure of this theme to be more important and valid than the authors' analysis and labeling of it.

Fred Edwards is editor of the Humanist.