book reviews | Adam Plaiss

American Nations: A history of the eleven rival regional cultures of North America
By Colin Woodard

Colin Woodard‘s thesis is simple and compelling: there is no American people, but rather there are American nations.

The United States is, according to Woodard, an inter-national conglomeration that sometimes works together and sometimes doesn’t. The nations were founded between the 16th century and the mid-19th century. Different peoples from different parts of Europe arrived on North American land with different purposes in mind, and interacted with the native peoples in different ways. For the most part, in the U.S. context, these regional cultures have sorted themselves out into Northern and Southern coalitions. These coalitions have a different view as to what is right and what is wrong. These divergent opinions express themselves in domestic politics, religion and foreign policy. Furthermore, the waves of immigration that came to the U.S. in the late-19th and early-20th century did not affect these regional cultures. Instead, the immigrants adapted and acculturated themselves to the pre-existing norms of their new home nations.

Woodard’s thesis is fresh and at first seems a little shocking. But for me, and I imagine for others, his argument puts into words something I’d felt all along. His work affirms a pet theory I’ve had for a while now: although every nation is an imagined community (as Benedict Anderson so famously pointed out), I think that the United States is a particularly existentialist nation.

Allow me to explain. I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, and in those heady years I was much taken by the works of Sartre and Kierkegaard. Existentialism, in a nutshell, is a philosophy that privileges human choice. An individual chooses his own nature–it is not given to him. Existence precedes essence. And, to a large degree, it’s that way with the United States. The “we” in “we, the people” is unwieldy. We don’t speak the same language, worship the same God, or believe the same things about the proper role of government. What holds us together is our assent to the authority of two documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. By agreeing to follow the ideals and guidelines of those texts, we make ourselves into a people. This isn’t a case for American exceptionalism–other countries could well be in the same boat–it’s merely an explanation for why this land, time and again, seems to have little holding it together other than its founding documents. If you think otherwise, then Woodard’s book is definitely for you.

The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform
By Andrew Koppelman

If you’re like me and are wondering, “what exactly did the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) amount to?”, this is the book for you. Andrew Koppelman, the John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, translates the esoteric world of legal argumentation into understandable metaphors, explanations and historical accounts that makes the constitutional challenge to the ACA understandable to a non-lawyer.

Koppelman argues that the United States Constitution must always be read in the context of the United States’ Articles of Confederation. The Articles, for better or for worse, did not enable American governments to address the problems that the American ruling class thought faced the nation. As a result, the American ruling class drafted the Constitution, which created a federal system of government designed to solve problems. However, Koppelman finds that opponents of the ACA forward interpretations of the Constitution that make America’s healthcare situation into a problem that cannot be solved. More frighteningly, Koppelman contends, opponents of the ACA find in the Constitution grounds for claiming that America’s healthcare issues are problems that ought not to be solved. This, Koppelman finds, is a “tough luck” Constitution which, he insists, is a complete misunderstanding of the Constitution’s purpose.

Regardless of your political leanings on the ACA question, I recommend this book. It’s short, concise, and easy to read. For people who support the Obama administration’s efforts to reform healthcare, this book will provide you with a grounded constitutional case for the ACA; for those who disagree with the administration’s strategy, you’d better read this book so that you’ll be informed of the most clear-sighted argument against your position.