Atlantic Romantics: How America forgot its Greater European Past
The USA has a history problem with Europe. It forgot its Greater European Past. This problem bizarrely unites Hannah Arendt and Donald Trump. How on earth, you ask, can that be?
Arendt and the Atlantic Romantics
In this history problem, the USA denies its Greater European past, and exaggerates the unique virtues of the American Experiment. The problem generates stories of American Manifest Destiny. One version of this history appeared in Donald Trump’s 2025 Inauguration Speech. Another version was written by Hannah Arendt in On Revolution.
One of the tough lessons I learned in my intellectual adventures in government was that the world is too perplexing for even the finest minds. Reality always trumps intellect. History always sidesteps philosophy. Consequently, even the minds that you admire the most still make mistakes. Great minds have blind spots where they fall in love with ideas and fail to sense reality. So it is with Hannah Arendt’s writing on Western history. She was an incurable Atlantic Romantic.
In 1963 in On Revolution she wrote “it has become rather obvious that Western civilization has its last chance of survival in an Atlantic community.”
In over-simplified form, Arendt’s history has become a mainstream political cliché. You see it everywhere including the establishment magazine, The Atlantic and the notorious foreign policy grandees of The Atlantic Council. At its ‘Founding’, after the American Revolution of 1776, the USA became, in former President Joe Biden’s words,
“the only country founded on an idea. Every other country is founded based on geography, ethnicity, or religion. We’re founded on an idea: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
The New World of America was founded in a virtuous idea. The Old World was fixed in ancient hatreds. Sadly and understandably, Arendt fell for this fable.
Below the paywall I explore:
The Old World of Europe vs the New World of America
American Resentment of Europe
Arendt’s Fable of the American Revolution
World History on Arendt’s Atlantic Dream, and
Further Reading on the American Revolution.
Thanks for joining me, ❤️Jeff….