Natsu Taylor Saito, Human Rights, American Exceptionalism, and the Stories We Tell

• Citation: Vol. 23 No. 1
• Publication year: 2009

HUMAN RIGHTS, AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, AND THE STORIES WE TELL

Natsu Taylor Saito^*

In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted-knowingly or unknowingly-in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.

-Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free¹

In many respects, the story of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),²since its promulgation by the United Nations, is one of remarkable growth of international recognition of the rights of all peoples. Nonetheless, the framework of universal human rights continues to be contested, and one need only glance at any newspaper to be reminded of the grim realities that still confront much of the world's population. The 60th anniversary of the UDHR gives us an opportunity to focus not only on the extent to which the rights it articulates have gained acceptance in international discourse, but to consider the options for extending and enforcing those rights. The theme of this symposium is "Advancing the Consensus." The notion of a consensus implies a common agreement, a shared narrative or story. The history of the post-World War II human rights movement can be told as one of ever- expanding agreement on certain basic or universally acknowledged values and norms, embodied most visibly in the UDHR.³However, it is also a story of great frustration, as we consider the many impediments to the implementation of these norms and are forced to acknowledge that life is exceedingly difficult for most of the world's people.⁴The premise that we have a consensus to be advanced highlights what are often perceived as two major obstacles to the human rights movements of the twenty-first century. One of these is American exceptionalism, the United States' practice of unilaterally exempting itself from participation in international organizations and human rights treaties while simultaneously insisting that the rest of the world comply with international norms.⁵Another is resistance in significant sectors of the world to the universalization of rights on the grounds that international institutions are being used to impose Western values unilaterally upon non-Western cultures.⁶From the perspective of those struggling to "advance the consensus," both of these tendencies seem to undermine the progress made since 1948 in the field of international human rights. While often viewed as representing diametrically opposed sources of pressure on the human rights paradigm, they both may be products of the Eurocentric nature of contemporary international law. If this is true, it may be time to consider expanding and reframing the paradigm of human rights.

This Essay is a reflection on the narrative of American exceptionalism, focusing on its premise that the United States represents the highest stage in the evolution of Western civilization achieved to date and its related claim to be at the forefront of human progress. It is significant to the human rights discourse because, while used as a justification for the United States' self- exemption from the human rights regime, this foundational belief simultaneously reinforces the Western ideals and values underlying the contemporary international legal framework.⁷In turn, the arguments used by

U.S. leaders to undergird their exceptionalist positions lend credence to critics of contemporary human rights law who argue that human rights are being used as a "Trojan horse" to impose a Western worldview on non-Western societies.⁸

My thesis is that if we are to achieve a true consensus about contemporary human rights norms, we will have to take seriously the critique of their colonial roots, opening up the discourse to the stories of all peoples. Only then, I believe, will we be able to achieve an honest consensus capable of both effectively countering American exceptionalism and providing a means of embracing multiple understandings of the world within the framework of international human rights. This is, of course, a large subject and what follows are simply some preliminary thoughts to initiate the discussion.

I. THE COLONIAL PRESUMPTIONS OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

In September 2008, law professor Steven Calabresi, a co-founder of the neoconservative Federalist Society, provided an apt summary of the exceptionalist perspective when he objected to the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of "foreign law" by arguing:

Those of us concerned about citation of foreign law . . . believe in something called American exceptionalism, which holds that the United States is a beacon of liberty, democracy and equality of opportunity to the rest of the world. . . . The country that saved Europe from tyranny and destruction in the 20th century and that is now saving it again from the threat of terrorist extremism and Russian tyranny needs no lessons from the socialist constitutional courts of Europe on what liberty consists of.⁹

A similar sentiment was expressed by President George W. Bush in his introduction to the 2002 National Security Strategy, in which he described the United States as representing the "single sustainable model for national success" that had emerged in the twentieth century, and presented the United States' plan to maintain and expand its "unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence," using it "to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world."¹⁰

This perspective is not limited to those who advocate unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy. In his speech acknowledging victory in the presidential election of 2008, Barack Obama first noted that "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand," and then proclaimed:

[T]o all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright-tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.¹¹

In this statement, President-elect Obama was invoking one of the most common images of American exceptionalism: the United States as the embodiment of freedom and democracy and, therefore, the light of hope for the rest of the planet. He also was echoing a theme first articulated in 1630 by Puritan minister John Winthrop, who predicted, "[W]ee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill,"¹²a theme reiterated by President Ronald Reagan when he stated in his farewell address, "And how stands the city on this winter night? . . . [S]he's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom. . . ."¹³

This framing is significant because it reflects a core aspect of American identity-the deeply ingrained belief that the United States represents the highest stage of progressive development in the history of humanity.¹⁴As anthropologist Eric Wolf notes:

Many of us . . . grew up believing that [the] West has a genealogy, according to which ancient Greece begat Rome, Rome begat Christian Europe, Christian Europe begat the Renaissance, the Renaissance the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment political democracy and the industrial revolution. Industry, crossed with democracy, in turn yielded the United States, embodying the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.¹⁵

This view of history incorporates some of the most fundamental presumptions of Western civilization-that there is a fundamental dichotomy between people and nature;¹⁶that the benchmark of human civilization is the domination of nature, particularly through science and technology;¹⁷that all of human history can be understood in terms of a universal, linear path of progress toward increased civilization;¹⁸and that what has been termed Western civilization represents the highest stage of evolution in human history to date.¹⁹It is also a view that focuses on difference and the "ranking" that can be assigned to individuals and peoples as a result of that difference on the universal scale of

Western development or, as often put, "human progress."²⁰

Describing what he terms "the founding legend of Western civilization,"²¹historian Richard Waswo summarizes the relationship between this understanding of civilization and the international law that developed in the European world:

When we Europeans felt we were barbarians, the Trojan legend told us we weren't; now that we know that we were barbarians but aren't any longer, we can drop the legend from our history, and use it henceforth to determine the history of the barbarians we've so lately discovered. The use of the legend . . . to determine the fate of the indigenous populations in the new world is clearly visible in the formation of a special branch of law. This would eventually become international law, and was created expressly to deal with the accelerating conflicts among the major powers of Europe, due in large part to their competing claims over territory and trading privileges in the new world, and with the vexed question of the respective "rights" of the colonizers and the colonized.²²

As discussed briefly below, it is this belief in the superiority of Western civilization and its universal applicability, considered so obvious as to be "common sense" in the American worldview, which undergirds both our current structures of international law and the United States' claims to be upholding "universal" human values while exempting itself from internationally accepted norms.

Winthrop's "city upon a hill" is repeatedly referenced by American leaders not simply because it provides a powerful image, but because it captures the Puritans' belief that their journey to the New World was a "reenactment of the Exodus narrative revolv[ing] around a powerful theology of...