Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 44

MODERN AGE

the 1930s as "a great garden, well kept and
blooming . . . populated by clean and healthy
people." Also, much as Kennan advocated
a tougher policy toward Stalin, Kennan's
ruling-class perspective on America led
him to value Communism's purposefulness
over what he saw as the meaninglessness of
American life.
Americans, however, do view their lives as
meaningful-largely in proportion to their
religious faith. Anyone studying American
life is compelled to note that Americans are
far and away the world's most religiously
observant people. It is no leap of logic to
point out that honest representation of the
American people to foreigners would have to
begin with this fact, without which nothing
much that happens in America makes sense.
To the extent that, by commission or omis-
sion, the diplomat minimizes or denigrates
this fundamental facet of American life, he
misrepresents his country.

A

merica differs from other countries,
notably in Europe, in other regards as
well-pervasive ownership and carriage of
firearms, for example. Fidelity to truth and
to his client obliges the diplomat to explain
this fact as such, rather than to do so in terms
of the audience's, and of the American ruling
class's, aversion to that truth. It is not neces-
sary to continue with such examples for us to
see the threat to representation posed by the
conflict between the American people's ways
and those of its ruling class, from which the
diplomats are likely to be drawn.
Taking care of America's business requires
distinguishing it from the business of others.
From our republic's very beginnings, Ameri-
can diplomats have represented a country
whose principles, mores, and institutions
the rest of the world regarded with curios-
ity, strong attraction, revulsion, or hostility.
As America's power has grown, more have
44

FALL 2014

sought America's advice, blessings, or aid
in causes they have claimed to be akin to
America's own. Others have preferred to
think of us as devils. But in our time as in
earlier days, sound principle is, while never
to stint pride in America's own ways and
always to fulfill anyone's curiosity about
them, to refrain from insult by proselytizing
that indicts others as inferior.
As John Quincy Adams counseled, if we
want others to leave us to our ways, it helps
to leave others to theirs. Hence America must
not enlist "under other banners than [its]
own, were they even the banners of foreign
independence." Were America to do so, said
Adams, she "would involve herself, beyond
the power of extrication, in all the wars of
interest and intrigue, of individual avarice,
envy, and ambition, which assume the colors
and usurp the standard of freedom."
The fundamental reality of foreign
relations is that it is about relating to
foreigners-people who are unlike ourselves,
who have loves, hates, and objectives of their
own-people who are beyond our control.
Taking differences seriously is the primor-
dial requirement for dealing with them.
That is why, in years past, the foreign service
recruited its officers from among students of
foreign languages and cultures, people who
had spent years acquiring a facility in other
languages and had become familiar with the
assumptions embedded in their use.
In our time, however, the in-depth study of
foreign languages and cultures has declined
in proportion to the rise of English as the
language in which so much of international
intercourse occurs, as well as the influence of
the (unintentionally ironic) concept of "diver-
sity." The latter is emblematic of our ruling
class's belief that it is "multicultural"-that
its recognition of all cultures' essential equal-
ity allows them to understand and, in a way,
to subsume all cultures into their own, which
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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