A Barbarian at the Walls

I have decided that this blog can handle more than my more academic reflections on the confluence between antiquity and today and have decided to record herein my own barbarian invasion of Greece. Yesterday, I descended upon the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for a short visit before heading out to Kenchreai and then back to Athens for a full sight-seeing tour (this means, of course, that the pictures between now and July 1 will be less exciting than after). It all began with my 14 hour travel extravaganza from Columbus to Philly and from Philly to Athens:

I managed to get the seat right up against the wall of the bathroom (row 11--remember to avoid it for future flights on this particular plane-type) which meant NO RECLINING! FOR 11 HOURS! I did not sleep very well. This is Loring Hall, the place I am staying at the school.

A statue hanging on the porch off the dining area.

The outdoor dining area.

My room is in the basement. Apparently they usually put the students there, but me and another professor are here this week and it is lucky. Loring Hall is NOT air conditioned (though we all have our own fan) and the basement stays cooler than upper floors.

The long corridor to the bathroom.

My room (including my fan)

I found a little bakery nearby that I will be breakfasting at this morning and I am going to try Greek frappe. It is coffee, I know, but I tend to like the coffee in Europe, just not in the US.  The school is in Kolonaki, an upscale neighborhood in Athens. Even here, though, you have to be prepared for emergencies:

I'm not sure what in my room is good for barricading, maybe the chair, if I can carry it to the main hall.

That is all for now. I'll try to get pictures the city over the next couple of days, especially the bakery.

ELECTIONS, ACCOUNTABILITY AND DEMOCRACY IN ANCIENT ATHENS

The following is the text of a talk I gave in the fall for our Tuesday Lunch Series (the iTunes U podcast with the slideshow can be found here, #35). 

Today I want to talk about the role of elections in a democracy through the lens of the ancient Athenian democracy. Modern Americans tend, despite their low rates of participation, to think that elections are a fundamental part of a democracy. Whenever we speak of a country opening itself to democracy, the first thing we talk of is open elections. If a newly formed government manages to hold fair elections, we call it a triumph for democracy. But why is this? What does an election symbolize for us that give it such status?

Thankfully, the US is in a perpetual election cycle, so one needs simply to turn on the TV or radio or read an article to find the answer. A couple of examples should suffice:

1. For example, when the democrats took control of both the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, politicians, journalist and pundits alike referred to the victory as a “rebuke of” or “referendum on” the former President Bush’s war policy. One journalist referred to the Democrats as “riding a powerful wave of public anger over the war in Iraq and scandal at home.” We have now heard the same message repeatedly during the Tea Party “wave” that took back the House—it was a referendum on President Obama’s health care or other policies. The next election will supposedly be a referendum on someone’s economic policy, be it the President, the Democrats, or the House Republicans—take your pick. 
2. I want to get into the Way-back machine for this one and go to the 2004 elections: In a Washington Post article after the elections, journalists summed up former President Bush’s understanding of the election results. According to the article, the then president said that: ...the public’s decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath. “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 election”. When the Obama administration took over in 2008, there was a push to investigate the Bush administration on issues relating to the war in Iraq, among other things. But no investigation materialized. Perhaps Bush was right and the accountability moment had passed (despite the 2006 midterm “rebuke”). 

These two examples suggest that for Americans elections serve two functions. First, they express the will of the people: they allow us to voice our opinions on government policy. Second, they are a way of holding public officials accountable.

QUESTIONS: But, today I want to investigate with you whether elections are really democratic at all, let alone function as expressions of the will of the people and as a form of accountability? To get at this problem, I want to look back to the first democracy, the democracy of ancient Athens and to think about the nature of Athens’ democracy, what were its ideals, what were some of its practical manifestations and, finally, what a fuller understanding of the Athenian model might offer us as Americans when considering our own assessments of democracy and its mechanisms. Specifically, did the Athenians conceive of elections as fundamental to their democracy? Were elections an expression of the DEMOS? And, finally, were they a measure of accountability for officials?

 To start, I should highlight some of the major components of Athenian democracy for you to put some of the differences between our two systems into perspective:

• Direct participation by all members of the citizen body. All citizens had the right to sit in the Assembly and vote on legislations directly. After a certain age, they were also able to speak on and propose legislation of their own. Also, pretty much every citizen would at one point in their life serve as one of the members of the Council that was in charge of running the Assembly meetings and setting the daily agendas. 
• Eleutheria: freedom as a political value. It is rather abstract but in practice was manifested through things like parrhesia—freedom of speech in the assembly and in the courts. 
• Isonomia: equality before the law—not social or economic equality, but political. This is actually the word used, it seems, for the system of government the Athenians had; demokratia came into use only late in the fifth century BC and was originally a slur used by opponents of the system. 
• Lottery: The majority of offices were chosen by lottery. 
• 5. Access to Courts: The Athenians themselves, considered the courts as the defining institution of democracy. One of the earliest democratic reforms, it originally gave all citizens the right to appeal a magistrate’s sentence to a jury of their peers. By the fifth century BC, it was a regular cottage industry with nearly 1/5 of the citizen population sitting on juries every day (the first 6000 citizens to arrive would be included in the jury pool); nearly every building in the town center itself functioned as a courthouse and their public and private art was filled with depictions of jury votes and court hearings. POLYPRAGMOSUNE (Being a Busy-Body) 
• Euthuna: The essence of the euthuna was that all magistrates, regardless of whether they were elected by vote or appointed by lottery, were required at the end of their term to undergo a reckoning of their tenure in office. Citizens had a designated three-day period to lodge a complaint against an outgoing official. If the board (drawn by lot, one from each of the 10 tribes) decided there was evidence enough, a trial would be held in the Assembly and the magistrate would have to answer the charges. 

 The Athenian system did not appear all at once, complete as scholars and the History Channel sometimes seem to forget, but developed over a period of 100-150 years between 594 BC and around 450 BC, though development by no means stopped. It had moved in that time, however, from a system wherein aristocrats were elected to hold all public offices and the Assembly basically voted to approve their competing measure to a system whereby any citizen from any economic or social background could and did serve in office, serve on juries, and present and debate legislation to the Assembly.

One thing that sticks out from even a very rough sketch of the development of Athenian democracy over that period is the lack of prominence given elections. In fact, with exception for highly specialized offices, there is a distinct move away from them. As the democracy became more radical (i.e. based on the broadest citizen base), fewer posts were elected or even restricted to the upper classes, but were instead drawn by lot.

We Americans love elections so much, we even vote for positions like county coroner. In ancient Athens, however, they only had two categories of elected posts: military leadership and accountants; both highly specialized positions where you might want someone with certain skill sets—and incidentally, military leaders were the only individuals who could be elected to office consecutively and for more than 2 years total. Every other office, including the highest, the archon, was appointed by lottery drawn from all eligible citizens. The restriction on elected offices suggests that election was not considered the best way to put people into office. The Athenians preferred the whimsy of the lottery gods. Why? Our best sources on answering this question are actually the critics of Athenian democracy (most of our sources about the democracy are from those who were hostile to it—it is often said that political theory originated to try to show how democracy can’t work).

ANCIENT CRITIQUES. One of the greatest criticisms from antiquity leveled at the Athenian democracy was that it preferred to give power to the lower-class, under-educated, morally degenerate masses.  Aristophanes’ Knights parodies demagogues (in this instance a Sausage-seller and a tanner named Paphlagon) pandering to the Demos instead of acting in the city’s best interest. In the world of the comedy (a political satire), the quality of the leadership and the quality of the democracy itself were intimately linked: as one went downhill, so did the other. The so-called Old Oligarch (who was likely not as old as his curmudgeonly moniker suggests), another fifth-century Athenian, tells that the Athenians were well aware of the moral questionability of their leaders, but saw this as the best way to guarantee the survival of democracy. He writes:

When the poor, the ordinary people and the lower classes flourish and increase in numbers, then the power of the democracy will be increased; if however, the rich and the respectable flourish, the democrats increase the strength of their opponents (1.4).

Democracy, in this context, according to opponents of the system, is not interested in good government per se, but rather in preserving the rights and privileges of the ordinary and lower class citizens. Lack of elections, for the Old Oligarch, falls under the penumbra of ways in which the lower classes preserve the democracy at the expense of good government. We’ll consider why in a moment. But the lottery works for those whose interests seem to be most tied to the democracy. The lower classes. They provided Athens with its strength because Athens was a naval power with an empire that depended on a strong fleet. The lower classes manned the fleet, built the ships, provide the helmsmen etc. In other words, as the Old Oligarch goes on to tell us, since Athens’ power in the international community was based on naval strength and the lower classes were the bulwark of the navy, they rightly held power.

Of course, concerning the only elected offices, the Old Oligarch points out:

They (the demos) do not suppose that they ought to be able to cast lots for the post of general or commander of the cavalry, for they realize that they gain greater advantage from not holding these offices themselves but allowing the most capable to hold them (1.3).

What does the Old Oligarch’s position tell us about the role of elections in democratic Athens taken in combination with the actual development of the democracy itself? It tells us a number of things. First, it assumes that elections were advantageous to the “noble and respectable” citizens: namely, the aristocrats, also known as “the capable”. Second, it tells us that elections were not perceived of as in the best interest of democracy. Elections, in fact, are a threat to democracy since, as the Old Oligarch tells us later, if the so-called respectable citizens made the laws, they would not allow anyone they deemed ‘mad’ (i.e. from the mob; hoi polloi) to take part in city affairs.

So, one of the major components of our modern conception of democracy, elections, was conceived of in democratic Athens as un-democratic. Why? Because elections implied that some citizens were more capable, and therefore, perhaps, more equal than others. And the Athenians, while they did not believe that all humans were equal in all ways, had a political system that was premised absolutely on the equality of all citizens before and under the law, isonomia the fundamental principle of Athenian democracy.

Perhaps this is why Pericles, whom we will see more of shortly, in his great Funeral Oration as recounted by the historian Thucydides, is so keen to point out that Athenians were advanced in public through merit, not class (Thuc. 2.37). Athenians were suspicious of those who sought elected office because only the wealthy and aristocratic citizens tended to run. Why, we might ask ourselves? Again, because the aristocracy themselves conceived of popular elections as a badge of honor, a mark of their superiority, not only to other aristocrats, but rather to the people in general.

So, elections were not considered “democratic,” but rather a holdover from Athens’ pre-democratic days, but perhaps, like certain other aspects of Athens’ system, a way to harness the wealth of the aristocracy to its own needs. This brings us to the second issue at hand: accountability. Even if elections weren’t democratic, were they at least an accountability measure? There was one election in Athens—an important one—that no one wanted to win and that might have been a clear accountability measure: OSTRACISM.

OSTRACISM was a sort of reverse election. Every year, the Athenians would gather and vote on a single individual whom they would like to see exiled from the city. If a quorum of 6000 citizens voted and one individual got a majority, then he would be required to leave Attica for the 10-year period. He would not lose his property rights or his citizen status, but he could not return for the 10 years (unless recalled: a rare occasion). Although ostracism was supposedly created as a part of Cleisthenes’ reforms in 508 BC (the modern date for the founding of the democracy) and was aimed at keeping would-be tyrants at bay, it was not actually used until two decades after the reforms when in 487BC a number of men formerly associated with the Peisistratid family, who had ruled Athens from 547-514BC, were ostracized (an event likely tied to the appearance of one of the Peisistratids with the Persian army at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC).

Could such an election be considered a measure for accountability? It seems unlikely actually. Men who had performed great services for Athens, like Miltiades the leading general at the battle of Marathon in 490BC and Themistocles, the architect of Athenian naval policy during the 480s and the hero of Salamis, or Cimon, the leading general in the expansion of Athens’ empire in the 460s, could find themselves out of Athens very soon after their triumphs. This “election” was apparently targeted at preventing any single individual from gaining too much authority. But, it could be rigged, as the cache (CASH) of thousands of ostraka with the name Themistocles on them attests. One need not have done anything other than be prominent or be associated with the wrong family or fall victim to political chicanery to be ostracized. Such chicanery was actually not difficult since the majority of the population was not literate. The mass of ostraka with a single name on it for Themistocles was all carved by the same hand—this suggests something like a campaign “Vote for Themistokles! Get your ostraka here!”

Being ostracized was like being elected general (especially given that many of the ostracized had been generals)—it was not so much a mark of merit but rather name recognition, thus the ostraka with a single name being passed out by the thousands. It is not a coincidence that men whose fathers had been generals (like Pericles and Cimon, or Pericles Jr.) became generals themselves without any previous command experience. And in a few cases, their own fathers had been ostracized as well (both Pericles’ and Cimon’s fathers were).

What about regular elections, not ostracism? ARE THESE ELECTIONS A VALID METHOD FOR HOLDING OFFICIALS ACCOUNTABLE IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY? According to the Athenians, they were not. An example from the Peloponnesian War will make this clearer.

During the first year of the Peloponnesian War (a war that continued off and on for about 28 years starting in 431 BC), Athens adopted a defensive strategy at the behest of its leading politician and one of the 10 generals, Pericles. This strategy entailed the following: 1. Withdrawal of all citizens from Attica into the city behind the long walls; 2. Maintain and continue strengthening of the navy by which all of Athens’ supplies could be delivered during any Spartan campaigns in Attica; 3. Maintain the status quo in the empire. Pericles thought it best to keep a firm grip on what Athens already had instead of attempting to expand further. This was a good strategy and Thucydides suggests that had the Athenians been able to effectively follow it, they may have, in fact, won the Peloponnesian War or, as was Pericles’ apparent aim, draw a stalemate.

 One consequence of Pericles strategy, however, was both unexpected and devastating—the plague. The plague struck at the beginning of the second year of the war and was the result of a virus carried on a grain ship from Egypt. Under normal circumstances, it is probable that a few people and animals would have died, but because of the increased population in the city (up from 30,000 to at least 4 times that number, with people sleeping in public buildings, temples, etc.), the plague spread like wild fire. The Athenians were sorely distressed. Add to this the fact that the Athenians, who prided themselves on their courage in war, were forced to watch from the walls as the Spartans, for a second straight year, pillaged and laid waste their farms. It did not make for a good situation.

As a result, Thucydides tells us, “a change came over the spirit of the Athenians...They began to find fault with Pericles, as author of the war and the cause of all their misfortune...” (2.59). What follows this statement is a speech by Pericles (which we will come back to shortly). Thucydides goes on to tell us of the people’s reaction:

Such were the arguments by which Pericles tried to cure the Athenians of their anger against him and to divert their thoughts from the immediate afflictions. As a community he succeeded in convincing them; they not only gave up all idea of sending to Sparta for peace, but applied themselves with increased energy to the war; still, as private individuals they could not help smarting under their sufferings...In fact, public feeling against him did not subside until he had been fined. Not long afterwards, however, according to the way of the multitude, they again elected him general and again committed all their affairs to his hands, having now become less sensitive to their private and domestic afflictions, and understanding that he was the best man of all for the needs of the state (Thuc. 2.65.2-4).

 What are we to make of such a thing? The people obviously held Pericles responsible for their sufferings, and rightly so, some would say, since it was his policy which led directly to their two biggest complaints, the unchallenged ravishing of their homesteads by the Spartans and the spread of the plague. And yet they re-elected him. Why?

Thucydides is a biased observer. It is well accepted that Pericles is, for Thucydides, as close to the ideal statesman as can be. No one can compare. But even within the frame of Thucydides’ bias, there is something sincere that can be understood about the demos’s desire to reelect Pericles while still not agreeing with or endorsing his policy. And that is grounded within the rhetoric of the speech Thucydides gives Pericles to calm the people’s anger.

Pericles will appeal to three sentiments of the Athenians: Patriotism, self-responsibility and resolve in time of war. And it is the arousal of these sentiments that will convince the Athenians, despite their misgivings, to re-elect Pericles as the most capable man of carrying them through to the end of the war. Let’s look at a bit of the rhetoric:

Thuc. 2.60.2-4: I am of opinion that national greatness is more for the advantage of private citizens, than any individual well being coupled with public humiliation. A man may be personally ever so well off, and yet if his country be ruined he must be ruined with it; whereas a flourishing commonwealth always affords chances of salvation to unfortunate individuals. Since then a state can support the misfortunes of private citizens, while they cannot support hers, it is surely the duty of every one to be forward in her defense, and not like you to be so confounded with your domestic afflictions as to give up all thoughts of the common safety, and to blame me for having counseled war and yourselves for having voted it.

Thuc. 2.61.4: Born, however, as you are, citizens of a great state, and brought up, as you have been, with habits equal to your birth, you should be ready to face the greatest disasters and still to keep unimpaired the luster of your name. For the judgment of mankind is as relentless to the weakness that falls short of a recognized renown, as it is jealous of the arrogance that aspires higher than its due. Cease then to grieve for your private afflictions, and address yourselves instead to the safety of the commonwealth.

Thuc. 2.64.1-3: But you must not be seduced by citizens like these nor be angry with me—who, if I voted for war, only did as you did yourselves—in spite of the enemy having invaded your country and done what you could be certain that he would do, if you refused to comply with his demands... Remember, too, that if your country has the greatest name in all the world, it is because she never bent before disaster; because she has expended more life and effort in war than any other city, and has won for herself a power greater than any hitherto known, the memory of which will descend to the latest posterity; even if now, in obedience to the general law of decay, we should ever be forced to yield, still it will be remembered that we held rule over more Hellenes than any other Hellenic state, that we sustained the greatest wars against their united or separate powers, and inhabited a city unrivalled by any other in resources or magnitude.

Pericles’ rhetoric works on many levels. First, he co-opts the people into responsibility repeatedly by reminding them that, though war was his recommendation, they did vote for it in the Assembly. How can they now be angry when the war does not go as easily as they had hoped? Secondly, he reminds them that uncontrollable emergencies, like the plague, happen. The best citizens know how to deal with these setbacks and prevail. Next, Pericles emphasizes that the fate of a single individual is truly nothing when compared to the greater good. In fact, the true sign of a great patriot is to submerge his own identity beneath that of the city and be prepared to sacrifice for its sake. If an individual falls, the state will survive. If the state falls, the individual cannot survive. Lastly, and most importantly, Pericles plays on the greatness of the city and the vast benefits the citizens receive as a result of being citizens at Athens and he reminds them of how they were first invaded by the enemy and yet did not buckle. They showed great fortitude, worthy of their great name, worthy of their great city, and should continue to do so even as the war turns unpleasant. That the Athenians reelect Pericles despite their disagreement with his particular policy should not be surprising in the face of such a rhetorical onslaught. He has pressed all the right buttons. But is the reelection an endorsement of Pericles’ policy as such? Is it an accountability moment? Absolutely not. When Pericles dies that same year, the Athenians immediately resolve upon an aggressive offensive policy that is in direct conflict with Pericles’ defensive strategy (Five major expeditions in 2 years, in fact).

Consider also that Pericles’ position is one of the few elected positions, that of general. The people are obviously unhappy with his performance in the course of the war, but he is re-elected because he is a known entity having been general every year for the last decade and his father had been general before him. Pericles’ rhetorical strategy emphasizes his steadfastness, his experience and the idea of responsibility—the qualities almost always viewed as favorable in times of instability. Pericles was no flip-flopper.  Regardless of how positive Thucydides presents Pericles and his re-election, Thucydides’ statement that the people re-elected him because they recognized that he was the best man, the most capable, reinforces the Old Oligarch’s contention that elections favor the aristocracy, not the demos because name recognition trumps agreement or disagreement with actual policy.
Thus, when Thucydides gives his encomium of Pericles (Pericles’ death is mentioned right after the people fine him and reelect him) and tells us that, while Pericles lived, Athens was a democracy in name only but in truth a rule by its first citizen, we understand what?

1. The interests of the many have been overshadowed by the will of an individual who has been granted extraordinary authority. But this authority is hidden under the guise of elections, thus somehow the people are voluntarily relinquishing this authority. There is a paternalism inherent in the elective process—the “best” men take care of the city on behalf of the less capable Demos (liturgies, benefactors, etc). 
2. The fact that his elected office is one that can be held year after year without restriction (unlike most lottery positions which can only be held twice ever and at 10 year intervals) suggests that their policies are not what is being voted on but only the power of the name. 
3. The re-election of Pericles in particular should not be viewed as an endorsement of his policies nor an act of accountability—they fined him just previous to re-electing him as a mark of their dissatisfaction. This, not the election, was the accountability moment. The complete reversal of his policies almost immediately upon his death suggests strongly that they did not agree with them and had little intention of continuing with them. 

So, if elections weren’t democratic nor measures of accountability, what was a democratic accountability measure in ancient Athens? The EUTHUNA, which is probably the process by which Pericles was removed from office and fined in the situation just discussed and which has no parallel in American system. The euthuna, in fact, is, in some ways, in direct opposition, to the American way of thinking. We seem to prefer to hear all the juicy tidbits of an administration in best-seller form some time after that magistrate’s tenure has ended, preferably at a safe distance in time from the actual events. Any sort of accountability procedures initiated during an officials’ tenure or shortly thereafter is often considered, at least in Washington, as political shenanigans. The Athenians demanded an accounting on the spot.

EUTHUNAI: The euthuna was a powerful tool for keeping check on officials, especially elected officials like the board of generals, though it applied to all officials, elected or lottery. Its purpose seems to have been to intimidate officials from taking bribes and from extorting funds: they had to give a reckoning of all money spent at the end of term as part of the process. A downside to this may have been, especially in the case of military officials, a hindrance to aggressive and sometimes necessary but unpleasant actions in war. One very prominent example of this is the fate of the generals at the battle of Arginusae in 406BC, with which I will end my talk today. It is an extreme account of accountability of public officials, but that was its purpose. It was meant to underscore the absolute power of the people over their elected officials.

Our main source for the events surrounding the battle of Arginusae is Xenophon’s Hellenica:

• Now there are ten generals voted every year, one from each tribe. Of the generals for the year 406BC, eight were at the battle of Arginusae. These eight generals fought a naval engagement against the Spartans and were actually victorious. After the battle, however, the eight generals assigned two men, Theramenes and Thrasybulus , 47 ships with the task of picking up the bodies of the dead Athenians for burial. A severe storm arose that prevented the retrieval from being carried out and so the bodies were lost—failure to bury the bodies was a sacrilege that put the whole city at risk. 
• Afterwards, 6 of the 8 generals returned to Athens to find themselves facing a trial for misconduct as generals for failure to retrieve the bodies. Interestingly enough, one of the main accusers was Theramenes (the man actually assigned to pick up the bodies—a CYA maneuver if ever there was one). After a series of procedural wranglings, including a measure to try the generals altogether instead of separately as was their right, the 8 generals (the 6 present and the 2 who did not return to Athens) were condemned to death for betraying the Athenian people. Accountability, indeed. 

Now this is an extreme example of euthuna. In fact, it was not a formal euthuna since the generals were tried together instead of being given individual trials in which to give their own reckonings and defenses. But it shows how central to the democracy was the idea of accountability. In fact, so powerful was the fear of this accountability among the generals that 2 chose not to return rather than face the displeasure of the people (They spent the better part of a decade in exile looking for ways to return to the city).

The primary defense speech on behalf of the generals’ right to individual trials is likely the key to understanding the centrality of accountability for the democracy. One Athenian, Euryptolemus asks of the Assembly:

What is it, pray, that you fear, that you are in such excessive haste? Do you fear lest you will lose   the right to put to death and set free anyone you please if you proceed in accordance with the law, but think that you will retain this right if you proceed in violation of the law, by the method which Callixeinus persuaded the Assembly to report to the people, that is, by a single vote? (1.7.26; Slide 15)

 Euryptolemus’ question is on a point of law, but it hits at the heart of the matter, the people’s fears that they will wake up one day and their authority over their officials would disappear and along with it, their democracy. This is exactly, I might add, what had happened only 5 years earlier when a group of aristocratic citizens, known as the 400 Oligarchs, convinced the Assembly to vote itself out of existence for the sake of state security. It would also happen again, only 3 years later, when a group of 30 aristocrats became tyrants of Athens and disbanded the courts, disenfranchised 90% of the citizen- body and executed without trial 1000s of residents and confiscated their property. Perhaps their fears weren’t so irrational?

What, then, can we conclude about the relationship between elections, accountability of public officials and democracy in Athens?

• Elections were seen as favoring the aristocratic members of society and were not favorable to the democracy. 
• Accountability, especially of the few offices that were chosen by popular election, was seen as a lynch pin of the power of the people, given as far back as the time of Solon and considered a necessary component for a functioning democracy. 

And what about our moments of “accountability”? Taken in this light, were the voters punishing their Congressmen for supporting unpopular policies? Or did the re-election of Bush serve to demonstrate approval of his and his appointees activities? If we look to the Athenian model and the first democracy, elections are NOT a method of accountability. Rather they are a mechanism that reinforces the status quo separately from any real method of accountability. Elections presented the populace with prominent men from a small segment of the population, from the upper socio-economic classes, as choices—a hold over from the days of aristocratic governance—and served more often to reinforce elite views of their own political importance. Elections, along with liturgies, were ways for aristocrats to rank themselves against each other. Real accountability for the Athenians rested with the end of term reckoning, the euthuna—and this, not elections, was the key to a strong democracy.
Does this mean that our democracy has no method for holding officials accountable since we don’t have a public reckoning upon the completion of a term in office? Not necessarily. But it does mean that maybe we should be a little more cautious when touting the upcoming elections as a true measure of accountability on the policies of a party or administration, or of thinking that any radical change could be affected by simply electing new members of the American governing class into the White House.

One reason why studying the ancient world can be useful and interesting is because it provides us with models through which to consider the contemporary world. The ancients are at once alien and familiar to us. No, of course, ancient Athenian democracy is different from the modern American version. But many of the institutions we have, the ideals upon which they are founded and the rhetoric to which we turn in discussing them do have their roots in Ancient Athens (as well as, of course, Rome).

The Athenian evidence at the very least should lead us to question whether elections such as ours are really cut out for doing the democratic work we ask of them. The Athenian evidence also gives us a license to do something becoming almost completely forbidden in our modern Democracy – criticize it. Could there be a better way of holding our officials to account? What would a modern euthuna look like? What would it do? What about introducing a lottery for officials? Think about what that would mean for us? When our own democracy seems to many ineffective, or dysfunctional, a look at the earliest attempts to open up government to the whole community can be a remarkably powerful tool, even a dangerous one. Thinking about Athens was certainly beneficial a few centuries ago for a certain group of men considering establishing a new form of democratic government in their newly liberated community. But, they were elites and they rejected the Athenian model as too radical with too much power in the hands of the “people”. Maybe we should rethink Athens and reconsider whether the Founding Fathers were right about that.

Orientalism and Classics

In preparing for a new research project, I have been rereading two books that have become important in the world of classical scholarship and to those who study Greek tragedy especially--Edward Said's Orientalism and Edith Hall's Inventing the Barbarian. I was caught up in the reasons presented by these two scholars in their prefaces for why tragedy and Orientalism go together and I want to jot my thoughts on it down here. These thoughts concern both whether we can truly conceive of Athenian tragedy or any 5th century BC Athenian text as "Orientalist" and what it is that we scholars gain or seek to gain by utilizing theories like Said's in our study of the ancient world--in other words, is it really a good idea to conflate ancient Greece (and I use this general term cautiously) with 19th century Western European imperial powers. Who gains from such a conflation? What I really want to figure out is what sort of political capital is gained by constructing the Athenians in the mold of evil British imperialists who oppressed and romanticized /fantasized the Middle East. Said's motivation is not that hard to find. Hall's is a little more ambiguous.

It has become fairly standard to think of Greek tragedy (really Athenian tragedy) as being pat of a number of "projects" that link it to the Orientalism ascribed to it by Said. Tragedy participates in the process of "othering" non-Greeks by its extensive use of non-Greek characters (i.e. barbarians) in its stories, often in the roles of slaves or socially/morally inferior tyrants. The Athenians who wrote, performed and watched these plays were rampant imperialists which situates this "othering" within the frame of an imperial project. Because these non-Greeks were often Persian or "oriental," the othering and the imperialism are specifically within the mold of 19th century western European domination and suborning of the "East" and the attendant cultural imaging of what the exotic "East" was like by their "western" overlords --i.e. "Orientalism. Orientalism, as Said describes it, is "a dynamic exchange between individual authors and the large political concerns shaped by empire...in whose intellectual and imaginitive territory the writing was produced" (14-15).

With regards Greek tragedy specifically, Said sees a play like Aeschylus' Persians as an example of the Orient being transformed from a very "distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that are relatively familiar (in Aeschylus' case grieving Asiatic women). The dramatic immediacy of representation in the Persians obscures the fact that the audience is watching a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made the symbol for the whole Orient" (21). In other words, Aeschylus "speaks for the other" by imagining without basis in fact what the Persian court must be like and by presenting that space in a way that removes the agency from the Persian to represent itself and instead becomes a "Greek Persian"--a Persian as Greeks imagine them to be in all their exotic, feminine, despotic glory.

The tragic form requires all sorts of "speaking for others" given that it is a mimetic art form where a playwright imagines people other than himself in situations that are extraordinary or mythical and often occurring in places he has never been. And a play is "dialogue", people must talk to one another, taking on the role of people not themselves in order for a play to be a play. Let's not even start on the fact that the Persians and not the Greeks were the grand imperialists (an inconvenient fact for Said and others). If anything, Said should be imaging the Greeks as the colonized and not the colonizers. Maybe the Mimic Men of Memmi, who embrace and imitate the ways of the their (former) imperialist overlords, are a better analogy, if one needs an analogy. But, it seems that Said must have us understand the Greeks as the 19th century Brits themselves wanted everyone to understand them--as the progenitors of Western civilization--but only culturally. The Greeks themselves have been jettisoned, their ancient culture sanitized, bleached and restricted to the "Classical." To buy the Athenians as Orientalists, we have to buy the British/French/German imperialist ideal that the great cultures of the past were their intellectual heritage and property alone. We have to forget that until the mid 19th century, Greece was part of the Orient. In fact, we have to accept the propaganda and ideology which Said is supposedly trying to reveal as given in order for Said's own co-option of the Classical Greeks as Orientalists.

Maybe because I am a historian (even if my history is not about reconstructing narratives but a history of thought and ways of viewing the world) I like my theorists and scholars to do a little research and get their facts (what little facts we know) right. Maybe that research involves just going down the hall and talking to the Greek historian or the tragedy scholar--we are resources, you know. Knowing things doesn't make one inaccessible. It makes us useful! But yes, so Said's facts, like his influence Foucault's facts, are askance. Or rather, ironically, Said gets the descriptives right, but ignores the evidence in front of him in order to feed his pet project. What do I mean?

Said's description of the Western imperialist/orientalist actually relates more accurately to the evidence we have of how Persians represented themselves in iconography and inscriptions--how they viewed their subjects, the peoples they aimed to conquer, their own position in the hierarchy of the world. We seem to take for granted a level of Greek cultural superiority and diffusion that was not historically accurate until after the adventures of Alexander in Asia. In an ironic twist, the Hellenistic world, the world that resulted from conquests by a semi-Greek monarchy of the Persian empire, that was a world of cultural domination by the Greeks is called "Hellenistic" precisely because it is considered derivative and inferior to the great classical period of the 5th and 4th centuries BC.

The British particularly transported back in time that notion of cultural superiority to the Athenian culture they admired even while denigrating the actual period of time and its culture which held such power. The Hellenistic world wasn't "pure" Greek, but a fusion culture. Perhaps the dismissal of that fusion was a fantasy by the British imperialists that they could co-opt and alter their colonies while remaining "pure" themselves. In truth, there is no cultural superiority of the Greeks until after the time of Alexander and we don't really have the dynamics of Orientalism, "a political vision of reality whose structure promotes the difference between the familiar and the strange," until Rome's conquest of the Hellenized Asia when the West v East division became canonized in the reality of government function, language fluency and cultural heritage. Orientalism before the period of Alexander's successors is a fallacy, but a convenient one.

Surely, that was a bit elliptical. I'll have to clear it up soon.

How Obama Became American: Herodotus and the Rhetoric of Ethnos in the 2008 Election

What does it mean to be an American? This is something that many people have little understanding of—not because we don’t consider ourselves Americans or because we are ignorant, but because “American” isn’t and has never been a simple category of citizenship. It is an idea and so is as open to negotiation, manipulation and interrogation as any other idea. The way I want to approach the idea of “American” is through the concept of ethnos—this is the ancient Greek word from which we derive words like ethnicity. In ancient Greece it meant, variously, a group of people accustomed to living together, a tribe, a host (in the military sense) and a swarm or flock of animals. In the aftermath of Greece’s wars against the Persian Empire, though, ethnos came to mean something closer to what we might consider a nation (not in the modern sense exactly but close enough for our purposes today). Because of the regard in which Herodotus, the historian who first gives a clear and systemic definition of the concept of ethnos, was held by many of our Founding Fathers and early framers of our Federal system, it seems that how Herodotus went about defining ethnos filtered into their own vision of what America would be and who would be American. That understanding of what makes an American is restrictive and eschews the diversity that has been the real America from its inception and yet, in times especially of crisis or during elections, the narrow, idealist definition re-emerges as our officials contest over who is and who is not American enough to represent our nation to the world. President Obama endured such a contest and, seemingly, passed through.

What I want to argue through an examination of the history of this concept of ethnos and its mobilization in the election rhetoric of 2008, though, is that in order to pass through this contest over what it means to be an American, President Obama had to meld himself to the idea of American in more ways than he was able to stand outside of it. Thus when pundits and journalists and others make claims that we have moved into a post-racial society, they are ignoring clearly that the patchwork and diversity Obama seems to represent to them is, in fact, only skin deep. In order to become president, he needed to show (and will, indeed, need to continue showing) that he understands the American ethnos not as an expansive and inclusive type but as exclusive and closed.

I’ll start with quotations from a couple of well-known American patriots which should give us some insight into the early ideal of what it means to be an American. Then we’ll move to the ancient Greeks and then the 2008 election (and beyond). First:

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs (John Jay, Federalist #2).

And:

The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles and accustomed to one general tenor of social usage and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity (John Quincy Adams, Private Letter, 1811).

This idea that the United States was ever a nation united by language, religion and customs is a myth but one with a long history and rooted in 18^thcentury notions of what it meant to be a nation. When Jay and Adams were both writing, at least 40% of the citizens of the young country were non-English speakers who were not of the Anglican or even reformed brands of Christianity and who did not necessarily share the same manner and customs. While they were all primarily of northern European decent, they were still not an ethnically united people. And yet this is one of the most enduring myths of our nation—even if it is one of the most problematic.

The idea that we are and always have been a nation united by shared language, religions and customs found its most enduring symbol in the myth of the melting pot which developed in response to the waves of immigration of the 19^th century, at first from northern Europe and then predominantly from southern and eastern Europe. The melting pot myth comes to us courtesy of Israel Zangwill whose 1908 play called, of course, The Melting Pot examines the romance of a Jewish man and Christian woman, both immigrants to America, who are able to overcome the ethnic and religious divisions and hatred of their pasts to fall in love—something that could apparently only happen in America. Along the way to this happy ending, the play touts the virtues of assimilation and Americanization. David, the young man in love declares:

America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to — these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians — into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

A mighty vision of an America that never was and, still, is not. But where did such a vision come from? And what makes this ethnic unity—because this is what the melting pot envisions—desirable?

These are not new questions and over the last century, arguments have been made for both the value and the harmfulness of the melting pot notion which seeks to provide a metaphorical mechanism by which the ideal of the ethnically unified American promoted by the Founding Fathers could be realized in the reality of mass immigration. But, in the immediate afterglow of the election of the first non-white American to the presidency, pundits and journalists began sounding the cheer that we were entering into a post-racial world where the dream of being color-blind could finally be realized, where the melting pot would cease to be our dominant metaphor, at last, and the new image of the patchwork America cold begin in truth. One anonymous opinion piece being distributed by McClatchy (Jan. 23 2009), however warns us to remember the racial, ethnic and economic barriers that still impede us. But there is hope:

The president talked about a patchwork of America in his inauguration speech. That quilt includes many immigrants who are working to absorb the language, culture and customs of the United States. The political dynamite of immigration must be elevated to the national stage after the economy reaches relative stability.

Instead of a pot, we have a patchwork quilt—but it is still a unifying structure that requires those who wish to be called American to meld or be woven into. And the way that happens is through the absorption of or assimilation to a shared language and customs (and, as we shall see, even religion). Failure to be woven in is still a stigma despite (or as a result of) the multicultural movements of the last two decades. Evidence for this can be found in the attacks leveled on then candidate Obama during the election (and which continue to be leveled rather aggressively in some media outlets today). Some may say that Obama’s election despite these attacks shows that Americans have grown past this narrow definition of what makes as American. But the continued attacks on Obama on exactly the points of shared language, religions, government principles and customs, suggests that we are still not all past it.

But what is the origin of the notion that in order to be a people, united, we must share our language, religion and customs? Why and how have 300 years of American identity been shaped by seeing such absorption and assimilation as positive—despite at least 100 years of direct assaults on the notion. The answer is that it comes to us through a long history of classical education and through the love of a single text by many of the individuals who shaped our constitution and national myths. That text is the Histories of Herodotus, the first historian and ethnographer and he was, for reasons that should become obvious, beloved by many of our earliest statesmen [we know they read the text—at least in English translation—since they cite evidence from it in the Federalist papers, in their private letters and in their commonplace books].

The ancient historian Herodotus is the first person whom we know of to have defined a people (ethnos) as those who share a language, a religion and customs or traditions (nomoi). His Histories has two main trajectories—the narrative of the Persian Wars and the descriptions of the various peoples in the Persian Empire and the Greek world. Some scholars have seen these two aspects of the history as distinct going so far as to suggest that Herodotus wrote them separately and then tacked them together. In fact, both of these trajectories of Herodotus’ big book are necessary functions of the other and are integrated toward a single goal of demonstrating how a little, dis-unified place like Greece could defeat the Persian juggernaut. In essence, they did so because by their nature, which was manifested in their unified language, worship of the gods and shared customs, the Greeks were superior to the Persians—culturally, politically and militarily. Herodotus argues this point through the course of his Histories by presenting the varieties of ethnea united merely politically under the Persian Empire beside the ethnically unified and yet politically diverse Greeks. Herodotus explores the definition of ethnos within his history to expose as false the possibility of that any nation could, in fact, be truly unified, and therefore powerful if they did not share these fundamental characteristics.

So, what was it about Herodotus’ Histories that was so appealing to men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay and other Founding Fathers? It actually wasn’t the long descriptions of Egypt and the other territories of the Persian Empire but the narrative of the war between the Greeks and the Persians. This is the story of a small, freedom loving people who want nothing more than to be autonomous and free from the control of a great imperial monster. You can see how this might appeal to the revolutionaries. In fact, the culmination speech by the Athenians to the Spartans of their shared identity as Greeks at the hour of Greece’s greatest danger was the likely culprit in shaping their understanding of what an American would have to be.

Following the Greek victory at the battle of Salamis in 479 BC and the departure of the Persian army to winter quarters [Xerxes himself left Greece with the navy but left roughly 80,000 troops behind under his senior general), the Athenians were approached by Alexandros, a friend from Macedon, with an offer from the Persian general, Mardonius, of peace with Persia and rule over one other part of Hellas (8.140a). The Spartans, terrified that the Athenians might accept and knowing full well that they could not defeat the Persians without the Athenian navy, arrived at Athens to beg them not to betray their fellow Greeks. To this plea, the Athenians gave their famous reply:

It was quite natural for the Spartans to fear we would come to an agreement with the barbarian, but nevertheless, we think it disgraceful that you became so frightened, since you are well aware of the Athenians’ disposition, namely, that there is no amount of gold anywhere on earth so great, nor any country that surpasses others so much in beauty and fertility, that we would accept it as a reward for medizing and enslaving Hellas (8.144.1).

They then give the reasons why they would not. First, the Persians had burnt their sacred temples. This requires repayment. And second:

It would not be fitting for the Athenians to prove traitors to the Greeks with whom we are united in sharing the same kinship and language, together with whom we have established shrines and conduct sacrifices to the gods, and with whom we also share the same mode of life (8.144.2).

With this speech, Herodotus tells us the punch-line to a long built up theme that winds its way through his Histories: what makes a people (ethnos)? His answer is that it is made up by people who share the same language, religion and customs. When he has the Athenians declare this bond they share with their fellow Greeks, it is in between the two great victories of the war—Salamis and Plataea, one Athenian-led, the other Spartan—which would lead to Persia’s abandonment of their campaign. Despite the political divisions that he details in his narrative among the Greeks directly preceding these battles, in their darkest moments, these ties bind them together and give them the strength to fight.

Those necessities that John Jay and John Quincy Adams cite as the backbone of our nation: speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, are all present and accounted for in this heroic and dramatic moment in Herodotus’ history and are sharply set in contrast to the diversity of language, religion and customs of the Persians since such diversity, in the minds of the Greeks, could only live side by side under the harsh rule of a single tyrant (and this is something that we see discussed by foreign policy experts and others in discussions of nation building in places like the Balkans, the middle East, etc. It was especially discussed concerning Bosnia and in the aftermath of the Cold War. What Soviet dictators were able to keep in check (i.e. ethnic clashes) exploded once these restrictions had been removed).

So, for better or for worse, while they reveled in the victory of the freedom-loving Greeks, they also absorbed the anti-Persian, barbarian rhetoric of ethnos that framed it and this would shape our own ethnic policies both towards the native Americans as well as non-northern European immigrants in the 19^th century and still has a great hold (because it has now become one of our own myths) in immigration debates. And, it is something that was brought to the fore in the recent election since one of the candidates, Barack Hussein Obama, is African-American with a Kenyan father, grew up in Indonesia and had a funny name that sounded to many people like he was of Arab decent and so possibly, in their minds, a Muslim. So, how did it work and how did Obama assure us that he was, in fact, American?

The most well known attacks on President Obama center of the issue of his birth and his early childhood. Although his mother is a Kansan and a Christian, his father is from Kenya and his step-father, Indonesian and Muslim. Rush Limbaugh was one of the earliest to begin attacking Obama on these connections. Limbaugh argued (blurring the figures of father and step-father) that Obama could not be African-American because his father was from an Arab part of Africa. Therefore, he must be an Arab-American. Also, because he was registered for school at the age of 6 or 7 as a Muslim, he could not possibly be a Christian. Even if he was later baptized—which some of his adversaries contested.

So what do we make of this line of attack? First, that Limbaugh and those who followed his lead, are a bit ignorant about Kenya since it is not an Arab nation. Although there were Arab and Persian settlements in Kenya dating back to the 1^st century BC, the majority of the population now is of Bantu origin and the national language is Swahili (or English) and the majority of the population claims to be Christian (though there are Muslims and Hindu, among others, present). Limbaugh and others, however, emphasizing the “Hussein” in Obama’s name, found it convenient to fuse Indonesia (which has one of the world’s largest Muslim populations) with Kenya and could point to the fact that he was once registered at school as a Muslim. Thus, through a series of slights of hands, Obama becomes an Arab-American, conflating a "foreign sounding" name with being Muslim with being Arab--who can forget the little old lady at the McCain rally who said she couldn’t trust Obama because he was an Arab.

But how was this "charge" of being an Arab-American and not an Africa-American countered? And, why was it such a bad thing anyway? One of the most interesting aspects of this line of attack by the GOP and its media affiliates is that no one, until Colin Powell only a month before the election, countered by arguing that there was nothing wrong with being an Arab-American. McCain stopped the little old lady and said “He isn’t an Arab. He is a decent man whom I strongly disagree with on certain issues” as if being Arab and being decent were two separate things. 

Obama as well, remained relatively silent on the matter. His campaign responded to the allegation that he was a Muslim based on his school registration by simply stating that his step-father was, indeed, a Muslim and he was registered under the religion of his father though he himself was not. Many who, like Obama, consider the matter closed because it is a silly thing to accuse someone of being something because their parents may have been associated with it when they were children. My mother was a member of the Mormon Church when I was 6, but I never was since the Mormons don’t baptize that young. And yet, were I to run for office, I could be accused of being un-American (as has been suggested subtly concerning Mitt Romney) because my mother was once a member of a non-mainstream brand of Christianity (though some will argue that Mormonism is not Christianity—the Mormons beg to differ). It is an absurdity to hold a 7 year old to account regardless. but it is even more telling, that it was unacceptable and dangerous for the Obama campaign to even consider saying “Yes, he was once a Muslim but converted to Christianity at age 23.” Or, even more, “Yes, he is a Muslim and this is a land that espoused freedom of religion. So what is the problem?”

The fact is that candidate Obama could never have been President Obama because we (and you have all heard it) define our nation as a Christian nation—it is the shared ethnic marker of religion. In a land made of immigrants where there has never been a time when at least 40% of the population was not English speaking and Protestant, there have to be artificial boundaries and markers. The majority population projects their own ideal and the minority population must conform or remain silent. Something that also almost got Obama into trouble since even his brand of Christianity came under fire early on when his associations with a pastor, the reverend Wright, was almost used to brand him as un-American. Both Hillary, and later McCain, marked it as out of bounds but ONLY because they didn’t want to be accused of racism. Otherwise, Obama’s status as Christian, and so American, would have been open to attack from another angle since he could have been seen as not the right kind of Christian.

I’ll remain silent on the subject of language for now because President Obama is a native English speaker which no one could dispute (although much has been made of his apparent eloquence and adherence to standard grammar). But the issue of customs and adherence to shared political principles which was, for the Greeks, a sub-category of customs, were ever present in the election in no small part because of the presence of anti-gay legislation on the ballots of some states and, of course, the difference in opinion on how the economy should run—which becomes a matter of political principle here in the US since we often (intentionally or unintentionally) conflate capitalism and free markets with democracy.

The socio-cultural issues of gay rights that has been used in the past as a line of attack against more liberal candidates has been cast in recent times as a defense of the tradition of marriage, something which, as Americans, we feel we value more than others. Traditional values, family values—these are what we call “American values.” What this means is the myth of the nuclear family, of a man and a woman married with their 2.5 children, a dog and a cat and perhaps a fish. They have two cars, are homeowners and live in a nice neighborhood with a yard and a garage maybe. This dream, the American Dream, has been promoted for many decades now as what we all as Americans should want and should have if we want to be truly American. Opponents to gay marriage and gay adoption argued that any deviation from this “norm” (which we mostly recognize is only one among many variations in reality of “norms”) is an assault on it and somehow threatens the lives of those who have or desire to have the American Dream. It became a factor in the 2004 election but, though it could have been a huge wedge-issue this go-round, was relatively muted because the Obama campaign strategically stated that it supported civil unions without mention of supporting marriage for gays.

One of the more interesting tactics was that Biden, the running mate, was usually the mouthpiece for this support of civil unions, not Obama. Perhaps, it was because Biden was a well-known Christian whose life story showed a dedication to the America values of family so that he was less open to attack on this issue than someone whose mother had not one, but two bi-racial marriages, lived in Muslim countries and whose son was raised mostly by his grandmother in a non-traditional home. This alleviated a line of personal attack and helped relegate the questionability of Obama’s Christianity more since he could also stand silently and present his own solid marriage and perfectly happy children (a model of the American family) to the public. Thus, Obama is able to simultaneously be seen as a supporter of gay rights while still embracing most overtly the values of the American family. And it is this self-presentation and his avoidance of expressing openly himself that he supported gay marriage which accounts in [part for the fact that many Obama voters also voted to ban gay marriage. had Obama himself come out and said “I support gay marriage and so should you” it is possible that things would have gone differently. BUT, just as with the issue of religion, President Obama needed to appear and needs still to appear as if he shares the values of the majority of Americans and adhered to the same customs and traditions.

The final attack came on this front came in the late days of the campaign when we began to learn that Obama was a socialist. This attack was double pronged because socialism is considered simultaneously a political and economic system and it allowed those leveling the attack to not only claim that Obama’s policies would undermine our economic heritage of capitalism and free market but it would also undermine the democracy itself. Such a clever attack (though it failed to rile up enough people) is perhaps the one with the most lasting impression since the economic stimulus package has itself been attacked as socialist, reviving that last gasp of the campaign. Just as with the other series of attacks, this too, played on this notion that America and all Americans adhere to a certain set of governing principles that have come to include the notion of unfettered capitalism-the markets will regulate themselves, the markets, like our citizens, must be free. Obama’s response to this attack during the campaign was to make a joke, “Next thing you know, they’ll be accusing me of being a communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.” But, his real response was to begin gathering around him and making it known that he was a group of well-respected capitalists. The most well-known of these economic advisors was Warren Buffet. Yet again, Obama surrounded himself in the familiar and acceptable in order to maintain his position within the fold of Americana.

In the end, the color of his skin did not matter because the president made it clear that in the categories that matter: religion, customs (including social and political) and language, he was as American as any other guy on the street, if not more. But his election made us feel good about our image of the melting pot or, in its new guise, the patchwork because on the surface, we appeared to have chosen someone outside of the norm and outside of our comfort zone. But throughout the election and in response to the attacks on his American-ness, Obama made it clear that he adhered to the restrictive and exclusive category of what it means to be an American that was shared by our Founders.

The United States, unlike most other nations in the modern world, was never made up of a single ethnic group. The early American citizens did not universally speak English, but a plethora of European languages. They were mostly Christians, but not the type of Christians (one of the primary causes of their leaving their homes to begin with) and the traditions of settlers from England differed from those of the French, Dutch, German and Spanish settlers. America is a country built on and by immigrants and yet, in our political rhetoric, we seek often to foster an artificial unity through the three factors of shared language, religion and culture. We do this, in part, because we have no single or even closely linked ethnic identity to fall back upon and yet still adhere to an understanding of what it means to be a united people that dates back to the ancient Greek world and was filtered up to our ancestors through an uncritical acceptance of the values and ideas of those ancients. Because of this and because of our refusal to question ourselves and how we define ourselves, we will continue to find it difficult if not impossible to re-think what it means to be an American in a way that can include everyone who holds the title of American citizen.