Ruminating on Our Enemy the State: America the Adolescent?

With regards to the topic of discussion this month over at RTD (where I also put up this same post), Lydia commented,

“…[A]ll the bad that can be said about corps. can be said about the gov. Refer to “Our Enemy, the State,” by Albert Knock for an exposition on this.”

Salixc provided links to the book here and a printable version here. I must say, the book was worth printing out and reading. I found myself thoroughly engaged and scribbling notes in the margins right and left. There are so many levels of it I would like to discuss (and am discussing, in my head and with the poor people stuck nearest to me), though hardly the time to do it.

One of the smaller thoughts (in light of the others that) the book brought out is the question of whether or not America will ever grow up—or if it even can. I noted the quote below in the margins of my printed copy, because I’d heard this line of reasoning before. I can’t remember which Psychology class it was for certain [though I believe it was one from the Learning Company with Professor Daniel Robinson], but it was on the perpetual adolescence of America, the lecture delving into the fact that if America was evaluated pyschologically as a person, that person would not be found psychologically healthy. She would be found in a perpetual position of wanting to be all-grown-up and yet decidedly not acting that way nor able to think that way—a toddler in an adult-like body, if you will.

I found it interesting that Nock said as much in “Our Enemy, the State,” and even more interesting that, far from suggesting America would evolve into full adulthood (which was more the hopeful conclusion of the lecture I’d heard), Nock seemed to suggest that America has always been that way and likely always will be, because being immobilized at that particular level of development is markedly advantageous for those who desire to exploit said toddlers.

This quote comes from Chapter I, section IV:

The ablest and most acute observer among the many who came from Europe to look us over in the early part of the last century was the one who is for some reason the most neglected, notwithstanding that in our present circumstances, especially, he is worth more to us than all the de Tocquevilles, Bryces, Trollopes and Chateaubriands put together. This was the noted St.-Simonien and political economist, Michel Chevalier. Professor Chinard, in his admirable biographical study of John Adams, has called attention to Chevalier’s observation that the American people have “the morale of an army on the march.” The more one thinks of this, the more clearly one sees how little there is in what our publicists are fond of calling “the American psychology” that it does not exactly account for; and it exactly accounts for the trait that we are considering.

An army on the march has no philosophy; it views itself as a creature of the moment. It does not rationalize conduct except in terms of an immediate end. As Tennyson observed, there is a pretty strict official understanding against its doing so; “theirs not to reason why.” Emotionalizing conduct is another matter, and the more of it the better; it is encouraged by a whole elaborate paraphernalia of showy etiquette, flags, music, uniforms, decorations, and the careful cultivation of a very special sort of comradery. In every relation to “the reason of the thing,” however – in the ability and eagerness, as Plato puts it, “to see things as they are” – the mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.

Thoughts?