The thread from Winthrop’s sermon to the war in Iraq is not one of linear decay but of persistent, adaptive paradox. The United States has always carried two intertwined identities: the exemplary “city” and the expanding “empire.” The former provides the moral fuel; the latter executes the physical project. This is not a story of a pure ideal corrupted by power, but of an ideal that inherently justifies the accumulation and application of power. The belief in a unique, providential righteousness has been the one constant, flexible enough to sanctify continental genocide, colonial occupation, covert coups, and preemptive war.
This paradox is sustained by a powerful domestic ecosystem. The nation’s self-critique—from the abolitionists and anti-imperialists of 1898 to the Vietnam protesters and investigative journalists like Hersh—is not a bug in the system but a core feature. It provides a crucial pressure valve and a renewing sense of moral purpose. America can condemn its own atrocities because its foundational myth is one of striving toward a perfect ideal. This allows for course corrections without ever fundamentally dismantling the ideological engine that drives intervention. The “city” critiques the “empire,” and in doing so, reaffirms the “city’s” ultimate goodness.
The 21st century finds this paradox stretched to its limits. The “War on Terror” was framed as a new cosmic struggle, yet it produced Abu Ghraib, indefinite detention, and drone warfare with high civilian casualties. The public’s faith in the benevolence of its foreign policy has sharply eroded. The challenge now is whether the nation can construct a new identity—one that retains its aspirational ideals without requiring an external “other” to save, civilize, or dominate. Can it be a true city upon a hill, confident in its own example, without feeling compelled to drag the world up to its gates by force? The history of American power suggests this is its oldest and most unresolved question. The burden of righteousness, it turns out, is one the world never chose, and America has never known how to lay down.