The Advocate

From UnAmerican to too American in Thirty Seconds

Shukhan Ng
The stump speeches of presidential candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush are fascinating. Vice President Dick Cheney has warned voters that if they made the wrong choice in the election, the US might “get hit again”. Then the next day, the Vice Presidential candidate, John Edwards, shot back: such a warning is “unAmerican”.
What exactly does unAmerican mean? This was not the first time I had heard the word; in fact, I’ve heard it over and over again. So I decided to do some sleuthing and get to the bottom of this rhetorical commonplace.

First, I checked the online dictionary. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, UnAmerican means: “Not American: not characteristic of or consistent with American customs, principles, or traditions.”

Seems clear enough, but I certainly don’t know what “characteristics” Americans share. The first thing that came to my mind was that, with two-thirds of adult Americans overweight, being unAmerican probably means to have a healthy body mass index. In that sense, John Edwards, John Kerry and George W. Bush are probably unAmerican. Dick Cheney looks pretty American though.

Then I consulted the Cambridge International Dictionary of English and the Cambridge Dictionary of American English. Both agree that unAmerican means: “Guilty of activities, behavior or beliefs that show opposition or a lack of loyalty to the US and its political system.”

This definition is clearly different from that in the Merriam-Webster. While the Merriam-Webster focuses on a broad array of criteria, the blokes at Cambridge have a pointedly political view. Note: the Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and it didn’t even have an entry for the word. This dictionary lives up to its name: A real American dictionary shouldn’t have anything that is unAmerican, including the word itself.

I also did an internet search for the word “unAmerican,” which yielded thousands of “hits” for the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC). HUAC, it seems, was established in 1938 mainly to investigate German-American involvement in Nazi and KKK activity. After the Second World War, it launched a high-profile witch hunt for Communist sympathizers, and its investigation of political organizations allegedly found strong connections between Americans and the Communist Party. The people who “got caught” included Alger Hiss, W.E.B. DuBois and I.F. Stone. HUAC was also interested in the show business; it blacklisted a number of leftist scriptwriters known as the “Hollywood ten” and forced Charlie Chaplin into exile in Switzerland. The Committee was dissolved in 1975 and its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee, the same committee that drew up impeachment papers against Bill Clinton in 1998.

Meanwhile, a website of MTV’s “Rock the Vote” says censorship is unAmerican because it threatens free speech, free thought and free expression. An ariticle on the web site of The Economist proclaims the establishment of the military commissions for the trials of terrorist suspects is unjust, unwise and unAmerican. These statements seem to suggest that Americans should question the government and social norms; they show an appreciation and respect for free speech, free thought, free expression and justice. Do you agree? I wonder what un-French, un-Korean, un-Brazilian, and so forth would mean.

In today’s politics, the term unAmerican is usually understood derogatively. But note that while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s repeated insistence that the Abu Ghraib scandal was unAmerican, some people argue that those abusers were in fact too American. An article by Ron Jacobs on Counterpunch says the practices that came to light at Abu Ghraib “represent the US military’s standard operating procedure.” The author lists a series of events dating back to 1776 that reveal atrocities committed by US military personnel. The settings, to mention only the more recent ones, include the Korean War, Vietnam War, Panamanian invasion of 1989, and the Gulf War of 1991. Similarly, an article by Munnoo Bhai in The Daily Times discusses the report by Anne Marie Cusac, an investigative crime reporter, detailing the human rights violations, torture, sadism and sexual perversion in US jails and detention centers. All this paints a picture of Americans who assume power over others as too American. But they may become unAmerican if the people above them no longer support them.

Shukhan Ng is a student in the PhD program in Linguistics.