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10. Sixth Echo: American Crescendo, 1945–1974
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276 10 Sixth Echo American Crescendo, 1945–1974 Speaking before a hushed House of Commons on the eve of the Battle of Britain, Churchill described in apocalyptic terms the stakes involved in World War II: The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.1 World War II ranks as the most momentous event in modern world history. Had the Allies been defeated, Western constitutionalism might have disappeared or else emerged badly deformed. With it might have gone America’s ideas about democracy, the rule of law, and limited government . To indulge in such speculation only underscores the great significance of American constitutionalism. America came out of the war instead a superpower, its constitutionalism intact, when the sixth “echo” produced a crescendo. The three decades from 1945 to 1974 represent the highest peak of American constitutionalism abroad to that date. It was spurred by the decolonization movement giving rise at the same time to many of the constitutions of emerging new nations. The American Declaration of Independence experienced a new lease on life with the decolonization movement after 1950. This “third historical American Crescendo, 1945–1974 277 moment” was distinguished from the earlier two because the countries involved alluded less directly to Jefferson’s masterpiece, being more distant in time and often turning to intermediate models but making clear that the American Declaration was the ultimate source of their inspiration. “Some seventy new states were created from the wreckage of the British, French, and Portuguese empires, mostly in Africa and Asia. Declarations of Independence joined other instruments of independence devised for extinguishing empires.”2 The bill of rights tradition was another indication of the great spread of American constitutionalism. The Holocaust, the slaughter of innocent victims, and the oppression of minorities by abusive majorities forced government leaders to recognize that the protection of individual liberties could no longer be left in the hands of executive and legislative branches of national governments. This situation became clearer when totalitarian leaders like Hitler began using legislative majorities to persecute minorities like the Jews. To protect minorities, a broader approach to the bill of rights tradition was needed. One result was that almost every constitution written in the postwar period included a bill of rights, whether or not such rights were enforced. The expansion of the bill of rights tradition also began to develop along two quite different lines. One was the traditional way, a bill of rights embedded in a national constitution. The second approach differed when the tradition became “internationalized.” Rights began to be protected by other written instruments, such as international treaties, covenants, and transnational agreements.3 After the Holocaust, world leaders reconsidered the traditional notion of national sovereignty holding that a nation’s government should be the ultimate authority on human rights. During the Nuremberg trials in 1945, Allied victors charged Nazi leaders with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other massive human rights violations . In the course of the trials, a new notion was introduced, that international standards of conduct should sometimes outweigh national sovereignty when human rights were violated on a huge scale. The result was that the bill of rights tradition began to be articulated through international agreements like the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The expanded influence of American constitutionalism was evident as well in the changing relationship of the United States within Western constitutionalism itself. Whereas America emerged from the war a superpower , there was a concomitant decline in the status of the two former great powers, Britain and France. Devastation during the war left [54.225.35.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:10 GMT) 278 American Crescendo, 1945–1974 the economies of the two nations in chaos, and the loss of their colonies reduced their power further. The United States, by contrast, emerged with fewer casualties, its homeland unscathed, and its postwar economy...