{"id":195650,"date":"2026-06-25T14:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T22:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=195650"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:07:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T22:07:28","slug":"the-anarchists-son-in-perry-millers-chair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=195650","title":{"rendered":"The Anarchists’ Son in Perry Miller’s Chair"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Montreal, in the fall of 1933, two Jewish radicals name their son after two dead men. Nicola Sacco<\/a> and Bartolomeo Vanzetti<\/a> die in the electric chair in Massachusetts in 1927. Six years later the Bercovitches fold the two names into one and lay it on a baby. Sacvan. His mother, Bryna, writes; decades on she publishes a memoir she calls “Becoming Revolutionary.” The name the parents give the boy carries a verdict on the country to the south. It says he belongs to the executed, to the workers of the world, to the cause the American state killed in a Dedham courtroom.<\/p>\n

The boy grows up to become the foremost American reader of the Puritans.<\/p>\n

Sacvan Bercovitch<\/a> (1933\u20132014) takes a long road into the New England mind. He studies at the New School<\/a> and at Reed<\/a>, earns a degree at Sir George Williams College<\/a> in Montreal in 1958, finishes a doctorate at Claremont<\/a> in 1965. He teaches at Brandeis<\/a>, at the University of California-San Diego<\/a>, at Princeton<\/a>, at Columbia<\/a>. In 1984 Harvard gives him the Powell M. Cabot Professorship in American Literature. The chair belonged to Perry Miller<\/a> (1905\u20131963), the scholar who recovered the lost intellectual world of seventeenth-century New England and seated the Puritans at the head of the American imagination. The anarchists’ son takes the place in the shrine.<\/p>\n

He builds his career on a single argument. America turns dissent into consensus. In The Puritan Origins of the American Self<\/a> (1975) and The American Jeremiad<\/a> (1978) he traces a rhetoric that runs from the Puritan sermon through the Declaration and the Gettysburg Address and out into the national literature. The Puritan jeremiad laments the people’s fall from the errand, and in the lament it renews the errand. The complaint feeds the mission. The preacher who scolds the colony for backsliding has already agreed that the colony has a holy purpose worth backsliding from. In The Office of “The Scarlet Letter” (1991) and The Rites of Assent (1993) Bercovitch carries the argument into Hawthorne and into the liberal culture of the nineteenth century. He shows that the symbol of America holds such reach that it gathers up its own critics and seats them at the table. The man who attacks the country in the country’s name has accepted the terms. He has assented.<\/p>\n

The argument earns him enemies on both flanks. The right reads him as a subversive, a founder of the New Americanists who pull down the canon. The left reads him as a consensus historian who launders American exceptionalism. Both sides miss the better joke, which is that Bercovitch supplies his own clearest case. The son named for two hanged anarchists takes Perry Miller’s chair, enters the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986, collects the Lowell Prize, the Hubbell, the Bode-Pearson, the lifetime awards. His dissent becomes the consensus’s crown. He performs the rite of assent with his career, then writes the book on it.<\/p>\n

Here Ernest Becker<\/a> (1924\u20131974) does the work. In The Denial of Death<\/a> (1973) Becker argues that culture exists to let a man feel heroic in the face of his own end. Every society hands its members a hero system, a set of roles and prizes and sacred objects through which a mortal earns the sense that he counts and that some part of him will outlast the body. The hero system answers the terror of death with the promise of significance.<\/p>\n

For Bercovitch the hero system is the text. Not the country, not the party, not the radical kitchen of his childhood. The text. He reads for a living, and reading confers on him the significance the revolutionary creed once promised his parents. The seminar room is the church. The close reading is the liturgy. The footnote is the laying on of hands, the touch by which a living scholar reaches a dead writer and an unborn student in one motion. His monument is the Cambridge History of American Literature, eight volumes, twenty years as general editor, a structure raised to stand after the builder lies down. A man who fears death edits an eight-volume history. The volumes keep their place on the shelf when the body goes into the ground.<\/p>\n

Bercovitch gives his life to a single sacred word, and his lasting gift to scholarship is a demonstration. The word means a different thing inside each hero system that holds it dear. The word is America.<\/p>\n

Run it past the believers and watch it change shape.<\/p>\n

A Cuban man works a cafeteria window in Hialeah<\/a>. He crossed the water in 1962 and built a counter that sells cortaditos to a line of men in guayaberas. For him America is the thing Havana stopped being. America is the deed to the property, the register he owns, the absence of the comandante. “Aqu\u00ed nadie me quita lo m\u00edo,” he says. Here no one takes what is mine.<\/p>\n

A Lakota man stands on dry land above Pine Ridge<\/a>. For him America is the broken treaty, the Black Hills seized after the gold, the word on the parchment the courts affirm and the government ignores. America names the power that promised everything and kept nothing. “They signed it,” he says. “Ask them what their own signature buys.”<\/p>\n

A Marine comes home to a town in eastern Ohio with the folded flag from his brother’s coffin. For him America is the oath he swore and the men he carried out. America is not an argument. It is a debt. “You weren’t there,” he says, and the sentence shuts the subject.<\/p>\n

A Punjabi engineer raises a company in a rented room in Fremont<\/a>. He arrived on a student visa with two suitcases and a thesis on compiler design. For him America is the place that lets a man with no name and no cousins raise money on a slide deck. America is the meritocracy, the garage, the term sheet. “Nobody asked who my father was,” he says, and he offers it as the highest praise a country can earn.<\/p>\n

A Black church mother in Charleston<\/a> sits in the second pew of an AME<\/a> congregation older than the Republic. For her America is the promise still unpaid, the Jordan the people have not crossed. She sings an arrival she has not lived to see. “He may not come when you want Him,” she says, “but He’s always on time.” The America she loves lives in the future tense.<\/p>\n

Five lives, one word. Five countries inside the borders of one. Becker accounts for the spread. The sacred object binds the hero system by meaning whatever the system needs it to mean. The Cuban’s America and the Lakota’s America cannot both be true, and each one bears the full weight of a life. To call either man wrong is to ask him to give up the thing that makes his days count against the dark. The word survives the contradiction because the contradiction never reaches consciousness. Each believer hears his own meaning and assumes the others hear the same. That assumption holds the country together. Bercovitch spent fifty years proving the country runs on it.<\/p>\n

Late in life he goes home. He puts down the American text and returns to Yiddish. He translates Sholom Aleichem<\/a>. He takes a Mellon grant for a project on the Ashkenazi Renaissance of 1880 to 1940, the lost world of the murdered millions, the tongue of the Montreal kitchen. The man who showed how America turns its dissenters into communicants spends his last working years among the ghosts his parents fled and mourned.<\/p>\n

Becker reads the ending as the tell. What a man returns to when the career is spent shows what he held sacred beneath the official faith. Bercovitch served the American text across five decades and demonstrated that it could hold any meaning a believer carried to it. At the close he goes back to the one hero system that named him before he could speak. Sacco and Vanzetti. The son keeps faith with the dead men after all, in a language almost no one left alive can read.<\/p>\n

The Great Delusion<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In his 2018 book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities<\/em><\/a>, John J. Mearsheimer wrote:<\/p>\n

\nMy view is that we are profoundly social beings from the start to the finish of our lives and that individualism is of secondary importance… Liberalism downplays the social nature of human beings to the point of almost ignoring it, instead treating people largely as atomistic actors… Political liberalism… is an ideology that is individualistic at its core and assigns great importance to the concept of inalienable rights. This concern for rights is the basis of its universalism\u2014everyone on the planet has the same inherent set of rights\u2014and this is what motivates liberal states to pursue ambitious foreign policies. The public and scholarly discourse about liberalism since World War II has placed enormous emphasis on what are commonly called human rights. This is true all around the world, not just in the West. \u201cHuman rights,\u201d Samuel Moyn notes, \u201chave come to define the most elevated aspirations of both social movements and political entities\u2014state and interstate. They evoke hope and provoke action.\u201d
\n[Humans] do not operate as lone wolves but are born into social groups or societies that shape their identities well before they can assert their individualism. Moreover, individuals usually develop strong attachments to their group and are sometimes willing to make great sacrifices for their fellow members. Humans are often said to be tribal at their core. The main reason for our social nature is that the best way for a person to survive is to be embedded in a society and to cooperate with fellow members rather than act alone… Despite its elevated ranking, reason is the least important of the three ways we determine our preferences. It certainly is less important than socialization. The main reason socialization matters so much is that humans have a long childhood in which they are protected and nurtured by their families and the surrounding society, and meanwhile exposed to intense socialization. At the same time, they are only beginning to develop their critical faculties, so they are not equipped to think for themselves. By the time an individual reaches the point where his reasoning skills are well developed, his family and society have already imposed an enormous value infusion on him. Moreover, that individual is born with innate sentiments that also strongly influence how he thinks about the world around him. All of this means that people have limited choice in formulating a moral code, because so much of their thinking about right and wrong comes from inborn attitudes and socialization…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If John J. Mearsheimer is right, his anthropology provides a striking, structural validation of Sacvan Bercovitch (1933\u20132014), the preeminent cultural historian of American Puritanism. At the same time, it completely flips the meaning of Bercovitch’s most famous concept: the American jeremiad.
\nBercovitch argued that America is unique because its national identity is built entirely on a rhetorical and ideological matrix inherited from the New England Puritans. The jeremiad — a political sermon that laments the moral decline of the community while simultaneously reaffirming its sacred, exceptional mission — functions as a powerful ritual of consensus. For Bercovitch, dissent in America does not challenge the status quo; instead, by invoking the “promise of America,” critics are trapped by a rhetoric that binds them closer to the dominant liberal culture.
\nMearsheimer\u2019s realism interacts with Bercovitch’s critical framework across several primary concepts.
\nBercovitch tracks how the Puritan political sermon successfully joined civic and spiritual selfhood into a single transcendent ideal: “America.” He demonstrates that this rhetoric allows the nation to absorb multi-ethnic immigrant groups under a shared identity of preordained purpose.
\nIf Mearsheimer is right, Bercovitch has mapped the precise engineering of an exceptionally powerful tribal value infusion. Because the human animal has a long childhood, the group must inject its moral code into the individual before his critical faculties develop. The American jeremiad is not merely an interesting literary style; it is a highly evolved instrument of group socialization. It allows a vast, diverse population to function as a tightly bound, highly cooperative tribe. What Bercovitch calls the “rites of assent”\u2014the cultural rituals through which individuals buy into the American myth\u2014are the exact evolutionary mechanisms required to maintain internal cohesion in a competitive world.
\nBercovitch\u2019s most subtle insight is that ideological co-optation in the United States is absolute. When an American radical protests against the state, he almost always does so by demanding that the nation live up to its founding ideals of liberty and rights. Bercovitch argues that this form of protest unconsciously reinforces the mainstream liberal framework, ensuring that radical movements end up strengthening the capitalist state rather than subverting it.
\nMearsheimer\u2019s anthropology explains why this cage is inescapable. A man cannot easily reason his way out of his early childhood socialization. The moral language infused into him by his society forms the very boundaries of his thought. The American dissenter cannot invent a genuinely post-tribal critique because his mind has been shaped by the group’s survival rhetoric. His protest is not an independent act of pure reason; it is an internal negotiation within the tribe’s pre-established boundaries.
\nBercovitch notes that the word “American” is unique because it combines intense nationality with a claim to universalism\u2014the belief that the American model is a world-redeeming promise meant for all mankind. Mearsheimer\u2019s The Great Delusion focuses on this precise trait, reading it as the fatal flaw of liberal states.
\nHere, Mearsheimer provides the hard structural consequence that Bercovitch avoids. Bercovitch analyzes the universalist myth as a self-perpetuating literary and cultural consensus that keeps domestic peace. Mearsheimer reveals that when this universalist tribe is turned outward into an anarchic international system, the myth becomes a engine of aggressive foreign policy. The American state, convinced that its parochial tribal values are actually universal human rights, seeks to remake other societies in its own image. Mearsheimer\u2019s realism predicts the inevitable collapse of this ambition, showing that foreign populations, bound by their own childhood value infusions, will always reject the imported American script.
\nBercovitch highlights how the New England Puritans relied heavily on “typology”\u2014a method of biblical interpretation where they mapped their contemporary migration onto the historical journey of the ancient Israelites. They did not view themselves merely as a religious sect, but as the literal “New Israel” entering a promised wilderness. Bercovitch analyzes this as a brilliant rhetorical invention that fused secular history with sacred destiny.
\nMearsheimer\u2019s anthropology provides a functional, realist explanation for this typological maneuver. In an anarchic, unfamiliar, and hostile environment, a migrating group faces immediate existential threats. The primary requirement for survival is absolute internal solidarity and a clear definition of territorial rights. By adopting the identity of ancient Israel, the Puritan leadership deployed a highly effective tool for group cohesion. The typology did not operate as a detached literary style; it served to draw a sharp, unyielding boundary between the in-group and the out-group, justifying territorial acquisition and military mobilization against rival populations under the ultimate sanction of divine mandate.
\nIn The Office of the Scarlet Letter (1991), Bercovitch traces how the early Puritan rhetoric of isolation and spiritual purity evolved smoothly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to endorse commercial enterprise, individual enterprise, and the rise of the industrial marketplace. He shows that the language of spiritual growth was seamlessly transferred to the growth of material wealth.
\nMearsheimer\u2019s realism explains this transition as a standard process of state optimization. A group\u2019s cultural narratives always adapt to serve its material survival needs. As the American colonies expanded into a vast continental arena, isolation was no longer a viable strategy for long-term security in a competitive world. The state needed to maximize its material power, which required economic scaling, infrastructure, and wealth accumulation. The rhetorical shift Bercovitch documents is the cultural reflection of this structural transformation. The social animal did not abandon its tribal framework; it simply updated its ideological standard to sanctify the economic growth necessary to outcompete European rivals and project power across the continent.
\nA core element of Bercovitch\u2019s analysis of the jeremiad is that the sermon relies on a permanent state of crisis. The ministers consistently claimed that the community was on the verge of ruin due to its sins, yet this declaration of crisis never led to despair; instead, it served to re-energize the community’s commitment to its mission. Bercovitch calls this a “rhetoric of controlled anxiety.”
\nMearsheimer\u2019s anthropology, paired with alliance theory, strips the psychological mystery from this pattern. The constant invocation of external or internal crisis is a classic strategy used by an elite coalition to maintain its status, manage its reputation, and enforce internal discipline. By keeping the population in a state of controlled anxiety, the ruling elite justifies its authority, silences domestic competitors, and ensures that individual resources remain dedicated to the preservation of the group’s institutions. The jeremiad’s cycle of lamentation and reaffirmation is the structural logic of a coalition maintaining its grip on power under the guise of moral reformation.
\nIf Mearsheimer is right, Bercovitch stands as a master cartographer of the American mind. He correctly saw that American liberalism is not a bloodless collection of abstract rights, but a thick, totalizing, and deeply religious myth designed to enforce conformity. His realist correction is simply that this powerful consensus is not a unique cultural puzzle to be analyzed through literary close reading. It is the ideological armor of a highly competitive, exceptionally successful global tribe using universal language to preserve its own dominance.<\/p>\n

‘A Big Misunderstanding’<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

If David Pinsof is right, Bercovitch\u2019s entire framework is an elegant decoding of his own class\u2019s ultimate survival strategy. The American jeremiad is not a deep psychological or cultural neurosis. It is the business model of the secular intelligentsia.<\/p>\n

Bercovitch spent his career analyzing why American intellectuals, writers, and reformers are so obsessed with public lamentation. From the seventeenth-century Puritan ministers to nineteenth-century writers like Emerson, down to modern progressive activists, the formula is always identical: “We have strayed from our noble ideals, and we must reform ourselves to fulfill our mission.”<\/p>\n

From Pinsof\u2019s perspective, this ritualistic lamentation is a highly strategic tool used to secure elite status. By framing society\u2019s problems as a failure to live up to stated ideals, the intellectual class builds a permanent market for its own intervention. If the problem with America is that it has a bad motive (e.g., raw greed or a desire for dominance), then you need a cop, a boundary, or a structural overhaul. But if the problem is that America has misunderstood its true mission, then you need an interpreter.<\/p>\n

The jeremiad is a device that turns every structural, competitive conflict into a moral misunderstanding. The intellectual positions himself as the mandatory guide who gets to tell the public exactly how they have strayed and how they can be redeemed.<\/p>\n

Bercovitch\u2019s most famous insight was that in America, radical dissent is actually a form of consensus. When a critic stands up and says, “America is failing its promise of equality,” he is not destroying the myth; he is validating it by invoking the “promise.” Bercovitch argued that this ideological mechanism allows American capitalism to absorb every radical movement, turning rebellion into an affirmation of the status quo.<\/p>\n

Pinsof\u2019s logic reveals the raw interest behind this mechanism. The secular university class does not absorb dissent because they love cultural harmony; they absorb dissent to protect their monopoly over the attention economy. If a radical movement completely rejects the system, the university professor becomes obsolete.<\/p>\n

By channeling raw, visceral anger into a rhetorical dispute over “American ideals,” the academic elite tames the threat. They take the raw energy of social conflict and translate it into articles, books, and Ph.D. seminars. It is a flawless turf defense: it transforms an existential threat to the hierarchy into a fresh supply of academic capital, ensuring that no matter how angry the public gets, the intellectual class remains in charge of the curriculum.<\/p>\n

Bercovitch traveled the world lecturing on the “American consensus,” analyzing how language traps citizens in a loop of self-correction. He wrote with a brilliant, ironic detachment, positioning himself as the ultimate secular observer of this massive ideological trap.<\/p>\n

If Pinsof is right, Bercovitch\u2019s brilliant detachment was the ultimate status signal. By mapping the exact boundaries of the ideological hole Americans are stuck in, Bercovitch established himself at the absolute apex of the academic hierarchy. He wasn’t solving the misunderstanding; he was proving that the misunderstanding was so deep, and so total, that only a Harvard professor of the highest order could trace its lineage. He did not aim to dismantle the American ideology because that ideology was the exact machine that paid his salary, granted him tenure, and ensured his name would be remembered as the definitive chronicler of the national mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Montreal, in the fall of 1933, two Jewish radicals name their son after two dead men. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti die in the electric chair in Massachusetts in 1927. Six years later the Bercovitches fold the two names … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t