The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

"What is the biggest threat to America?"

This now seems to be a normal, regular question asked of a person running for office in the United States, but I don't think that it is asked in order to determine a candidate's grasp of American foreign policy or America's role in the international system. I think, rather, it is a question asked so that a candidate may opine significant on the goodness and greatness of the United States. It is a question asked so that the candidate's relative love and commitment to the U.S. may be judged or ascertained. If the answer is unsatisfactory, then the candidate's patriotism is thus unsatisfactory or at least suspect, and his or her political opponents will use the unsatisfactory answer to their own advantage.

I started thinking about this a little after reading this article at Huffington Post in which Colin Powell responds to Mitt Romney's statement that Russia is the greatest geopolitical foe facing the United States. In Powell's estimation--and in my own estimation, for that matter--Romney is way off in his assessment. In this day and age, what with Osama bin Laden dead, naming the enemy can be tricky, but we have to have one. That's nonnegotiable (as is waging war against the enemy). I remember quite clearly when President George W. Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the components of an axis of evil. Of course, during the Cold War the enemy was never in question; no need to ask "What/who is America's greatest threat?"

I can't help but wonder, must we have a greatest threat? Must we have an enemy? Can a candidate express patriotic sentiment apart from his or her unwavering hate of the enemy? Is our country so divided on domestic policy that the only thing around which we can unify and upon which we can agree is that the enemy must die?

If we must have a threat, if it is impossible to have a life without the "greatest threat," then who is really our greatest threat? If an enemy is a necessary component of our self-understanding, then who is really our greatest threat? Is it not ourselves? Are we not, then, our own biggest threat?

On a side note, this post may contain the most questions of any post I've written to date.