Superman Has Left the Building
Superman has renounced his American citizenship.
In Superman 900, the "Man of Steel" stands before the U.N. and states, "Truth, Justice, and the American way. It's just not big enough anymore." He then renounces his American citizenship.
I have grown up reading Superman comics. He is my favorite Superhero. In an age where fanboys and comic geeks turned to darker fare, and an era when people denounce the Man of Steel for being a "Big Blue Boy Scout," I have always defended Superman. We need a beacon of goodness. We need someone who has values that are ideal and unique; someone who is willing to lay his life down for those values.
In renouncing his American Citizenship, Superman is renouncing the quintessential American values. What are these values? What exactly is he renouncing? Supes, look at a coin.
There are our values: "Liberty," "E Pluribus Unum," and "In God we Trust." These values are unique to America. No other country in the history of the world has lifted up these values. Are they so bad, so awful, or so profoundly immoral (or at least amoral) that Superman must separate himself from them?
Is it Liberty? Does Superman believe that people should not be free to live their own lives or shape their own destiny? Does he believe that people should be able to walk down the street without fear of being snatched off the street and flung into torture camps? Does he feel that an individual, through a combination of talent, hard work, and (yes) luck shouldn’t be able to improve his lot in life?
Perhaps it’s “E Pluribus Unum,” or “From Many One,” which Superman simply cannot stand. Obviously, the idea that people of multiple cultures can come together to help each other build a community and to take strength from that community appalls the Man of Steel. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Is he angry that America doesn’t hold up this ideal to its perfection? I thought that’s why he chose to take on the mantle of Superman. To be (pardon the religiosity of the expression) “light to the world.”
Does he not realize that the value of “E Pluribus Unum” is antithetical to human nature? Has he learned nothing by from being around human beings for so long? Racism and Xenophobia are nothing to be proud of, and they represent the basest aspects of humanity. However, they are aspects to be overcome and can only be overcome by holding a value such as “E Pluribus Unum” in highest, almost sacred, regard. Then again, perhaps Boy Blue doesn’t think humanity needs to overcome base instincts.
Still, Superman could have disdain for the most controversial American value, “In God We Trust.”
After all, Superman flies, stops trains, sees through objects, possesses freezing breath, super-sonic hearing, etc. etc. etc. Superman is for all, intents and purposes, a god. Yet, as Bruce Wayne noted in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies:
In many ways, Clark is the most human of us all. Then… he shoots fire
from the skies and it is difficult not to think of him as a god. And
how fortunate we all are that it does not occur to him.
If Superman doesn’t think he’s a god then, just maybe, he believes humanity to be doing perfectly fine without God. I mean, did not Jor-el implore Superman (regarding the human race), “They can be a great people, Kal-el, if they wish to be?” Perhaps, Superman took this to mean they can be great on their own. Of course Jor-el didn’t think so when he said, “They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you. My only son.”
So Superman is to be a “light” to “show the way.” Excellent! This is what all great moral teachers do. Confucius, Jesus, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pope John Paul didn’t bring a “new morality” but reminded people of the morality and ethics that they had forgotten. Philosophers that suggested a new morality either killed themselves (Nietzsche) or EVERYONE ELSE (Hitler and Karl Marx).
And where did this morality, this ethical code, come from? God. Of course God. It’s the morality of God that compelled Jefferson (along with Adams and Madison, by the way…Jefferson physically wrote the Declaration of Independence probably because he had the nicest handwriting) to write, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It seems to me that Superman would in fact agree with the ideas of America’s Founding Fathers, especially regarding God. Superman, undoubtedly believes in the capacity of mankind for good (as do I, as did Jesus), but he would acknowledge that to actually do the good for which man has a capacity is a struggle. It is something man must work for, as John Adams states in a letter written on October 11, 1798, “Greed, ambition, revenge, sexual compulsions are each able to break the strongest cords or our Constitution in the same way a whale goes through a net. In other words, our [United States] Constitution was only for a moral and religious people.” Surely in 70 years of constantly fighting evil forces from Lex Luthor,
to Metallo,
to Parasite,
Superman must have come to the same conclusion as John Adams. The vices of mankind can destroy the most idealistic of morals, if God is not moving within the people attempting to sustain such morals.
Then again, Big Blue could just be disturbed by the tedious merging of church and state that “In God We Trust” inherently brings with it.
Well I hope he can be comforted by Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the least religious founder of them all, who said to the chairman of the 1789 Constitutional Convention:
“I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing
proofs I see of this truth: That God governs in the affairs men. And if a
sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable than and
empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred
writings [the Bible], that ‘except the Lord build the House, they
labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without
His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than
the Builders of [the tower of] Babel.”
I mean, can Superman really be that disturbed by faith in a God that says, “Love your neighbor as yourself, and do to other as you would that others should do to you,” which is what John Adams wrote in his diary on August 14, 1796, followed by the words, “which brings good to everyone.” This Golden Rule, as we have come to call it, is uniquely part of the Judeo/Christian value system; the value system America is founded upon.
So what, then, is Superman’s problem with the “American Way?” I doubt he has any serious objections to any of these values. I must conclude that he has forgotten these values. You see, the amazing thing about the “American Way” and the reason that Superman in the 30’s and 40’s wanted to stand for the “American Way” was that it wasn’t just the best HOPE for America. It was the best HOPE for the world. If the world follows in America’s footsteps, valuing Liberty, from many one, and to trust in God, then it can step out of the darkness that humanity is mires itself in, and it can become “the great people that we wish to be!”
It is my sincere hope that Superman will remember that he stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
