It is said that Captain America is the moral compass of the Marvel Universe, the standard of virtue against which all other heroes should be measured. To give a sense of the purity of his heart and conscience, it is best to quote him directly. “This land of ours may have seen some hard times” he says in issue #255 (March 1981), “and maybe it hasn’t always lived up to the promise of the Founding Fathers . . . but America at its best has always stood for the rights of man, and against the rule of tyrants! And if America needs a man to stand for her principles, to battle the forces of tyranny—then, as God is my witness, I shall be that man!” And from issue #273 (September 1982), this is the sort of thing he tells his foes—in this case, agents of HYDRA: “Like every other tyrant, your lust for power masks your true motive—fear of a free society! For, with freedom, man has pride, dignity, and a sense of destiny. Your fear causes you to arrogantly mock those concepts! You seek to reduce mankind to your own level! But against every despot there has always arisen a champion of liberty! That is why I exist—and why men like me shall always win!”
But what are Captain America’s politics? One might expect him to be voted “Most Likely to Be a Conservative” in the superhero yearbook. He comes to us from the past, bringing old-timey morals and manners from a generation before hippies and the pill. He has old-fashioned ideas regarding patriotic duty and sacrifice, decency and formality, hard work, loyalty and integrity. As “a man out of time,” his stories can be critical of our lives today, but from a perspective within our own cultural context; a perspective that is outmoded but not quite obsolete. Having lived through the 1930s and 40s, however, Cap’s view of those times isn’t romantic or nostalgic; he knows that the past was not unqualifiedly great and can see how we have both declined and progressed since then.
Still, Cap is rarely, if ever, portrayed as a political conservative. He has had libertarian moments, as in 2006’s Civil War storyline, adapted for the big screen in 2016. Fairly consistently, however, following his revival in the 1960s, he has been a standard New Deal liberal, as Roger Stern put it in the letter column of Captain America #246. Stern was writing in 1980, a time when conservatism was on the rise due to the perceived failings of what then passed for big government. The opening sequence of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) has Cap’s civilian identity, Steve Rogers, running laps around the Reflecting Pool, and each time he passes Sam Wilson (who will become the superhero Falcon), Steve says, “On your left.” Jogging courtesy or subliminal hint, that left-of-center perspective holds that moderate progressivism represents the best interpretation of America’s founding principles. In practice, this tends to mean subordinating the concern for liberty to an emphasis on equality—or at least working toward equality under the care of enlightened superiors who promise everybody more freedom one day if only they surrender a little more of it now.
Cap comes from a time when America’s foreign interventions were regarded as an unambiguous force for good. He continues to fight for America and Americans despite the many ways in which they have changed. I don’t mean ethnically—Captain America has always been a friend to all races and an enemy of bigotry—but ethically, with respect to the character of our souls. In Winter Soldier, Cap seems to wonder whether America even knows what it means to be moral anymore. His example raises the fair question of whether those who fought in WWII would have been so ready to sacrifice themselves if they could have glimpsed twenty-first-century America. Many might have grieved that their sacrifices were squandered—with respect to who we have become inwardly, irrespective of what we look like outwardly. Nevertheless, in the case of Captain America, he trusts that we remain worthy of his efforts and keeps fighting on behalf of American people and ideals. Even on those occasions where he distances himself from a political situation he dislikes by temporarily changing his alias and appearance, he acts to see America restored to his favored reading of its founding principles.
Cap has expressed wariness about his place as a throwback in today’s world, where many Americans believe that nationalism is immoral, and our commitments should tilt toward an imagined global community. Other superheroes have moved faster on this front: Superman dropped “the American way” from the list of things he stands for in Superman Returns (2006) and renounced his American citizenship in 2011’s Action Comics #900. The Justice League of America became Justice League International in 1987 before becoming simply the Justice League in 2011, well in advance of the 2017 movie. In the first Avengers film from 2012, Steve asks, “Aren’t the stars and stripes a little old-fashioned?” Putting America first now seems an anachronism. Steve Rogers is not certain that he and America are good fits for each other anymore: In both Winter Soldier and Civil War, he is distraught by the degree of concentration of power under government control and the extent to which America has become a surveillance state en route to becoming a police state—something that cannot be blamed solely on presidents of one party or the other.
Presidents, though partisan, are expected to represent all Americans. In representing the idea of America, Captain America is not overly partisan, but it is fine for him to be somewhat partisan, as the raucous but respectful coexistence of countless factions is among the nation’s fundamental ideals. Still, he comes to the assistance of any and all people without first checking their social media footprint to ensure he doesn’t disagree with them. In our political discourse, half of Americans may be labeled irredeemably deplorable while another 47 percent is accused of being wholly dependent on government catering to their every whim, but Captain America is ready, shield-in-hand, to protect them all and would never dream of denigrating either group.
Captain America is intended to model the qualities of good citizenship. He illustrates the value of loyalty, integrity, seeing the best in others and helping to bring it out, building unity out of diversity and living consistent with one’s dignity. He is fortunate to represent a nation whose principles exceed its laws, allowing people to be patriotic as they stand up for its conception of justice while being critical of the current government. He also appreciates that other Americans can be good Americans without devoting themselves to America as much as he does. To be sure, though, that doesn’t prevent him from lecturing Americans about the values they should share, the efforts that they should make together, and the qualities of character they should exhibit in order to remain free and sustain the social conditions under which everyone has a greater opportunity to flourish.
Today we see, on the one hand, a tendency among many to retreat into unsociable and irresponsible private lives, and on the other hand, a temptation among a growing number to lend credence to illiberal collectivist ideologies and agitate on their behalf in uncivilized ways. As an alternative to those extremes, Captain America encourages us to live responsibly, do our part in serving the community voluntarily, and be brave in standing up for each other’s freedoms. He furthermore reminds us that we need to heed moral principles and possess a sense of duty so that politics does not devolve into a cutthroat pursuit of victory, wealth, and power.
