Saturday, November 16, 2013

Why the Fear of American Exceptionalism?

Talk of American exceptionalism  enrages some liberals.
American flags and people For example, it drove Oliver Stone and American University professor Peter  Kuznick to pen a USA Today commentary  saying Washington should have a wall with “the names of all the Vietnamese,  Cambodians, Laotians, and others who died [in the Vietnam War].” That, they  said, would be “a fitting memorial to all the victims of ‘American  exceptionalism’  a perfect tombstone for that most dangerous of American  myths.”
New America Foundation’s Michael Lind, in a 2011 piece titled “The Case  Against ‘American Exceptionalism,’” dismissed the idea as “amusing, if it were not so dangerous.”American“exceptionalists,” he argued, are know-nothing boastful boobs “not allowed to  peep beyond [their] borders, to learn from the successes and mistakes of people  in other countries.” They “thump” The Federalist Papers as if it were the Bible,  trying to “deduce what Hamilton, Madison and Jay might have said about physician  reimbursement rates.”
Oh my. Stuff that straw man before you knock it down, Mr.  Lind.
Mr. Lind and Mr.  Stone miss the point completely. American exceptionalism is not about  nostalgic yahoos railing against “furriners.” Thomas  Jefferson staunchly believed that Americans had an exceptional destiny. His  entire worldview was informed by European philosophy. He took ideas from Swiss  natural law philosopher Emmerich de Vattel to write the Declaration of  Independence, and he was a great admirer of the French philosopher Voltaire.  Is Jefferson a know-nothing rube for  believing in American  exceptionalism?
Those who believe in American  exceptionalism don’t reject foreigners. They recognize what’s unique about our  history: a distinctive confluence of culture, government and economy, and an  ethos of personal responsibility that tamed the economy’s wild horses and  tempered the potentially anarchic tendencies of free people. These, not  government action, gave rise to the wealthiest and most powerful nation on  earth.

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