Talk of American exceptionalism enrages some liberals.
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.
