My good friend Joe Fab sent me his thoughts on the idea of "American Exceptionalism" that is being used as a foundational principle for Republican presidential candidates in 2012. The Wash Post did a piece on this unfortunate development yesterday and it prompted these thoughts from Mr. Fab:
I'm proud and feel very fortunate to be an American. But I know that I'm here by good luck, not because I myself am exceptional in an earned sense of any consequence. What I have done and am doing with my own life is the measure of my worth, and I feel a heightened responsibility to make that worth register positively in part because of the chance combination of time and geography that led to my birth in this country.
That's a far cry from the sense of entitlement that these new American exceptionalists (may we call them AEs?) often seem to feel. You'd think they'd fought the American Revolution themselves the way they wrap themselves in the Declaration of Independence. If one were to appropriately employ the hyperbole so popular in recent years -- the comparison to Nazi Germany -- this might be just the occasion for it. No matter what the AEs think, America is unique as in "one of a kind" and exceptional as in "set apart by certain unusual qualities." But we are not the kind of 'exceptional' that automatically gives Americans a seat above and before all others on the planet.
None of us living today created that unique aspect of this country. We are the beneficiaries of what some amazingly thoughtful people cooked up many generations ago. We are the trustees of their wise design. The design is what is exceptional; we are not. And the only way for us to strive toward being exceptional is to treasure, respect and responsibly carry on the values and principles contained in both the Declaration and Constitution.
A clear and precise distinction must be made between that mission and the shallow flag-waving, placard-carrying tantrums in evidence in AE America. To me, today's use of the idea of American exceptionalism is frightening and smacks of desperation and immaturity.
Mel Brooks' Two Thousand Year Old Man captured the AEs perfectly when he reminisced about the Stone Age and how neanderthals began to group together into tribes. He remembered with relish how everybody thought his own gang was the absolute greatest, just because, well, it was the gang to which he belonged. His group lived in Cave #7. Their rallying cry may sound primitive, but is it really any different from what the AEs are saying?
"Everyone can go to hell except Cave 7!"
Well said, Joe, well said -- and thanks for sharing.
1 comment:
Yes, very well put. Back when I was studying Political Science, American exceptionalism was, at best, a neutral term to describe the fact that the US is the only industrialized democracy without a viable socialist/labor party. From that neutral statement, though, you could move to the next obvious point that our exceptionalism in many regards (e.g. health care outcomes, infant mortality statistics, labor rights protections, education, etc.) relative to our peer countries isn't necessarily a source of pride.
You have to hand it to the Republicans, though. Who doesn't like to hear that they're special?
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