The Varieties of American Exceptionalism. This article originally appeared on Ethika Politika Lately Americans have been talking more explicitly than usual about what is called American exceptionalism.  For most of my lifetime not much was said about this directly.  Apparently most people just took it for granted and assumed that everyone believed it.  But now politicians think they have to affirm their adherence to it, and they criticize other politicians for their presumed lack of devotion to the idea.  However instead of looking around to see who does and who does not hold to this notion, let’s examine what it is and see how we might evaluate the various versions of it. American exceptionalism, as the term implies, means that the United States is an exceptional country.  And in one sense this of course is certainly true.  The United States is unique, exceptional, but then so is every other country in the world, Canada, Chile, Mongolia, Uganda, and every other one.  Every nation is different from every other nation, just as every individual person is different.  So in this sense American exceptionalism is nothing special, nothing anyone could possibly object to or deny.

Of course, this is not what people mean by the term.  They mean that the U. Quantico Saison 1 Episode 18 Replay here. S. is special in a unique sense, especially good or great or superior, in fact, the greatest country in the world.  But here I think we can distinguish further, for there are different degrees of this notion. Historically people in many lands have thought that their country was the best or the greatest.  I’m told that the Chinese historically thought this and perhaps may still do, so also the French and the English, and no doubt many other places too.  This is a fairly benign foible, one that’s certainly pardonable.  But still it is a foible.  Even if we could agree in advance on which features of a country were the most important, the ones that should count when we’re deciding what country is the greatest, it’s not likely that there is only one country that possesses all these features in the highest measure.  One nation may be the greatest in one way, another in another way.  And it’s even more unlikely that very many people have sufficient knowledge about enough countries to be able to have an educated opinion about which one is best and best in what.  One would have to live in quite a few countries, I would think, in order to have an opinion that is worth much on this subject. Of course, the upholders of American exceptionalism, or for that matter of any other national exceptionalism, don’t seem to think that much experience is needed to know the truth that their own country is the best.  Apparently it’s obvious (so they think) that the U.

Nick Douglas. Staff Writer, Lifehacker Nick has been writing online for 11 years at sites like Urlesque, Gawker, the Daily Dot, and Slacktory. Fifty Orwell Essays, by George Orwell, free ebook. The “10-page anti-diversity screed” that got a Google employee fired this week is a prime example of many, many societal ills. Besides the larger issues of.

S. (or China or England or France) is the greatest, and anyone who doesn’t think so is ignorant or perverse.  As I said, this is a fairly benign fault, if it goes no further than this. One would have thought, though, that Catholics would be least liable to such a view of things, since we ought to have a more universal outlook and, of all people, be the least provincial in our judgments.  This of course does not mean that we should not be patriotic, should not love our own country—about which I will speak later on—but it does mean that we ought to be free of the parochial opinion that whatever we have is necessarily and obviously the best. C. S. Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves, talks about this kind of national exceptionalism, about the idea “that is sometimes called patriotism…that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others.”  He notes the obvious fact that every country is apt to think thus, and relates the following humorous incident. I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, “But, sir, aren’t we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?”  He replied with total gravity – he could not have been graver if he had been saying the Creed at the altar – “Yes, but in England it’s true.”“Yes, but in England [or America or China] it’s true” is the kind of silly provincialism that should be spontaneously rejected by Catholics.  It is easy in a country cut off in some way from the rest of the world for the notion of exceptionalism to flourish.  England, with its unique institutions, even a church of its very own, long felt itself separate from the largely Catholic European continent.  Thus it is not surprising that such notions have abounded there.  And we Americans, able to romp around in our big expanse of territory without coming into much contact with anyone we thought needed to be taken seriously have also been prone to the same tendencies.  So while the tendency in both cases is understandable, still it is a blemish on our thinking, even if a relatively mild one, and a blemish that is particularly inappropriate in a Catholic. But while this sort of American exceptionalism is not of too much concern, there is another sort, a kind of greater intensity, that does raise concerns.  This is the type that goes from a mild self- satisfaction and feeling that we of course are the best, to an explicit political outlook which proclaims not only that we are the best, but that all the rest of the world had better acknowledge this or else!  Woodrow Wilson, in his second inaugural address of March 5, 1. We shall be the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred.  They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent.  We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind.

But if our principles are simply “the principles of a liberated mankind,” then, at least in the view of some, we have a right, if not a duty, to export—some would say impose—these principles on the rest of mankind, whether they want them or not, whether they like it or not.  If we were speaking of any other nation we would call this imperialism.  And indeed, unfortunately, our nation’s history has not been free of the aggressive nationalist imperialism that sought to impose our opinions and institutions because we claimed that “they were the principles of a liberated mankind”—and who after all would not want to be liberated? Unfortunately, with a sort of naiveté that would be charming were it not so dangerous, Americans continue to express such ideas.  One David Rothkop, who had firm links with both the Democratic and Republican political establishment, wrote in the summer 1. Foreign Policy magazine that…it is in the economic and political interests of the United States to ensure that if the world is moving toward a common language, it be English; that if the world is moving toward common telecommunications, safety, and quality standards, they be American; that if the world is becoming linked by television, radio, and music, the programming be American; and that if common values are being developed, they be values with which Americans are comfortable. And further, “…Americans should not shy away from doing that which is so clearly in their economic, political, and security interests” and, it seems, by a happy pre- established harmony,so clearly in the interests of the world at large.  The United States should not hesitate to promote its values.  In an effort to be polite or politic, Americans should not deny the fact that of all the nations in the history of the world, theirs is the most just, the most tolerant, the most willing to constantly reassess and improve itself, and the best model for the future.

As I said, the naiveté is almost charming, for apparently it never occurred to Mr.

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