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American Exceptionalism

seayakin

Graduate Poster
seayakin
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
Messages
1,437
GreyArea wrote the following in response to the OP about the American political spectrum.

GreyArea said:
As I recall discussing this in political science classes years ago, here are a few factors no one has mentioned yet.
You should also consider American exceptionalism, which is, as I recall, derived from 17th century notions of the Puritan Separatists. There is a sense that "America" is already good enough simply because it is already accepted that it is the shining city on a hill. I don't think any other countries have quite this kind of myth, certainly not Europe since that's where people were leaving from. They already knew the grass wasn't green enough there.
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I've often pondered whether this is truly unique to the US. If you break it down, isn't this really bald faced nationalism for Americans to believe in their own exceptionalism? I can't think of any other nation that doesn't have nationalists. The only thing I've wondered about if the western European nations experience in the world wars and post WWII loss of empires and influence made many rethink concepts of their own exceptionalism that they had through the 19th century.
 
I wouldn't credit Puritans with the idea, even as a distant source. I'd say "American exceptionalism" comes from the fact that the country was pretty much just invented on the spot by a few Enlightenment-soaked educated people. They tried to form a whole new system for democratic government, using their reason to figure out the best way to have things work. Everywhere else up to that time seems to have evolved or grown their government over centuries of trial and error, nobody'd sat down and built one all in a piece like that. America feels, more or less accurately, that it invented itself, which was pretty exciting and new for a long time.

The funny part is that these days, the US government is actually now one of the oldest ones--most of those that were around when it was fresh and new have since been scrapped and replaced, more often than not by governments invented the same way the US one was.
 
seayakin said:
I've often pondered whether this is truly unique to the US. If you break it down, isn't this really bald faced nationalism for Americans to believe in their own exceptionalism?
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That rather depends on whether the belief is correct, doesn't it? Consider two people who think they're the greatest tennis players ever. One of them is the caveman from the Geiko commercials, the other is Roger Federer. Are their beliefs really the same? Of course not.

If you want to talk about belief in American exceptionalism, you need to address whether or not America is actually exceptional.
 
The wikipedia article attributes the origin of the theor to Alexis de Tocqueville and I think he coined the term but I believe there concept is older than de Tocqueville. In any case, I wasn't thinking so much about the origin of the term but how Americans may still apply it today and how it colors our view of the world. I think the wikipeida article has a reasonable definition in that it states "American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States occupies a special niche among the nations of the world in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions, and its being built by immigrants." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism)

Agreeably, the founding fathers did something quite unique and forward thinking for their time that made the United States exceptional and unique. Today, the United States no longer is exceptional save for its military power and economic strength. In the modern world, those who would advance American exceptionalism are in engaged in nationalistic jingoism. As far as moral authority is concerned, I think you can just create a multidimensional scale and some nations would be grouped together but no one can simply claim they are the moral authority (although you can probably name countries that have zero moral authority).

I think the interesting thing is that it is my impression that some seem to think that Americans are exceptional in promoting the idea of American exceptionalism and that other nations do not engage in this thinking. This I believe to be false because as stated previously every nations nationalist thinks their nation is exceptional and unique. However, at this time I don't have specific examples to back this up so I will need to do further research.

Therefore, my question is, is the US exceptional in its theory of American Exceptionalism?
 
seayakin said:
Today, the United States no longer is exceptional save for its military power and economic strength.
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I disagree. I think the concept of individual rights is more pervasive in American society than anywhere else. Free speech, in particular, is better protected in the US than anywhere else in the world. Furthermore, our economic might (of which our military might is simply a product) is not simply some historical accident. It has causes, causes directly related to the nature of our nation. Even if economic power is the only important thing that distinguishes the US from the rest of the world, well, isn't that still enough to make us exceptional?
 
I think most western hemisphere countries (plus Australia/New Zealand) show significant differences from European and Asian countries simply because they were so recently brought into the modern age. (I won't say "settled", because all of them were already settled before Europeans came.) The abundance of land allows a lot more freedom than in a land which cannot grow unrestrained by borders. Americans, both NA and SA, haven't quite resolved themselves to the restrictions imposed by borders and limited resources.
 
Americans really did have something going for them when they first settled here. They carried smallpox. It sure makes it easier to start nations from scratch when no one is around to stop you.
 
Something I always found odd was that back right before the Revolution America has the highest standard of living in the world. Which wasn't bad for a mere colony.
 
Ziggurat said:
I disagree. I think the concept of individual rights is more pervasive in American society than anywhere else. Free speech, in particular, is better protected in the US than anywhere else in the world. Furthermore, our economic might (of which our military might is simply a product) is not simply some historical accident.
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Actually, much of it is "simply some historical accident." That's one of the problems that the modern conservative movement has not yet come to grips with -- and the modern union movement, as well.

American economic might is largely based on the fact that it showed up late to the two major wars that defined the economics of the 20th century, and suffered little economic loss in either. The 1950s were the glory years for American industry because it was the only country left in the world with factories still standing.

Had the accidents of history played out differently -- had the Zimmermann telegram actually worked, for example, and the United States had been forced to fight a war on its own territory -- Canada and Australia would likely have been the economic superpowers of the late 20th century.
 
drkitten said:
Actually, much of it is "simply some historical accident." That's one of the problems that the modern conservative movement has not yet come to grips with -- and the modern union movement, as well.

American economic might is largely based on the fact that it showed up late to the two major wars that defined the economics of the 20th century, and suffered little economic loss in either. The 1950s were the glory years for American industry because it was the only country left in the world with factories still standing.

Had the accidents of history played out differently -- had the Zimmermann telegram actually worked, for example, and the United States had been forced to fight a war on its own territory -- Canada and Australia would likely have been the economic superpowers of the late 20th century.
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Having undevastated home soil and relatively low population loss was an advantage for the USA, but it's not the whole story. (otherwise Japan would never have been the second largest economy post WW2).

And the Zimmerman telegram... can't really see Mexico being able to do that much damage to the USA's production centers circa 1917. Now if you want a counterfactual, perhaps something like Confederate seccession succeeding (perhaps if Lincoln lost the 1864 election?) leading to two antagonistic armed camps in N. America with the ability to do each other considerable damage. Now that could have stopped the 1900s from being "the American century" (as well as giving Zimmerman someone else to write to).
 
drkitten said:
Actually, much of it is "simply some historical accident." That's one of the problems that the modern conservative movement has not yet come to grips with -- and the modern union movement, as well.

American economic might is largely based on the fact that it showed up late to the two major wars that defined the economics of the 20th century, and suffered little economic loss in either.
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Your explanation might make some sense if all we had to compare the US to was Europe, but that's not the case. Your argument applies even more to Mexico, yet it's a basket case. Why? It's not lacking in natural resources, it wasn't ravaged by world wars, so why isn't it just as rich as the US?

de Tocqueville knew Mexico wasn't going to be able to compete with US. The man was prescient (he even knew that the US and Russia would become adversaries). And he understood what many now wish to forget: culture matters.

Had the accidents of history played out differently -- had the Zimmermann telegram actually worked, for example, and the United States had been forced to fight a war on its own territory -- Canada and Australia would likely have been the economic superpowers of the late 20th century.
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The alternatives to US power you chose are two of the countries which are most similar to the US in culture. That is no accident.
 
Travis said:
Something I always found odd was that back right before the Revolution America has the highest standard of living in the world. Which wasn't bad for a mere colony.
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The US at the time had a built in safety net in the form of free land. If all else failed you could be a farmer, the poor in Europe had no such option.

Something I find interesting is that most Americans view the American Revolution as a unique experiment in democracy even though the elected Parliament in England had been established as the preeminent branch of government for nearly 100 years and the system that they set up in the US mirrored the English one piece for piece and nearly all law and rights were inherited directly from English common law.
 
drkitten said:
Had the accidents of history played out differently -- had the Zimmermann telegram actually worked, for example, and the United States had been forced to fight a war on its own territory -- Canada and Australia would likely have been the economic superpowers of the late 20th century.
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Wasn't sure if you were being fecitious or not but... I agree that had things played out differently the U.S. might not have been the main post-war economic superpower, but I'm not sure about your last statement. Neither Canada nor Australia were nearly of enough size to become economic superpowers, even if they had been the only countries untouched by the war. Canada in 1920 had 8 million people. Australia a little over 5 million. The U.S. had 100 million. Unless the U.S. was literally blown back to the stone age, just by sheer size it would pretty likely be able to surpass either country fairly quickly once it began rebuilding.
 
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Quad4_72 said:
Do we get points for donating the most foreign aid?
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Just gross? And not like 18th by % of GNP? Probably not.

I like America, and we've done a lot of good, but we've also done a lot of bad. I'd say we're a neo-Imperialist with a tinge of altruism. Overall the world would probably be better if we continued isolationism past WWI. Minus nuclear threats, we've done well on them.
 
Ziggurat said:
The alternatives to US power you chose are two of the countries which are most similar to the US in culture. That is no accident.
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Well, in that case, what you're looking at is probably British exceptionalism; what the US shares with Canada and Australia is also what it shares with the 19th century superpower. I'm not sure it makes the case you want....
 
Dragoonster said:
Just gross? And not like 18th by % of GNP? Probably not.

I like America, and we've done a lot of good, but we've also done a lot of bad. I'd say we're a neo-Imperialist with a tinge of altruism. Overall the world would probably be better if we continued isolationism past WWI. Minus nuclear threats, we've done well on them.
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Wow, I'd have to disagree strongly. With no USA in WW2, with no USA in NATO (not that there would be a free Western Europe to form it with anyway), no Marshall aid, no dissuading China from attacking Taiwan or India and Pakistan from going all out, etc etc

Without the USA the mid/late 20th century would have almost certainly been horribly worse for vast amounts of the world.
 
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