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Zonie63 -> RE: American Exceptionalism: Agree or disagree? (11/20/2011 7:18:44 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto
Is the United States inherently superior to every other country on Earth?
Is a child born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to parents who are American citizens inherently superior to, say, a child born in Manila, Republic of the Philippines, to parents who are citizens of the Republic of the Philippines?
Is the United States federal government inherently superior to, say, the national government of Australia?
Your comments?
In another thread, someone else mentioned the term "American Exceptionalism," which (according to the Wiki article on that subject) was a term first coined by Stalin. So, it's hard to take the term seriously when it originated with Soviet propaganda.
But to answer your questions, no, the United States is not inherently superior to any other nation.
However, the reason why politicians like Reagan and Bush use rhetoric like that is in order to drum up support for globalism and their military adventurism. They don't actually believe this stuff they say about America, because if they did, their policies would have reflected that.
As the writer indicates:
quote:
We are settling into a dangerous national pessimism. We must answer the big questions. Was our nation’s greatness about having God or having grit? Is exceptionalism an anointing or an ethos? If the answers are grit and ethos, then we must work to recapture them. We must work our way out of these doldrums. We must learn our way out. We must innovate our way out.
In the early days of our republic, it was decided that we would refrain from foreign entanglements and to not play favorites among foreign nations. This was the real key to our success, since it meant that we could stay out of permanent alliances and any major wars which could have threatened our national survival. We actively focused on maintaining our independence and security from foreign influence, all of which was outlined in George Washington's Farewell Address. He also warned against political factionalism and stressed national unity. He warned against incurring huge insurmountable debts and a large permanent military establishment.
It's not that we saw ourselves as "exceptional," but we merely saw ourselves as neutral and detached, which isn't exactly the same as "isolationism," which has always been a misnomer. True, there might have been some Americans who have argued along the lines that we are "exceptional," especially when they came up with terms like "Manifest Destiny." But that was only one side of the story; not everyone went along with it. It wasn't pessimism to believe that we had reached our limits and shouldn't go any further.
But if there was ever a decision to go to war, it was made on the basis of America's national interests and not upon any other consideration. That changed in World War I, when Wilson declared it to be a war to make the world safe for democracy. So, suddenly our foreign and military policy were no longer based on America's national interests, but on the interests of global democracy. That was an enormous shift in our fundamental beliefs, as a nation, even if it was only temporary and ultimately rejected when the Senate refused to ratify the US entry into the League of Nations. However, this monumental shift in our national security perceptions would eventually take hold permanently during the FDR years to the point where succeeding generations never even bothered to question it anymore.
So, our entire national existence has been all but subverted for the sake of world-wide democracy and capitalism. If our nation is "in decline" and "no longer the leading country in the world," it's only because our government's policies have mostly achieved the goals they've set out for. The policies of promoting democracy and capitalism around the world, if successful, would pretty much make "America" irrelevant as a nation. We would no longer be the leading country in the world precisely because our policies were designed to do exactly that.
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