American exceptionalism is a term given to the belief that the United States of America and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from its unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom.
The phrase is thought to have originated by Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous book Democracy in America. Some interpret the term to indicate a moral superiority of Americans, while others use it to refer to the American concept as itself an exceptional ideal which may or may not always be upheld by the actual people and government of the nation. Dissenters to the above view claim "American exceptionalism" is little more than crude propaganda, that in essence is a justification for an America-centered view of the world.
Protestantism
The earliest ideologies of English colonists in the country were the protestantism of the Pilgrim and Puritan settlers of New England. Many Puritans with Arminian leanings embraced a middle ground between strict predestination and looser theology. They believed that God had made a covenant with their people and had chosen them to lead the other nations of the earth. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, expressed this idea with the metaphor of a "City on a Hill" - that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the world.
Although the Protestant worldview of the United State's New England ancestors were later mixed with those of the Middle Colonies and the South, their deep moralistic and paternalistic values remained part of the national identity for centuries and arguably remain so today. Although American exceptionalism is now secular in nature, a portion of it stems from America's Protestant roots.
The American Revolution
Another event often cited as a milestone in the history of American Exceptionalism is the American Revolutionary War. The intellectuals of the Revolution (Thomas Paine's Common Sense is the best example) for the first time expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land, a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity that was being abused by the British mother country they had outgrown. Although few common Americans would have agreed with them at the time, they laid the intellectual foundations for the Revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism.
Arguments for American exceptionalism
Those who believe in American exceptionalism argue that there are many ways that the United States clearly differs from the European world that it emerged from.
Political ethos and ideas about nationhood
Proponents of American exceptionalism argue that the U.S. is unique in that it was founded on a set of ideals, rather than on a common heritage, ethnicity, or ruler. In the words of President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, America is a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". In this view, being American is inextricably connected with loving and defending freedom and equal opportunity. As such, America has often acted to promote these ideals abroad, most notably in the First and Second World Wars and in the Cold War. Critics argue that the U.S. Government's policy in these conflicts was more motivated by economic or military self-interest; most observers admit both the idealistic and the self-interested motivations, to varying degrees.
America's polity has been characterized since its inception by system of federalism and checks and balances, which were designed to prevent any person, faction, region, or government organ from becoming too powerful. Some American exceptionalists argue that this system and the accompanying distrust of concentrated power prevents America from suffering a "tyranny of the majority", and also that it allows citizens to live in a locality whose laws reflect that citizen's values. A consequence of this political system is that laws can vary greatly across the country, with some states' laws being more progressive and other states' laws being more conservative than the values of the nation as a whole. For instance, the rather libertarian state of Vermont legalized homosexual civil unions, a rather progressive move, before homosexual sex was decriminalized (by judicial, not legislative action) in several other more conservative states. Critics of American exceptionalism maintain that this system merely replaces a tyranny by the national majority over states with a tyranny by states over local minorities, e.g. the state goverments of some more conservative states retaining laws criminalizing the sexual behavior of a minority. On balance, the American political system arguably allows more local oppression of minorities but prevents more national oppression of minorities than does a more unitary system.
Opportunity and meritocracy
The U.S. is nicknamed the "Land of Opportunity". It has traditionally had less rigid social classes than other nations, and has no system of nobility. Americans have tended to believe that a strong work ethic and personal fortitude is the key to success, rather than being born to the right family or making the right friends. Critics argue that while America may have no formal aristocracy, one does exist in practice, and while it may have as part of its national character a myth of meritocracy, privilege and social stratification are just as strong there as anywhere else.
Religious tolerance
One claim is that while much of European history was wracked with religious wars and conflicts, with tension between Protestants and Catholics ran high, and often erupted into bloody conflicts like the French Wars of Religion, the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of Protestants under Mary I of England, and the Thirty Years War, the United States has been a religiously pluralistic country since its founding, with no experience of large-scale religious wars. This argument is weakened by its reliance on comparing events from 16th and 17th century European history with later events in American history, and by a history of small-scale religious persecution including attacks on the followers of Anne Hutchinson by the Puritans, the witchprocesses of Salem to the Utah War of the late 19th century, but it does reflect an important aspect of America's ethos that is not shared by many nations outside of the Western world.
Political rights
A common claim is that the United States is unique in that it has from its founding guaranteed political civil rights to its citizens – such as freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the presumption of innocence, and that respect for these rights is a uniquely strong component of American political culture. Critics of this position argue that these rights aren't especially American features anymore, as all modern Western countries have such rights presently, and that these civil rights have been granted unequally during America's history (for instance, some US states had Jim Crow laws that prevented suffrage among African-Americans until the 1960s).
Frontier spirit
Proponents of American exceptionalism often claim that the "American spirit" or the "American identity" was created at the frontier (following Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis), where rugged and untamed conditions gave birth to American national vitality. However, critics of this view believe that American expansion westwards in some ways was more a conquest of Native Americans than a cultivation of wilderness.
The American Revolution
The American Revolutionary War is the claimed ideological territory of "exceptionalists". The intellectuals of the Revolution, such as Thomas Paine, arguably shaped America into a nation fundamentally different than its European ancestry, creating modern democracy as we know it.
Arguments against American exceptionalism
Opponents of the notion of American exceptionalism argue that, while all societies differ in their history and social structures, the notion that the United States is uniquely virtuous overstates the importance of differences between American and other present-day First World countries. It ignores aspects of American history and society that contradict ideals of freedom and equality, such as slavery, segregation of schools in the South, the annexation by force of the Hawaiian islands, McCarthyism, the poverty and sometimes ghettoisation of millions of citizens, the unequal quality of health care and education, and the genocide and displacement of the Native American population. Proponents of American exceptionalism counter that these examples indeed show the failure of America to live up to its putative ideals, but that on the strength of those ideals, later generations of Americans have admitted these errors and have made attempts to redress them, through programs such as affirmative action.
A typical argument against the American exceptionalist position is to identify positive qualities in specific other countries that correspond to allegedly unique qualities of the United States. These arguments are seldom convincing to proponents, who reply that the historical uniqueness of the United States is the result of a combination of many factors and not captured by particular aspects of the national character.
Canadian and American politics compared explores this issue by contrast to the most similar nation, on the same continent, with a quite different history.
Comparison with other "exceptional" nations
Opponents of American exceptionalism point out that there are many nations in the world that consider themselves "exceptional." Many proponents do not consider this relevant, as it is the way in which America is exceptional that is relevant, not the mere fact that it is exceptional in some way.
Longevity
Throughout history there are countless examples of "invincible" and "unique" nations that can be considered to have failed (assuming time is a sort of test), such as the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the British Empire, and Japan and Germany during World War II. Here is a table showing their relative longevity:
| Nation | Longevity (Years) |
| Babylonian Empire | |
| Ancient Egypt | |
| Ancient Greece | |
| Macedonian Empire | |
| Persian Empire | |
| Roman Empire | 507 |
| Frankish Empire | 488 |
| Holy Roman Empire | 963 |
| Mongol Empire | 54 |
| First French Empire | 9 (plus 100 days in 1815) |
| British Empire | |
| Second French Empire | 18 |
| Ottoman Empire | 642 |
| Russian Empire | 370 |
| German Empire | 47 |
| French Union | 12 |
| Soviet Empire | |
| USA | 228 (As of 2004) |
Marxist theory of American exceptionalism
In Marxist theory, American exceptionalism refers to the proposition that there is something unique about American society that makes it especially resistant to socialism and attempts to explain why the labor movement in the United States is weaker than in other industrialized states and why a mass labour or social democratic party never developed. Explanations for why the US has been exceptional in this regard usually focus on geography, history or sociological explanations. One common explanation is that the in the United States the democratization of government and manhood suffrage occurred before the Industrial Revolution while in Europe, it occurred afterwords. As a result, it is argued that division between labor and capital in the United States did not map itself onto preexisting class structures, making class struggle less pronounced in the United States than in Europe.
In Marxist theory, the claim denotes an attempt to explain why socialist movements never became a mass phenomenon in the United States which, alone in the western world, does not have a major Labour Party. Proponents of the American exceptionalist theory such as former Communist Party USA leader Jay Lovestone argue that capitalism is more firmly established in the United States for various reasons and that the class struggle is at a lower intensity. Therefore socialists in the US must pursue more moderate methods such as collaborating with bourgeois forces and institutions, in order to put forward a progressive agenda.
External links
- "The American Creed: Does It Matter? Should It Change?" "Summary: Seymour Martin Lipset explains why the United States is exceptional. Michael J. Sandel blames its individualistic tradition for the country's ills and says America should return to the New England town square. But it isn't exceptional, and it shouldn't return." [1]