American exceptionalism

American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations.^[1] Proponents argue that the values, political system, and historical development of the U.S. are unique in human history, often with the implication that it is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.^[2]

It originates in the observations and writings of French political scientist and historian

The concept of the United States as an exceptional society has a long history, sometimes traced back to French writer Alexis de Tocqueville^[4] or to the ideas espoused by the Founding Fathers of the United States during the American Revolution.^[8] For example, in August 1861 The Times of London alluded to "the 'exceptionalism', if one may use the word, on which the Americans rather pride themselves" in a discussion of the American Civil War.^[4] However, the specific term "American exceptionalism" seems to have originated with American communists in the late 1920s. The earliest documented usage cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Daily Worker, 29 January 1929: "This American 'exceptionalism' applies to the whole tactical line of the Communist International as applied to America."^[4] In turn, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (who was likely aware of this earlier use) condemned the "heresy of American exceptionalism" in a tense discussion with Jay Lovestone of the Communist Party USA, after Lovestone echoed the arguments of other American communists that the U.S. is independent of the Marxist laws of history "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions."^[4][9] The term later moved into general use by intellectuals.^[9][10] "American exceptionalism" was rarely used after the 1930s until U.S. newspapers popularized it in the 1980s to describe America's cultural and political uniqueness.^[11]

In 1989, the Scottish political scientist Richard Rose noted that most American historians endorse exceptionalism, and he suggested their reasoning to be as follows:

America marches to a different drummer. Its uniqueness is explained by any or all of a variety of reasons: history, size, geography, political institutions, and culture. Explanations of the growth of government in Europe are not expected to fit American experience, and vice versa.^[12]

However,

Why has the myth of American exceptionalism, characterized by a belief in America's highly distinctive features or unusual trajectory based on the abundance of its natural resources, its revolutionary origins and its Protestant religious culture that anticipated God's blessing of the nation, held such tremendous staying power, from its influence in popular culture to its critical role in foreign policy?[14]

Some historians support the concept of American exceptionalism but avoid the terminology to avoid getting entangled in rhetorical debates.

The term became an issue of contention between the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign, with McCain criticizing Obama for allegedly disbelieving the concept.^[16]

History of concept

Alexis de Tocqueville and others (1835)

The first reference to the concept by name, and possibly its origin, was by the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835/1840 work Democracy in America:^[17]

The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the natives of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.^[18]

Kammen says that many foreign writers commented on American exceptionalism including Karl Marx, Francis Lieber, Hermann Eduard von Holst, James Bryce, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc and that they did so in complimentary terms.^[19] The theme became common, especially in textbooks. From the 1840s to the late 19th century, the McGuffey Readers sold 120 million copies and were studied by most American students. Skrabec (2009) argues the Readers "hailed American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and America as God's country.... Furthermore, McGuffey saw America as having a future mission to bring liberty and democracy to the world."^[20]

Communist debate (1927)

In June 1927 Jay Lovestone, a leader of the Communist Party USA and who would soon be named as general secretary, described America's economic and social uniqueness. He noted the increasing strength of American capitalism and the country's "tremendous reserve power" and said that they both prevented a communist revolution.^[22] In mid-1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, disbelieving that America was so resistant to revolution, denounced Lovestone's ideas as "the heresy of American exceptionalism",^[23][24] which was likely a reference to an article published in the Daily Worker earlier that year.^[4] The Great Depression in the United States appeared to underscore Stalin's argument that American capitalism falls under the general laws of Marxism.^[11] In June 1930, during the national convention of the Communist Party USA in New York, it was declared: "The storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism and the whole system of opportunistic theories and illusions that had been built upon American capitalist 'prosperity'".^[25]

America in The LDS Church

Although officially shunned by the LDS Church, fundamentalist Mormons believe in the White Horse Prophecy, which argues that Mormons will be the ones called upon to preserve the Constitution as it hangs "by a thread".^[29][30]

Uniqueness

In general, Americans have had the consideration of national "uniqueness." The historian Dorothy Ross points to three different currents regarding unique characteristics.

1. Some Protestants believed American progress would facilitate the return of
   Jesus Christ and the Christian Millennium.^[31]
2. Some 19th century historians linked American liberty to the development of liberty in Anglo-Saxon England.[32]
3. Other American writers looked to the "millennial newness" of America. Henry Nash Smith stressed the theme of "virgin land" in the American frontier that promised an escape from the decay that had befallen earlier republics.^[33][34]

Obama administration and later

In April 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama responded to a journalist's question in Strasbourg with this statement: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."^[35] Obama further noted, "I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone."^[36]

Mitt Romney attacked Obama's statement and argued it showed Obama did not believe in American exceptionalism.^[37] Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said that Obama's "worldview is dramatically different from any president, Republican or Democrat, we've had... He grew up more as a globalist than an American. To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation."^[38]

In a speech on the

In a direct response the next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin published an op-ed in The New York Times, articulating, "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.... We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."^[40]

Putin's views were soon endorsed by future President Donald Trump, who declared the op-ed "a masterpiece." "You think of the term as being beautiful, but all of sudden you say, what if you're in Germany or Japan or any one of 100 countries? You are not going to like that term," Trump said. "It is very insulting, and Putin put it to him about that."^[41]

Some left-wing American commentators agree with Trump's stance; one example is Sherle Schwenninger, a co-founder of the

The term was adopted by former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in his 2015 book Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.^[45]

Causes in historical context

Scholars have explored possible justifications for the notion of American exceptionalism.

Absence of feudalism

Many scholars use a model of American exceptionalism developed by Harvard political scientist Louis Hartz. In The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), Hartz argued that the American political tradition lacks the left-wing/socialist and right-wing/aristocratic elements that dominated in Europe because colonial America lacked feudal traditions, such as established churches, landed estates, and a hereditary nobility. As a result, American politics developed around a tradition of 'Lockean' liberalism.^[46] Although some European practices of feudal origin, such as primogeniture, were transmitted to America, Hartz argued that their abolition during the American Revolution only confirmed the U.S.' liberalism.^[47]

The "liberal consensus" school, typified by

Some scholars, however, have disputed whether feudalism was absent from America. Sheldon Wolin has argued that the American Revolution was a reaction against increased centralization by the British government, while Karen Orren has claimed that aspects of feudal employment law lasted in America as late as the 1930s.^[49][50][51] James T. Kloppenberg has criticized Hartz for viewing American politics as a liberal consensus, arguing that this oversimplifies U.S. history.^[52] On the other hand, Catherine A. Holland, while accepting other criticisms of Hartz, has argued that this is a misinterpretation, and that Hartz acknowledged divisions within American politics (albeit divisions within liberalism).^[53]

Puritan roots and Protestant promise

Parts of American exceptionalism can be traced to American

The ideas that created the American Revolution were derived from a tradition of republicanism that had been repudiated by the British mainstream. The historian Gordon S. Wood has argued, "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy."^[60] Wood notes that the term is "presently much-maligned" although it is vigorously supported by others such as Jon Butler.^[61]

Jefferson envisaged America becoming the world's great "Empire of Liberty," the model for democracy and republicanism. He identified his nation as a beacon to the world, as he said when he departed the presidency in 1809: "Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other areas of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence."^[66]

Basis of arguments

Marilyn B. Young argues that after the end of the Cold War in 1991, neoconservative intellectuals and policymakers embraced the idea of an "American empire," a national mission to establish freedom and democracy in other nations, particularly poor ones. She argues that after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration reoriented foreign policy to an insistence on maintaining the supreme military and economic power of America, an attitude that harmonized with the new vision of American empire. Young says the Iraq War (2003–2011) exemplified American exceptionalism.^{[67][failed verification]}

In 2012, the conservative historians Larry Schweikart and Dave Dougherty argued that American exceptionalism be based on four pillars: (1) common law; (2) virtue and morality located in Protestant Christianity; (3) free-market capitalism; and (4) the sanctity of private property.^[68]

In a 2015 book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, former

Proponents of American exceptionalism argue that the United States is exceptional in that it was founded on a set of republican ideals rather than on a common heritage, ethnicity, or ruling elite. In the formulation 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 Lincoln's interpretation, America is inextricably connected with freedom and equality, and the American mission is to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The historian T. Harry Williams argues that Lincoln believed:

In the United States man would create a society that would be the best and the happiest in the world. The United States was the supreme demonstration of democracy. However, the Union did not exist just to make men free in America. It had an even greater mission—to make them free everywhere. By the mere force of its example, America would bring democracy to an undemocratic world.^[70]

American policies have been characterized since their inception by a system of federalism (between the states and the federal government) and

The historian Eric Foner has explored the question of birthright citizenship, the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) that makes anyone born in the United States a full citizen. He argues that:

birthright citizenship stands as an example of the much-abused idea of American exceptionalism... birthright citizenship does make the United States (along with Canada) unique in the developed world. No European nation recognizes the principle.^[72]

Global leadership and activism

Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh has identified what he says is "the most important respect in which the United States has been genuinely exceptional, about international affairs, international law, and promotion of human rights: namely, in its outstanding global leadership and activism." He argues:

To this day, the United States remains the only superpower capable, and at times willing, to commit real resources and make real sacrifices to build, sustain, and drive an international system committed to international law, democracy, and the promotion of human rights. Experience teaches that when the United States leads on human rights, from Nuremberg to Kosovo, other countries follow.^[73]

Peggy Noonan, an American political pundit, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that "America is not exceptional because it has long attempted to be a force for good in the world, it tries to be a force for good because it is exceptional."

Former

Proponents of American exceptionalism often claim that many features of the "American spirit" were shaped by the frontier process. Following Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, they argue that the American frontier allowed individualism to flourish as pioneers adopted democracy and equality and shed centuries-old European institutions such as royalty, standing armies, established churches, and a landed aristocracy that owned most of the land.^[75] However, the frontier experience was not entirely unique to the United States. Other nations had frontiers without them shaping them nearly as much as the American frontier did, usually because they were under the control of a strong national government. South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and Australia had long frontiers, but they did not have "free land" and local control.^[76] The political and cultural environments were much different since the other frontiers neither involved widespread ownership of free land nor allowed the settlers to control the local and provincial governments, as was the case in America. Their edge did not shape their national psyches.^[77] Each nation had entirely different frontier experiences. For example, the Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. In Australia, "mateship" and working together were valued more than individualism was in the United States.^[78]

Mobility and welfare

For most of its history, especially from the mid-19th to the early-20th centuries, the United States has been known as the "land of opportunity" and in that sense prided and promoted itself on providing individuals with the opportunity to escape from the contexts of their class and family background.^[79] Examples of that social mobility include:

• Occupational: children could easily choose careers that were not based upon their parents' choices.^[80]
• Physical: geographical location was not seen as static, and citizens often relocated freely over long distances without a barrier.^[81]
• Status: as in most countries, family standing and riches were often a means to remain in a higher social circle. America was notably unusual because of an accepted wisdom that anyone, from poor immigrants upwards, who worked hard could aspire to similar standing, regardless of circumstances of birth. That aspiration is commonly called living the
  American culture. That stood in contrast to other countries in which many larger offices were socially determined and usually difficult to enter unless one was born into the suitable social group.^[82]

Regarding public welfare, Richard Rose asked in 1989 whether the evidence shows whether the U.S. "is becoming more like other mixed-economy welfare states, or increasingly exceptional." He concluded, "By comparison with other advanced industrial nations America is today exceptional in total public expenditure, in major program priorities, and in the value of public benefits."^[85]

Criticism

The historian Michael Kammen argues that criticisms against the topic were raised in the 1970s in the wake of the Vietnam War.^[86] According to Kammen, many intellectuals then decided, "The American Adam had lost his innocence and given way to a helpless, tarnished Gulliver."^[87] At about the same time, the new social history used statistical techniques on population samples that seemed to show resemblances with Europe on issues such as social mobility. By the 1980s, labor historians were emphasizing that the failure of a workers' party to emerge in the United States meant that America was not exceptionally favorable for workers. By the late 1980s, other academic critics started mocking the extreme chauvinism displayed by the modern usage of exceptionalism. Finally, in the mid-1980s, colonial historians debated the uniqueness of the American experience in the context of British history.^[88] On the other hand, Wilentz argued for "distinctively American forms of class conflict," and Foner said there was a "distinctive character of American trade unionism."^[89]

The third idea of American exceptionalism, superiority, has been criticized with charges of moral defectiveness and the existence of double standards. In American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (2005), the Canadian commentator Michael Ignatieff treats the idea negatively and identifies three main sub-types: "exemptionalism" (supporting treaties as long as U.S. citizens are exempt from them); "double standards" (criticizing "others for not heeding the findings of international human rights bodies but ignoring what the organizations say of the United States"), and "legal isolationism" (the tendency of U.S. judges to ignore other jurisdictions).^[90]

Exceptionalism as "exemptionalism"

During the

Critics such as Marilyn Young and

Donald E. Pease mocks American exceptionalism as a "state fantasy" and a "myth" in his 2009 book The New American Exceptionalism:^[96] "Pease notes that state fantasies cannot altogether conceal the inconsistencies they mask, showing how such events as the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and the exposure of government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina opened fissures in the myth of exceptionalism."^[96]

The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr argued that the automatic assumption that America acts for the right will bring about moral corruption, although Niebuhr supported America's Cold War policies. His position, "Christian realism," advocated a liberal notion of responsibility that justified interference in other nations.^[97]

Historian Jon Meacham points out examples of leaders that have made both good and bad moral choices, in some cases one person changing a position for better or worse, and in other cases rectifying bad choices made by a predecessor.^[98]

Double standards

U.S. historians like Thomas Bender "try and put an end to the recent revival of American exceptionalism, a defect he esteems to be inherited from the Cold War."

Though the United States has been remarkably democratic, politically stable, and free of war on its soil compared to most European countries, there have been major exceptions, most notably the

The United States military, diplomats, intelligence agencies, and foreign aid have been used to protect democratic regimes in many countries, including many Allies of World War II, First World democracies during the Cold War, and Israel. In its regime change activities, it has also brought democracy to many countries, sometimes by force. These include the governments and protectorates created in areas defeated in World War I, World War II, and the 2003 Iraq War.

The United States has also supported the overthrow of democratically elected governments in pursuit of other objectives, typically economic and anti-communist. These include the

In 1898, Pope Leo XIII denounced what he deemed to be the heresy of Americanism in his encyclical Testem benevolentiae nostrae.^[105] He targeted American exceptionalism in the ecclesiastical domain and argued that it stood in opposition to papal denunciations of modernism.^[106][107] In the late 19th century, there was a tendency for U.S. Catholic clergy to view American society as inherently different from other Christian nations and to argue that the understanding of Church doctrine had to be enlarged in order to encompass the "American Experience," which included greater individualism, tolerance of other religions, and separation of church and state.^[108]

Pre-emptive declinism

Herbert London defined pre-emptive declinism as a postmodern belief "that the United States is not an exceptional nation and is not entitled by virtue of history to play a role on the world stage different from other nations".^[109] London ascribed that view to Paul Krugman and others.^[110] Krugman had written in The New York Times, "We have always known that America's reign as the world's greatest nation would eventually end. However, most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic."^[110]

According to

In his book, The Post-American World, Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria refers to a "Post-American world" that he says "is not about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else."^[113]

Similarities between the U.S. and Europe

In December 2009, historian

The historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto argues that it be commonly thought that all people consider themselves exceptional. In most cases in which the subject has been broached, the similarities between the conflicting parties outweigh the differences. Things such as the "dynamic wealth creation, the democracy, the accessibility of opportunity, the cult of civil liberty, the tradition of tolerance," and what Fernández-Armesto considers evils such as the materialistic economy, the excessive privileges of wealth, and the selective illiberality are standard features in many modern societies. However, he adds, America is made exceptional by the intensity with which those characteristics are concentrated there.^[115]

"America First"

Critics may identify the political slogan "America First" as an apparent manifestation of American exceptionalism. Such critics may, examining American exceptionalism as the most important factor shaping the greater American political identity, further claim that the attitude is a soft power in the United States that disproportionally emphasizes the priority of American interests."^[116]

Effects

Critics of American exceptionalism argue that it has led to some of the expansion that is seen during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Americas.

Madsen also cited Frederick Douglass, a prominent black abolitionist before and during the American Civil War (1861–1865), who argued that the idea of American exceptionalism was absurd because the inherent nature of slavery still existed at the time.^[118]

Critics of American exceptionalism have argued that the bipartisan political class believes that one purpose of the United States is to

References

Bibliography

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• Churchwell, Sarah. Behold, America: The Entangled History of 'America First' and 'the American Dream' (2018). 368 pp. online review
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• Kammen, Michael. "The problem of American exceptionalism: A reconsideration." American Quarterly (1993) 45#1 pp. 1–43. online
• Koh, Harold Hongju. "On American Exceptionalism" 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1479 (2003) online
• Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. W. W. Norton.
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• Lang, Andrew F. A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era (U of North Carolina Press, 2021).
• LeBlanc, Paul and Tim Davenport (eds.), The "American Exceptionalism" of Jay Lovestone and His Comrades, 1929–1940: Dissident Marxism in the United States, Volume 1. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2015.
• Libby, Ronald T., The Church of Woke Vs. American Exceptionalism: The Struggle Over America's Ciivil Religion, 2023.
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• Lipset, Seymour Martin. The First New Nation. Basic Books, 1955.
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• Lloyd, Brian. Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890–1922. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
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• Swirski, Peter. American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History. New York, Routledge (2011)
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• Voss, Kim. The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (1993)
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Primary sources

• Roberts, Timothy, and Lindsay DiCuirci. (Eds). American Exceptionalism. Volumes 1–4. London: Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2012, 1552 pp. A compilation of the primary sources on the subject of American exceptionalism, including pamphlets, sermons, newspaper and magazine articles from colonial period to 1900.

Further reading

• ISBN 9781596982710
• Greg Grandin, "The Strange Career of American Exceptionalism", The Nation, January 2/9, 2017, pp. 22–27.
• Noam Chomsky, "Noam Chomsky on George Orwell, the Suppression of Ideas and the Myth of American Exceptionalism". Democracy Now!. Retrieved June 12, 2020. Included video discusses subject.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to American exceptionalism.

• How the World Sees America – Washington Post Feature
• "The American Creed: Does It Matter? Should It Change?"
• Obama and American exceptionalism – Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
• Obama and the Burden of Exceptionalism –
  WSJ.com
• The right to be different Debate between Grover Norquist and Will Hutton
• Booknotes interview with Seymour Martin Lipset on American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, June 23, 1996.
• American Exceptionalism, American Freedom, by Eric Foner (The Montreal Review, January, 2013)
• American Exceptionalism