We can’t be called the richest anymore because we’re deeply in debt and our per capita income ranks ninth or tenth in the world behind countries like Australia and the United Arab Emirates. We can’t be called the happiest; a perusal of various international polls shows the U.S. not even in the top 10 for happy citizens - it seems the happiest people live in northern Europe. We can arguably still be called the most free, but that distinction is subjective – partially for the happy reason that much of the rest of the world has become more free than previously, and partially for the unhappy reason that our liberties have been compromised over many decades.
The United States can claim to be home to exceptional innovation, but other parts of the world are quickly catching up. We can clearly claim an exceptional military, but I don’t think the ability to beat up other countries is what we mean by American Exceptionalism. Anyway, our military power is too often like a man using a shotgun to defend his home from ants; he can destroy many ants, but the shotgun will never make him safe from the little buggers getting into his pantry. There are many other ways, good and bad, that we are exceptional: we are exceptionally diverse; we are exceptionally generous when disaster strikes any part of the world, we are exceptionally obese, we are exceptional consumers, we live in exceptionally large homes… on and on; but none of these answer the question satisfactorily.
If American Exceptionalism exists, the roots of it must be found in our history, so I chose to ask myself a different question: “Was America exceptional?” To this I can shout a loud and proud “YES!” Our country was born a glowing gem on the world’s landscape. It was “conceived in liberty”, on the notion of a government of equally applied law rather than a hereditary aristocracy. This was indeed unique in the world at the time.
Long before Independence America was exceptional for its space, its opportunity, and its freedom. Its people were exceptional in their hardiness, their love of liberty; and because of generations of Bible reading, Americans were unique in their literacy. Prior to the Revolution virtually all men and most women in New England could read and write and the rest of the colonies were not far behind. At this same time literacy among men in France was about 50% and the same in the English countryside though the English cities could boast closer to 70%. And Americans read much more than their Bibles, they read newspapers that reprinted the political and philosophical debates from both sides of the Atlantic, and they read pamphlets by the hundreds on the same subjects. Since the “Glorious Revolution” in the late 17th century England was arguably the freest country in Europe, though still subject to an oligarchic aristocracy, but the colonies in North America were an ocean removed from the center of authority and the average American colonist was very aware of his freedom and he cherished it.
Americans were exceptional in land ownership. The average citizen in Europe had no hope of owning land, but a large percentage of Americans did, or could. How can we overestimate the effects on a citizenry of land owners standing in their fields thinking, “This land is mine!” compared to tenant farmers or slum dwellers in Europe. Further, owning land meant being privileged with suffrage – taking part in the governing process, so Americans were unique in their political involvement which most took very seriously; Americans were exceptionally engaged.
Early Americans were exceptional because they thought of themselves as exceptional. The New England descendants of the Puritan Calvinistic believers in predestination firmly believed that America and Americans held a special place in God’s Great Plan, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania believed that God had provided their part of America as a haven for the religiously oppressed. By the time of the Revolution these attitudes in a general way had spread throughout the colonies. Americans believed in American Exceptionalism before there was a United States of America, and believing it made them want to live up to it. This may be the primary explanation for the willingness of so many to suffer the depravations of the Continental Army in the darkest, hungriest days of the Revolutionary War.
The eighteenth century was called the “Age of Enlightenment” when thinkers and philosophers throughout the western world challenged intertwined political and religious systems that had been in place for centuries. These philosophers developed concepts that can be summed up in five simple statements: All humans are born with equal rights; reason is superior to dogma; ones method of worship is a private matter; government and religion should be separate; and people are capable of self government. Our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, gave the liberty loving philosophy of the Enlightenment a unique living laboratory to prove its value, and the result was indeed exceptional, as were the amazing people that made it all happen.
For a century or more America was an exceptional place of opportunity. There was always more land in the west for those hardy and courageous enough to claim it, and every man had equal opportunity to apply his mind and his hard work toward making himself whatever he was capable of becoming. It’s difficult for Americans today to understand how unique and wonderful that was.
The land is all claimed now, and far too much regulation and taxation has eroded opportunities for the individual entrepreneur, but still America draws emigrants from around the world because the economic environment created by two centuries of freedom still shines of liberty and opportunity in countries stuck in oligarchy or those whose pendulum has swung past liberty into the injustices of socialism. So I’ve answered my original question: America is still exceptional, but we cannot perpetually claim exceptionalism because of the accomplishments of our parents and grandparents.
The generation of Americans before mine was so exceptional that they helped save the world; mine started out in confused anti-establishment, pleasure-above-all activism and then slid into decades of political apathy bringing America into danger of being swept along with the world’s collective pendulum. Recent re-involvement and self-education by a significant segment of the population is heartening, but so far it’s only a beginning, and we still suffer from too many Americans not understanding our exceptional history, or caring. I don’t know if a generation hence we will still have a legitimate claim to American Exceptionalism.
Our Founders and Framers had no desire for America to remain the exception in an otherwise despotic world. They hoped and predicted that other countries would join us in greatness, in liberty, and in our experiment in self government; they believed in the inalienable rights of all people, not just Americans. They did not fear foreign power as much as they feared internal complacency that would allow our government to do what unchecked governments naturally do, grow and amass power. The story of the world and of America since their time has exceeded both their greatest hopes and their greatest fears, but through it all America has remained exceptional.
No comments:
Post a Comment