When Obama was asked if he believed in “American Exceptionalism,” he responded with a sound byte that’s been played repeatedly on talk radio:
I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
But just what is American Exceptionalism? Google doesn’t help much with this one.
Those who believe America is the same as, or worse than, other nations create a straw-man argument saying that American Exceptionalism means American Perfectionism.
They then show that America has done bad things (such as mistreatment of native Americans) and pretend they’ve disproved exceptionalism. Another straw-man argument I read today was the idea of divine right, which is one of the ideas that the founders of America rebelled against in declaring independence.
“Exceptionalism,” however seems to be a relatively new word, with a rather straight-forward meaning: To believe something is exceptional. Not average. Different from the norm. Exceptions can negative (the late Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was the exception among senators as the only one who was a leader in and recruiter for the Klu Klux Klan, and Bill Clinton is the exception among presidents for endorsing this), and it’s in this negative sense that Obama has often talked about America being exceptionally worse than other countries.
On the other hand, others recognize parts of the history and character of America that make it positively exceptional. In what ways is America positively the exception? Here’s how a few columnists have described it.
- America is the “freest, safest, and prosperous nation in the world.”
- “The belief that America often knows better than the world what is right and wrong.“
- “We’ve turned what was an 18th-century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind’s entire history.“
To sum up:
America has been exceptional and exceptionally good.
Not perfect. Not always good. Exceptionally good. This is an idea shared by Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy and George W. Bush.
John F Kennedy engaged in a space race to prove that America could do what no one had ever done before: land a man on the moon. (Or convince the entire world for generations that they had done it, which would be no small feat.)
America has been the front-runner with a far lead in space-age technology. We didn’t do it all alone, but we lead the way. The entire world, not just America has benefited from the technology developed for space travel like scratch-proof lenses to water filters.
Through American innovation, hard work, and cooperation, we’ve been to the moon and Buzz Aldrin is ready for Mars!
That’s why I was disappointed to read about Obama’s new orders to NASA:
- NASA’s primary mission includes reaching out to “Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering”
- “[T]he United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help.”
While the condescending idea of NASA helping Muslim nations with their self-esteem has gotten a lot of attention, the second point quoted from the end of the article is sadly revealing.
In light of whatJFK did in this regard and the daring history of NASA, it seems like the denial or ashamedness of American exceptionalism.
It sounds like “We can’t do anything better than anyone else,” but we’ve already proved that we can.
The message from Obama is really:
“We have dramatically helped the world by being exceptional, but we’re sorry, and we won’t do it again.”
