‘American Exceptionalism’: An idea in decline

Belief in “American Exceptionalism” is rapidly fading away, said Aaron Blake in WashingtonPost.com. As recently as 2002, 60 percent of U.S. citizens surveyed said they agreed with the statement, “Our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others.” But with our economy in tatters, our debt rising, and our foreign interventions producing frustration, Americans’ belief in our innate superiority has fallen to 49 percent, below a majority for the first time. In fact, we’re now only a few points ahead of Germany (47 percent) and Spain (44 percent). “We are settling into a dangerous national pessimism,” said Charles Blow in The New York Times. It’s even deeper among Americans younger than 30—just 37 percent of whom believe they live in the world’s best nation. That should send a wake-up call to our political leaders, who should “stop snuggling up to nostalgia” for a time when the U.S. economy and military dominated the world, and get back to making hard choices and investing in our future. “You choose greatness; it doesn’t choose you.”

The public may be disenchanted, said John Gans in The Atlantic, but this is “springtime for the idea of American Exceptionalism” among our political class. The Republican candidates for president have all pledged their passionate commitment to the concept that America has a unique, divinely decreed role as a global leader. And while it may come as a surprise to Republican voters, President Obama “has talked more about American Exceptionalism than Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush combined.” But what Republicans remember, said Richard W. Stevenson in NYTimes.com, is that Obama once said, sure, he thought the U.S. was exceptional, but the Brits and Greeks think they’re exceptional, too. That might not satisfy voters longing for a return to the America they once knew.

Like it or not, said James Kitfield in National Journal, America’s half century of world dominance is now over. With China and India ascendant, wealth and power are passing “from the developed West to the developing East.” The Romans once thought they were “exceptional” too, said Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com, as did the British at the height of their own empire. Such pride invariably presages a fall. You’d think that American conservatives, mindful of what the Bible teaches about “the sin of pride,” would be particularly wary of “self-proclaimed historical uniqueness.”

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