By Steve Hynd
There's a new Gallup poll out today getting lots of attention from the Right because it gives them an excuse to bash President Obama.
No-one from any part of the political spectrum would be surprised by this. Americans are told from birth that their country is the greatest - just as are Scots, Frenchmen, Italians and many others. It's no surprise that many believe it. Obama acknowledged this fact in Strasbourg in April 2009, saying "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," - and that's where the Right has stepped in to conflate acknowledging other nations' patriotism with not believing in his own country.
That Gallup poll today shows the effect of a year and a half of wormtongue suggestion in the media:
Conservatives intend to make this issue one of the key ones in the run up to 2012. It is to be "the battle cry from a new front in the ongoing culture wars." With Democrats widely sharing their view that America is indeed exceptional, a "greatest country", they'll have to work hard to associate the idea that it isn't with Obama specifically though. So far, they've had a free run - the White House hasn't really pushed back against their rhetoric yet.
Yet on a wider scale, might it be that the reason so many Americans think their nation is exceptional is because they have no method of comparison? Passport ownership in the U.S. is lower by a goodly margin than any other Western nation. America used to be the industrial powerhouse of the world but has been surpassed by Asia. It's used to be the world's financial heart though that too is changing. America is notable among the richest nations for its lack of universal healthcare, lack of education standards, lack of an adequate social safety net, it's "I'm alright, Jack" attitude to its own poorest - but how many really want America to be exceptional in that way? America is still by far the most powerful nation militarily - is that the only criteria left for calling America the "greatest nation" and if so where does that take American policy? A previous poll in early December showed that three quarters of American's thought their nations' exceptional status was slipping and felt something should be done to preserve it. Now, the current poll shows a purality saying America should be a world leader. By what methods?
I repeat - by what methods should America be a leader? If all that is left is a military hammer....well, we get Iraq and Afghanistan and the bleeding away of lifeblood as well as billions of needed dollars.
Conservatives are well aware of the internal contradictions of belief in American exceptionalism. They're left apealing to a nebullious and utterly un-factual exceptionalism of belief. David Azerrad of the neocon Heritage Foundation writes today:
Since the numbers don�t lie, what�s all the big fuss about then? America�s number one in philanthropy, but Japan has the longest life expectancy and Luxembourg the highest per capita GDP. Aren�t we all statistically exceptional in one way or another?
To really understand what sets America apart, we need to go beyond numbers to examine the heart and soul of the nation: the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. Unlike other nations that derive their meaning and purpose from some unifying quality�an ethnic character, a common religion, a shared history, an ancestral land�America is a country dedicated to to the universal ideas of equality and liberty. The truths we hold to be self-evident apply to all men�not just all Americans.
As G.K. Chesteron noted: �America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.� As such, there is an American Dream�but no French, Greek or Australian Dreams.
In the most fundamental sense, America is an exceptional nation not because of what it does�but because of what it believes.
It's simple revisionism, untrue on even a cursory examination. One might as well say that France is the only nation to have ever re-invented itself for it's Dream: the universal truths of "Libert��lit�fraternit�uot; are on every coin, a revolution was fought to preserve them and they are enshrined in the French Constitution just as firmly as Liberty and Equality are enshrined in the American one. Every Frenchmen believes that triptych just as fervently as any American believes their own duo. One could even argue that, by leaving off "fraternit�uot; - brotherhood, the notion of a social compact - America's Founders made a grave mistake which allowed the I'm Alright, Jack culture of modern Republicanism to rise and flourish.
No, the simple truth is that Americans believe their nation is exceptional because the are told from birth that it is and because they want to. There is no factual or moral reason for upholding that belief, any more than there is for any other nation on earth - but unfortunately America still has the ability to uphold its belief in it's own superiority at gunpoint.
Update: Sully is wondering about the decline of America too.
This is just good old fashioned tribalism which you can find anywhere. No where is it greater than in Russia.
ReplyDeleteActually, I was born and grew up in Italy, and I don't remember being told that Italians are exceptional. I also lived in the UK and in Argentina, and I never had the impression the locals thought themselves exceptional as such.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the fact that 80% Americans think they are exceptional makes of America an exceptional country, just not in the way it thinks it is.
I got a kick-out of Azerand pulling out the old G.K. chestnut because the beginning of the paragraph from which the bromide quote is pulled goes:
ReplyDelete"It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth, and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed."
G. K. Chesterton P. 6
What I saw in America
I also find amusing that the keyword exceptionalism was not an original American coinage:
"Given the significance of the keyword �exceptionalism� within the field of American studies, it is ironic that the word is not originally an �American� coinage. Joseph Stalin devised the phrase �the heresy of American Exceptionalism� in 1929 to justify his excommunication of the Lovestoneites from the ranks of the Communist International (J. Alexander 1981; Tyrell 1991). The Lovestoneites were a faction whose leader, Jay Lovestone, had already broken with the American Communist Party over what was then referred to as the national question, specifically the question of whether and how to work with established U.S. trade unions.
Donald E. Pease P. 108
Keywords for American Cultural Studies
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
� 2007 by New York University
Just a few more I like:
Richard Hofstadter: "It has been our fate as a nation not to have an ideology, but to be one." Think he was referring to Americanism - emphasize on the "ism", maybe exceptional or not.
and
Seymour Martin Lipset from his book American Exceptionalism:
"Americanism, as different people have pointed out, is an "ism" or ideology in the same way that communism or fascism or liberalism are isms."
Interesting line at Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteThe term "American exceptionalism" itself was first used by members of the American Communist Party in the 1920s, in reference to their belief that "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions, America might for a long while avoid the crisis that must eventually befall every capitalist society."
It may once have been a valid idea. But the three qualities cited -- natural resources, industrial capacity and the absence of class distinctions -- are all eroding even as we speak. The clock is ticking.