ISI Faculty Resource Center

Among the possible explanations for why a significant number of Americans do not believe that America is exceptional, you list the American people's ignorance of their country's noble origins. I would tend to agree with this with a strong qualification. I am often astounded by what students do not know about the political history of their country, especially prior to the twentieth century, and most especially the American Founding. But this ignorance is shared by both the least motivated students and the most intelligent, intellectually hungry students. This indicates to me that their ignorance is not willful. The blame falls on their prior teachers and their teaching colleges that prepared them for elementary, intermediate and high school teaching. I would suggest that the probable source of this ignorance is the principled choices of these teachers. They do not see anything exceptional or noble about America's origins, so why teach it? From their principled point of view, the worthwhile lesson to teach about America's origins is that they are ignoble, not noble. This work, in my view, probably more accounts for this Pew poll than any other factor.

I recently read Senator Jon Kyl's "Safeguarding American Exceptionalism" in Teaching America: The Case for Civic Education and it affirms both the post and comment above. One of his major points: if young people do not learn their country's history, specifically the Founding and its principles, "they will be citizens only in the technical, legal sense...true citizenship is about understanding, believing in, and uniting around the country's first principles." In order for the United States to remain successful, we need to remind American citizens what has made it exceptional. Indeed, that this government was formed (not by accident or force) by the people, embodied the principle of natural rights and redefined the purpose of government. The best way to pass this on is undoubtedly in the classroom. Though how we go about it is a bit more difficult question to answer.

This post provides three forthright arguments for American exceptionalism. I would press, however, for a little more clarity in the precise meaning of "exceptionalism." Construed narrowly, it just means something like "different." By this definition, the three arguments make a strong case that the US is indeed different from the rest of the world (at least if one takes all three arguments together, since there are plenty of other countries that can claim to be founded on religious principles, for example, but few that can meet the author's three criteria).

But if one defines "exceptionalism" more ambitiously, so that it's synonymous with "superior," the argument gets a little murky. It's hard to argue with the proposition that Americans know too little about their history and ought to learn more about it. But to suggest that America today is superior to all other countries of the world because of its character more than two centuries ago is something of a stretch. Would it not be more straightforward to make an argument for America's present-day exceptionalism by reference to the country's present-day qualities? Moreover, to suggest that the religious nature of the American founding makes the country superior to other nations raises questions about one's definition of "superior."

In a spirit of cordiality, all of this is to say that the author has sketched an argument that may appeal to the readers of this blog, but it needs further development to appeal to those outside these virtual precincts.

The last post is an apt one. I had always thought exceptional as different rather than superior. However, there are some conservatives, like neo-conservatives, who do equate exceptional as superior. In fact, today the political discourse of America being exceptional is often used with this neo-conservative meaning, with which I personally disagree and ultimately is harmful to the republic.

Is Gerson Morino-Riano serious?

While undoubtedly there are meaningful defenses of American exceptionalism, this is most certainly not one of them. It reads like it was written by Stephen Colbert.