American Exceptionalism

We have a republican candidate who has written a book on American exceptionalism. We have another leading Republican candidate whose religion actually teaches that America's destiny is to rule the world with the most powerful military. And conservatives have been pounding President Obama from day one about not asserting that America is exceptional.

As I've written before, American exceptionalism was a concept brought to you by Karl Marx. Karl Marx raised the question before the Socialist International in the mid-19th century why America had no powrful tradition of socialism. The question was not abut whether we were better than other countries or not. But why after the European Revolutions in 1848, America seemed pretty immune.

American exceptionalism became a doctrine with Ronald Reagan who described America as " a City on the Hill". And it became theologized by George W. Bush, who said America " was chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world." I even heard Howard Dean yesterday talk about ways in which America was exceptional because of its founding documents. So the idea is bipartisan.

Charles Blow in Saturday's "New York Times" wrote an op-ed titled "Decline of American Exceptionalism". Blow bases his column on the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, which asked Americans if they agreed that ,even though we aren't perfect, ur culture is superior. Only 49% agreed. This was down from the 60% registered in 2002, the first time the question was asked.

What is so interesting about the study is the gap between those 50 and older and the younger generation. 60% of those over 50 believe America is superior, while only 37% of young people. What Blow points out is that our young people are less enthusiastic than their counterparts in Germany, Spain,and Britain. The exception is France.

What I found interesting in the multi-national study is that people withouit college degrees here and in Europe feel their cultures are superior at a far greater rate than those with college degrees. This might explain the natural appeal to nationalism by politicians trying to get the vote of the uneducated.

Another interesting fact is that Germany has roughly higher scores on saying they are superior to the United States. And these scores reveal very little slippage between generational groups. However, their college educated population rates Germany superior only with 25%.

Blow cites other polls about the pessimism of Americans. A Time Magazine/SRBI poll conducted last month showed that 71% of Americans believed that our position in the world has been on the decline for the last few years. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this month believe that the United States has started a longer-term decline where the U.S. is no longer the leading country in the world."

The conclusion by Blow is that we have to invest in the country in order to maintain its greatness and bring it back from decline. It's a nice pep talk and I agree with his points. But it seems to me that we have to re-think our own role in the world as other countries economically develop. There is a ruinous nostalgia for a unipolar world, which only happened for a few short years. But you will not hear that in this year's elections. Instead, you will hear alot of rhetoric about restoring our power in the world.