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Amerocentrism redirects here. For the generalised topic, see Ethnocentrism

American exceptionalism is the ethnocentric idea that the United States and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom. Political science defines it as presence of unique traits in the United States, such a tradition of individualism, the failure of socialist parties, and high levels of religiosity that do not correlate with national characteristics in communist countries.

The term "American Exceptionalism", said to have been coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, has historically referred to the perception that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, and distinctive political and religious institutions.¹

Some interpret the term to indicate a moral superiority of Americans, while others use it to refer to the American concept as itself an exceptional ideal, which may or may not always be upheld by the actual people and government of the nation. Dissenters claim "American exceptionalism" is common ethnocentrism and little more than crude propaganda, that in essence is a justification for a America-centered view of the world that is inherently chauvinistic and jingoistic in nature. Historians and political scientists may use the term to simply refer to some case of American uniqueness without implying that an innate superiority of Americans resulted in the development of that uniqueness.

Causes in their historical context

American exceptionalism is often described as a term for a popularized cultural mythos that delivers a benevolent explanation for why and how American society succeeded. In essence it claims that a "deliberate choice" of "freedom over tyranny" was properly made, and this was the central reason for why American society developed "successfully." Many look skeptically upon this view as simply another example of a tendency within local societies to develop their own natural national folklore. With this opinion, American exceptionalism is one of many nationalist exceptionalisms.

The origins of the concept and the usage of the term have changed as the the United States has changed as described below.

Puritan Roots

The earliest ideologies of English colonists in the country were the protestants of the Puritan settlers of New England. Many Puritans with Arminian leanings embraced a middle ground between strict predestination and a looser theology of Divine Providence. They believed God had made a covenant with their people and had chosen them to lead the other nations of the earth. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, expressed this idea with the metaphor of a "City on a Hill" - that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the world. His metaphor is often used by proponents of exceptionalism.

Although the Puritan worldview of New England itself changed dramatically, and although different Protestant traditions were strong in the Middle Colonies and the South, the Puritans' deep moralistic values remained part of the national identity for centuries and arguably remain so today. American exceptionalism is now primarily secular in nature, a portion of it stems from America's Puritan roots. The Religious Right, including evangelical and fundamentalist groups that have a heritage similar to Puritanism, currently are major proponents of exceptionalism.

The American Revolution and Republicanism

Another event often cited as a milestone in the history of American Exceptionalism is the American Revolutionary War. The intellectuals of the Revolution (Thomas Paine's Common Sense is the best example) for the first time expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land, a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity that was being abused by the British mother country they had outgrown. These sentiments laid the intellectual foundations for the Revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism and was closely tied to republicanism, the belief that sovereignty belonged to the people, not to an hereditary ruling class.

Immigration and the availability of resources

Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States during a time of unprecedented growth. The United States was often seen as exceptional because of unlimited immigration policies and the vast resources of land and land incentivization programs during much of the 19th century. Even though those programs are for the most part in the distant past, popular attitudes within the United States often link patriotism and nationalism to them; many hold the view that the country is unique today because of what was done back then. Others counter that many nations throughout history have had unlimited immigration and incentives for land exploitation until it is no longer of economic benefit.

Some associate the phrase with the term Manifest Destiny which was often employed to assert a divine right to subjugate indigenous peoples, particularly Native Americans. Some associate the phrase with rampant materialism and consumerism. The unprecedented availability of natural resources and the drive to utilize them are the root causes of American exceptionalism for those who hold these views.

Political stability

The fact that the same form of government under the same constitution has been in place for nearly all of the nation's history (except for 1776 to 1789) is viewed as exceptional by many. However, this fact may also be viewed as an explanation for the existence of exceptionalism. The mythology of American culture is inextricably linked to its government because the culture lacks the experience of other governmental forms. Some argue that this linkage makes Americans more vulnerable than others to positivist propaganda about who they are (and who they should be) and that this linkage is a root cause of American imperialism in addition to an important cause of exceptionalist views.

The Cold War

American exceptionalism during the Cold War was often cast by the mass media as the American Way of Life personifying liberty engaged in a battle with tyranny as represented by communism. These attributions made use of the residual sentiment that had originally formed to differentiate the United States from the 19th century European powers and had been applied multiple times in multiple contexts before it was used to differentiate capitalist democracies (with the United States as a leader) from communist nations.

Arguments for American exceptionalism

Those who believe in American exceptionalism argue that there are many ways that the United States clearly differs from the European world that it emerged from, as well as other countries in the globe.

Republican ethos and ideas about nationhood

Proponents of American exceptionalism argue that the U.S. is unique in that it was founded on a set of republican ideals, rather than on a common heritage, ethnicity, or ruling elite. In the formulation of President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, America is a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". In this view, being American is inextricably connected with loving and defending freedom and equal opportunity. As such, America has often acted to promote these ideals abroad, most notably in the First and Second World Wars and in the Cold War. Critics argue that American policy in these conflicts was more motivated by economic or military self-interest; most observers admit both the idealistic and the self-interested motivations, to varying degrees.

The United States's polity have been characterized since their inception by system of federalism and checks and balances, which were designed to prevent any person, faction, region, or government organ from becoming too powerful. Some American exceptionalists argue that this system and the accompanying distrust of concentrated power prevent the United States from suffering a "tyranny of the majority", and also that it allows citizens to live in a locality whose laws reflect that citizen's values. A consequence of this political system is that laws can vary greatly across the country, with some states' laws being more progressive and other states' laws being more conservative than the values of the nation as a whole. For instance, the rather libertarian state of Vermont legalized homosexual civil unions, a rather progressive move, before homosexual sex was decriminalized (by autocratic, not democratic action) in several other more conservative states. Critics of American exceptionalism maintain that this system merely replaces the power of the national majority over states with power by the states over local entities. On balance, the American political system arguably allows more local dominance but prevents more national dominance than does a more unitary system.

Opportunity and meritocracy

The United States of America is nicknamed the "Land of Opportunity". It has traditionally had less rigid social classes than other nations, and has no system of nobility. Americans have tended to believe that a strong work ethic and personal fortitude is the key to success, rather than being born to the right family or making the right friends. Critics argue that while America may have no formal aristocracy, one does exist in practice, and while it may have as part of its national character a myth of meritocracy, privilege and social stratification are just as strong there as anywhere else.

Political rights

A common claim is that the United States is unique in that it has from its founding guaranteed political civil rights to its citizens – such as freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the presumption of innocence, and that respect for these rights is a uniquely strong component of American political culture. Critics of this position argue that these rights are not especially American features anymore, as all modern Western countries have such rights presently, and that some of these civil rights have been granted unequally or late during America's history (for instance, some US states had Jim Crow laws that prevented suffrage among African-Americans until the 1960s; the Comstock Law criminalized speech dealing with contraception).

Frontier spirit

Proponents of American exceptionalism often claim that the "American spirit" or the "American identity" was created at the frontier (following Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis), where rugged and untamed conditions gave birth to American national vitality. However, critics of this view believe that American expansion westwards in some ways was more a conquest of Native Americans than a cultivation of wilderness.

The American Revolution

The American Revolutionary War is the claimed ideological territory of "exceptionalists". The intellectuals of the Revolution, such as Thomas Paine, arguably shaped America into a nation fundamentally different from its European ancestry, creating modern democracy as we know it.

Arguments against American exceptionalism

Opponents of the notion of American exceptionalism argue that, while all societies differ in their history and social structures, the notion that the United States is uniquely virtuous overstates the importance of differences between American and other present-day First World countries. It ignores aspects of American history and society that contradict ideals of freedom and equality, such as slavery, segregation of schools in the South, the annexation by force of the Hawaiian islands, McCarthyism, the poverty and sometimes ghettoization of millions of citizens, the inequality of health care and education between rich and poor, and the genocide and displacement of the Native American population. Proponents of American exceptionalism counter that these examples indeed show the failure of America to live up to its putative ideals. But actions such as these are hardly unique to American history, and that on the strength of those ideals, later generations of Americans have admitted these errors and have made attempts to redress them, through programs such as affirmative action.

A typical argument against the American exceptionalist position is to identify positive qualities in specific other countries that correspond to allegedly unique qualities of the United States. These arguments are seldom convincing to proponents, who reply that the historical uniqueness of the United States is the result of a combination of many factors and not captured by particular aspects of the national character.

A further argument which can support an exceptionalist view, but not an innate exceptionalist view, is that accidents of geography (limited borders and a growing internal market), history (avoidance of the worst effects of 19th- and 20th-century warfare) and natural resources (for example, gold, oil, arable land, and fish stocks) have given the US an economic boost in the short term. This advantage can now be seen diminishing slightly but increasingly due to the effects of globalization, which has a mitigating influence on geographic differences.

The article "Canadian and American politics compared" explores this issue by contrasting a nation often considered similar to the United States that has had a quite different history.

Resources

External links

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"The American Creed: Does It Matter? Should It Change?" "Summary: Seymour Martin Lipset explains why the United States is exceptional. Michael J. Sandel blames its individualistic tradition for the country's ills and says America should return to the New England town square. But it isn't exceptional, and it shouldn't return." [1]

The right to be different Debate between Grover Norquist and Will Hutton

The religious character of American patriotism By Frederick Edwords executive director of the American Humanist Association and managing editor of The Humanist.

Footnotes

Note 1: Foreword: on American Exceptionalism; Symposium on Treaties, Enforcement, and U.S. Sovereignty, Stanford Law Review, May 1, 2003, Pg. 1479

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 :''Amerocentrism redirects here. For the generalised topic, see [[Ethnocentrism]]''
-'''American exceptionalism''' is the [[ethnocentrism|ethnocentic]] idea that the [[United States]] and the [[American people]] hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom. Political science defines it as presence of unique traits in the United States, such a tradition of [[individualism]], the failure of [[socialist]] parties, and high levels of religiosity that do not correlate with national characteristics in [[communist]] countries.
+'''American exceptionalism''' is the [[ethnocentrism|ethnocentric]] idea that the [[United States]] and the [[American people]] hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom. Political science defines it as presence of unique traits in the United States, such a tradition of [[individualism]], the failure of [[socialist]] parties, and high levels of religiosity that do not correlate with national characteristics in [[communist]] countries.
 The term "American Exceptionalism", said to have been coined by [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] in 1831, has historically referred to the perception that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, and distinctive political and religious institutions.<sup id="fn_1_back">[[#fn_1|1]]</sup>