I don't deny the fact that exceptional people built this nation. That is without question. I'm proud of that. However, this idea that Americans of today are more exceptional than other people in this world is such non sense. Stupid, entitled, materialistic, and arrogant is what Americans are.
My god, just look at the Tea Party. There are foreigners who admire America, but when they look at the Tea Party, they just scoff or laugh. Tea baggers, in terms of intelligence, are much stupider than the average person the world over. They are also selfish, arrogant and racist. I mean this is the movement who bitches about government spending but also insists on ridiculous tax cuts. How can you respect people who don't understand the concept of revenue?
And yes, I do think there are some great Americans living today. I just don't think being American has anything to do with it.
In terms of citizens, America is not at all superior to the rest of the world. Let's stop pretending that it is.
American Exceptionalism is just another generic catch phrase that can mean whatever you want.
Ah, like "Progressive"? Or even "Liberal" on these pages? So what, if anything, does it mean to you?
It's not a term I use or embrace but for some clue what we're talking about here's some disturbing description from our rhetorical Commons (Wiki):
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many
neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense.
[4][5] To them, the U.S. is like the biblical "
City upon a Hill"—a phrase evoked by British colonists to North America as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.
[6]
...American exceptionalism was tied to the idea of
Manifest Destiny,[18] a term used by
Jacksonian Democrats in the 1840s to promote the acquisition of much of what is now the Western United States (the
Oregon Territory, the
Texas Annexation, and the
Mexican Cession of California and New Mexico and adjacent areas).
....
Historian Dorothy Ross discussed three currents in American exceptionalism:
- Protestant American Christians believed American progress would lead to the Christian Millennium.[20]
- American writers also linked their history to the development of liberty in Anglo-Saxon England, even back to the traditions of the Teutonic tribes that conquered the western Roman empire.[21]
.... Parts of American exceptionalism can be traced to
American Puritan roots.
... One Puritan leader,
John Winthrop, metaphorically expressed this idea as a "
City upon a Hill"—that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the world.
[32][33] This metaphor is often used by proponents of exceptionalism. The Puritans' deep moralistic values remained part of the national identity of the United States for centuries, remaining influential to the present day.
Peggy Noonan, an American political pundit, wrote in
The Wall Street Journal that "America is not exceptional because it has long attempted to be a force for good in the world, it attempts to be a force for good because it is exceptional".
--- much more at
"American Exceptionlism" link
As you already noted, it's meant many things to many sources over time, some positive and some negative, including simply the "exceptional" (at the time) Liberal idea of government by the People replacing the traditional government by the Élite. But the worrisome cherrypicked negative aspects above, which sadly seem to be the more contemporary descriptions, seem to have turned that definition around 180 degrees, from "cast off the "Elite" to "We
ARE the Ëlite!" It would seem, at least as some use it, the term has come to embrace that which it formerly despised.
Much like some here do with the word "Liberal".
Funny how these things evolve.
Good to see not everyone lets the point sail blithely over their head. Well said.
