Exceptionalism in America

Marco Rubio, mouthpiece supreme of the Trump administration, not including the Great Orange King himself, spoke at the Munich Security Conference last weekend. It was a doozy of a speech, probably meant to deflect attention from the Epstein Files, which threatened to overwhelm the King on his gold-plated throne on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Here is Rubio in charm-mode:

“Our story began with an Italian explorer whose adventure into the great unknown to discover a new world brought Christianity to the Americas – and became the legend that defined the imagination of a our pioneer nation. Our first colonies were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the language we speak but the whole of our political and legal system. Our frontiers were shaped by Scots-Irish – that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong. Our great midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse – and by the way, dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer.”

He dwells in is talk on American “exceptionalism” – the idea that we as Americans are different from other countries, indeed better. It’s an old notion that appeals to our leaders, a way of pumping up the audience at hand, who like to be told that they’re well above average, and that nothing in the world quite compares...

Numerous red states have introduced bills to change the framework of AP history courses to emphasize the idea of exceptionalism and downplay aspects of American history that don’t seem, well, exceptional. Why teach kids about what we did to the Native American population? Why linger on slavery and its discontents? Can’t we just celebrate our good stuff?

The topic of American exceptionalism has been looked at by a few good historians. One of the best books is by Seymour Martin Lipset: American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (Norton, 1996). Lipset identifies five features central to the American value system: liberty, egalitarianism, populism, individualism, and laissez-faire. He suggests that we look at most trends in American history through the prism of these concepts, and – to an extent – this is a useful exercise.

The United States is remarkable, being a nation founded on a set of Enlightenment ideals as expressed by the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution – one of many written documents that King Donald ignores and probably doesn’t have the skills to read in any case. Readers at the fourth grade-level have a hard time with such documents.

The inconvenient truth for Trump and the Bobbleheads in his cabinet and, indeed, in his party generally, is that we are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we’ve managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion, and in theory values equal rights for all citizens. At certain times in history – World War Two is an example – we have joined forces with those on the side of freedom, willingly sacrificing our young men and women in a deadly war that secured the defeat of fascism.

Yet our history is, like every national story, a complicated one, and the American public deserves a balanced view. Native Americans died in massive numbers (mostly from diseases carried to these shores by the earliest European invaders) in the years after Britain and Spain (and a few others) invaded these shores, bringing guns to do the dirty work of clearing the land of “restless natives.” In the nineteenth century, the West was “won” at considerable expense to those who lived on the land. Americans need to know about the Trial of Tears, Wounded Knee, and other sad episodes in American history. This is part of our story.

We also need to talk openly about slavery as often as possible. In doing so, it’s useful to look at the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and see that over twelve million Africans were kidnapped and shipped to the New World between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The vast bulk of slaves, in fact, went to the Caribbean and South America. Slavery, wherever it occurred, was a brutal system, and it set in motion a great deal of bad karma, not helped by the era known as Reconstruction, when – in effect – aspects of slavery continued under the guise of freedom for a long time. (I recommend Eric Foner’s great book on the subject.)

But the United States has worked hard to recognize and right its wrongs, passing major legislation on Civil Rights over the years. It’s a long and winding road, as the Beatles put it. Trump, unfortunately, has been doing his best to roll back our necessary progress on Civil Rights. He’s a downright racist, of course, as seen by his recent video depicting the Obamas as apes. How does he continue in office? Any civilized party would have demanded his resignation over this single offence on the spot.

As for America’s military adventures, there are many wrinkles. The American Revolution remains an inspiring if complicated moment in our history, as Ken Burns has recently demonstrated in a marvelous TV series. But the Mexican-American War was a disgrace, “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation,” as President U.S. Grant said in his memoirs. It was this war that (in part) caused Henry David Thoreau to refuse to pay his taxes.

World War Two, as noted above, was an American triumph of will and courage.

Yet the Korean War remains confusing, and students should consider its odd dimensions. Vietnam and Iraq are also complicated, yet it’s important for students to know that our interventions in both countries led to a great deal of death and destruction. At the very least, 133,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of our “war of choice” in Iraq. This number should never be forgotten, as it set in motion a wave of violence that continues to this day, and it helps to explain anti-American feeling in that region generally.

In Iran, with battleships nearby, we stand on the brink of another “war of choice,” an exceptionally stupid one. If only we could learn from past mistakes – not something that we seem capable of doing.

Now that’s exceptional!