It’s time to kick the arrogance of ‘American exceptionalism’ to curb

By David McElroy · September 24, 2011

For some people, Americans are best represented by a hero such as Captain America. For others, we’re best represented by a doofus such as Homer Simpson. The truth is somewhere in between.

It’s self-evident to me that people are pretty much the same all over the world. Some are good. Some are bad. Most are in between. Some cultures are sicker than others — and I wonder frequently about ours — but you can’t really say that one is better than the rest.

That’s right. “American exceptionalism” is pure fiction today, even if there might have been a bit of truth when Alexis de Tocqueville dreamed up the concept in the early 19th century. His idea — that America was somehow different and better than any other country ever before — led to the imperial idea of Manifest Destiny and gave generations of Americans the dangerous fairy tale that they were superior to everyone else. (It’s interesting to note that the phrase “American exceptionalism” was coined by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as a derisive term.)

This ingrained cultural arrogance has led to the U.S. government spending the last hundred years (and more) running around the world hypocritically telling other people how to run their affairs — and backing up the “advice” with guns. When Ron Paul recently tried to explain that to people in a Republican presidential debate, he was booed and Rick Santorum jumped in to offer the conventional wisdom:

“We are not being attacked, and we were not attacked, because of our actions. We were attacked … because we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the Jihadists. And they want to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for, and we stand for American exceptionalism, we stand for freedom and opportunity for everybody around the world.”

Paul corrected Santorum:

“As long as this country follows that idea, we’re going to be under a lot of danger. This idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that ‘we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment, and you have been bombing…at the same time you have been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for ten years….’”

It’s arrogance to pretend that U.S. government actions haven’t laid the groundwork for what has gone on in the last 10 years. When we see our country being attacked, the natural question is why it’s happening. The truth is exactly what Paul outlined. But there’s one thing that keeps neoconservatives from seeing this. They have an ingrained belief in American exceptionalism, so they invent the absurd fiction that the Muslims simply decided to hate us because “we stand for freedom and opportunity.”

The Americans who have died in terror attacks didn’t deserve it in any way. The people responsible for the attacks were the people who carried out those attacks. They bear direct responsibility, and they should. What they’ve done is evil. But they wouldn’t hate us if it weren’t for things that the government claiming to speak in our names has been doing to their people for decades. The majority in this country allowed the government to do things in their name which they didn’t understand — and they didn’t understand the enemies they were making by allowing it.

In a very different context, I quoted linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky earlier this week as saying, “Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.” When Ron Paul tells the hard, cold facts about why many in the Muslim and Arab worlds hate us, he’s telling the truth, but the blind people who don’t know the facts think he sounds like an alien.

The arrogance of American exceptionalism is what keeps some people blinded to understanding the truth about history and about what’s going on today. It’s time to ditch this irrational and unreasonable idea. Many Americans are decent and honorable people, but that’s true of people from all other nations and cultures. Most people want to be left alone. It’s easier to understand that if we haven’t swallowed the lie that we’re better than everybody else.

I love the place where I live. It’s my home. It might not be home forever, but it’s been a nice place to live and grow up. But it’s not really any different from any other place on Earth. It’s a place with all sorts of people — good and bad, brilliant and stupid, kind-hearted and mean. We need to mind our own business and let other nations do the same — or we’re going to keep making enemies who will want to attack us in whatever way they can.

It’s time to retire the absurd notion of American exceptionalism. Let’s just be Americans, not people who teach children that we’re somehow elevated above everyone else.

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When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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