Posted on 12/30/2014 12:06:16 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
There is a debate in this country over whether or not our schools should teach American exceptionalism. Few people, however, seem to understand what American exceptionalism is.
It has nothing to do with democracy. Many countries have democratic elections. Neither is exceptionalism a claim of supremacy. Americans do not claim to be better than people living in other countries. Exceptionalism does not refer to superiority in wealth, status or any of the other advantages derived from civilization. The United States has high economic productivity, good schools, technologically advanced infrastructure and a high standard of living. Still, so do many other countries.
[SNIP]
The United States government was erected to protect the natural rights of its citizens, to establish a national defense, to create infrastructure and to provide other limited functions consistent with a free state. Our government was not designed to provide commodities for individuals, whether these be food, housing, health care or education. To the extent this occurs, it is a perversion of our founding principles. Our system was designed for a hardy and independent folk, not a people that want to be coddled and taken care of.
The equality spoken of in the Declaration of Independence is equality before the law, not equality in wealth or status. The right to pursue happiness is not the right to obtain happiness. Absolute equality is incompatible with liberty. A free people will sort themselves out according to their individual aptitudes and inclinations. Inequality of circumstances is the hallmark of liberty...........
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
There is a debate over American exceptionalism.
Few people, however, seem to understand what American exceptionalism is...”
Obviously!
They are the ones!
The Left disagrees. [But they don’t understand what it means - more likely, they don’t want it because it is incompatible with European socialism, and so they distort its meaning.]
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/17/curse-american-exceptionalism
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism-20140203
http://www.thenation.com/article/185305/its-time-rethink-american-exceptionalism
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/02/28/3344061/boo-exceptionalism/
Everyone refers to American exceptionalism with scorn, as though it means America is somehow above the law, or Gods chosen people, or some similar concept. It’s nothing of the sort.
you hear that all the time.
If only this was still taught in school...
I’m glad for this article because so many don’t understand what “American exceptionalism” is.
bkmk
Below is a fine example [more of the same in the link below] of how academics are actively working to distort American Exceptionalism - deconstructing what was one of the last holdouts. It’s a good insight into why the U.S. space program is being destroyed - greened up, toned down, melded into a global co-op. NASA [manned space exploration] is useful because it is symbolic but it must be transformed as it props up one of the last vestiges of American Exceptional thinking.
http://history.nasa.gov/sp4801-chapter25.pdf
“.....This brief historical review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy has sustained an ideology of American Exceptionalism and reinforced long-standing beliefs in progress, growth, and capitalist democracy. This rhetoric conveys an ideology of spaceflight that could be described, at its worst, as a sort of space fundamentalism: an exclusive belief system that rejects as unenlightened those who do not advocate the colonization, exploitation, and development of space. The rhetorical strategy of space advocates has tended to rest on the assumption that the values of “believers” are (or should be) shared by others as well.
Although the social, political, economic, and cultural context for space exploration has changed radically since the 1960s, the rhetoric of space advocacy has not. In the twenty-first century, advocates continue to promote spaceflight as a biological imperative and a means of extending U.S. free enterprise, with its private property claims, resource exploitation, and commercial development, into the solar system and beyond. Pyne,among others,has addressed the problematic nature of these arguments: “the theses advanced to promote [solar system] settlement,” he noted, “are historical, culturally bound, and selectively anecdotal: that we need to pioneer to be what we are, that new colonies are a means of renewing civilization.”
Spaceflight advocacy can be examined as a cultural ritual, performed by means of communication (rhetoric), for the purpose of maintaining the current social order, with its lopsided distribution of power and resources, and perpetuating the values of those in control of that order (materialism, consumerism, technological progress, private property rights, capitalist democracy). Communication research has shown how public discourses—those cultural narratives or national myths—“often function covertly to legitimate the power of elite social classes.” And this review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy reflects an assumption that these values are worth extending into the solar system.
Everything now suggests,” Nisbet wrote 25 years ago, “that Western faith in the dogma of progress is waning rapidly.” This faith appears to have remained alive and well, however, in the ideology of spaceflight. Christopher Lasch wrote 15 years ago,“almost everyone now agrees that [the idea of] progress—in its utopian form at least,” no longer has the power “to explain events or inspire [people] to constructive action.”
But in the current cultural environment, perhaps it does—at least among space advocates. Progress is, indeed, modern American dogma and a key element of pro-space dogma. But it does not resonate well—as Pyne and others have noted—in the current postmodern (or even post-postmodern) cultural environment, where public discourse is rife with critiques of science, technology, the aims of the military-
industrial complex, and the corporate drive for profit.
Pyne observed almost 20 years ago that space exploration was “not yet fully in sync” with its cultural environment. Modern (seventeenth-to twentieth-century) Western (European-American) exploration functioned as “a means of knowing, of creating commercial empires, of outmaneuvering political economic, religious, and military competitors—it was war, diplomacy, proselytizing, scholarship, and trade by other means.” But the postmodern exploration of space is different. outer space is not simply an extension of Earth and the era of space exploration is not simply an extension of the modern era of transoceanic and transcontinental exploration. Its cultural context is different. The modern phenomenon of spaceflight has outlived the modern era and its purpose is not clear in a postmodern or even post-postmodern world, characterized by uncertainty, subjectivity, deconstruction, and a rejection of so-called master narratives such as the story of frontier conquest. The moral imperative of the myth of pioneering the space frontier could be interpreted as a narrative that is in tune with its postmodern cultural environment in the sense that it conveys the values of the dominant social order—that is, what communication scholar Herb Schiller has called “the transnational corporate business order” and its ideology of private property ownership, resource exploitation and profit building.............”
From: Section VI
“Spaceflight, culture and ideology”
From your keys to God’s ears!
Have not hit the link you provided yet, but thanks in advance and complete agreement on the summary. Over Christmas got into the whole exploration / space debate and it always pains me to hear the miserable excuses people have for NOT doing something grand. Often well meaning but not well informed!
Rise to the Challenge, folks!
You are completely right about that, but I don't really think the "grand" has to be manned space flight.
It is sad that the country isn't filled with dreamers anymore. There is a real attitude just filling the pages of those old Popular Mechanics/Science magazines that doesn't seem to be present nowadays.
I want my flying car!
Jug ears was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and grifted his way through life. He’s not exceptional.
Thanks for the kind words, and I agree with your ambivalence about manned space flight — therein my thoughts get more competitive with idea of others “getting there first.”
...I know it’s a lot (waste) of $$$$$ that can be better spent on robotics, probes, telescopes, etc —
Still don’t want Chinese to get to Mars first...
(Can.t help it)
We need to get away from “grand.” It needs to be sustainable.
http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/china-now-positioned-dominate-moon-180953267/
For all the greatness in human progress and ingenuity that brought about manned space travel, there's no getting around the fact that it was a massive government program that couldn't possibly be justified under Constitutional law. In fact, this sort of program has probably done more to destroy our culture of self-reliance and individual freedom. Space exploration in U.S. history has been state-sponsored socialism at its core.
See Post #8. The Leftists don’t agree with you.
Very strong points you make Alberta’s Child.
When you look at the monetary cost of manned space it certainly cannot help but be a function of massive government spending.
The Constitutionality of the expense I will defer to others. By way of cowardice, I will acknowledge the limited powers in the Constitution, then I will note that they have been ignored for the past 225 years, which makes me think they are not going to be recognized anytime soon....
unless of course we get Patrick Buchanan to run for President!
One More Time!
Buchanan / Palin 2016
It’s Our Time!
I think we capture the “four pillars” of American Exceptionalism in “A Patriot’s History of the Modern World”-—namely, Christian (mostly Protestant) religion, common law, a free market, and private property with written titles and deeds. I think we make a good case for these pillars.
bump
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