To: Pelham
De Tocqueville wrote that the position of Americans was exceptional in the sense that they were living in a vast undeveloped land, something no other democracy had ever experienced and something that was unlikely to happen in the future.
Anyway my point still is that American Exceptionalism appears to be a neologism of recent vintage. Ive read a lot of political science and history over the last three plus decades and Ive only seen the phrase pop up recently.
Tocqueville was fiercely insightful in his observation that the geography of the United States seemed to be designed for the American people, as outlined in the earlier chapters of Democracy. Later foreign observers--my favorite being G.K. Chesterton in his "What I Saw in America"--noted the distinct American character. Both stated the exceptional circumstances in American life, but I don't think it was ever meant to imply the supremacy of anything and everything deemed "American."
Tell me that American Exceptionalism isn't the functional equivalent to "my mother drunk or sober."
69 posted on
10/06/2010 11:42:14 PM PDT by
Das Outsider
(Cicero, where art thou? Leave a voicemail message?)
To: Das Outsider
I think it’s more along the lines of “my sometimes drunken mother is always sober and the model of perfection for all you louts”.
I was just wondering where you’d been. Must have been a premonition.
70 posted on
10/07/2010 8:47:33 PM PDT by
Pelham
(Islam, the mortal enemy of the free world)
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