[A CA Guy]

You can thank Dems for empowering the KKK. Prior Dem Presidents even had them welcomed to the White House.

[longfellow]

There’s an old saying about America.
Love it or leave it.

Don’t let the door hit your dumb ass on the way out.

[a fool in paradise]

Barron’s test guides for the AP exams teaches the test, apparently.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3265796/posts
Barron’s AP Test Prep Guide: Clarence Thomas Is A Fascist In League With KKK [PHOTOS]
Daily Caller ^ | 3/8/15 | Eric Owens

[SMARTY]

“think we’re better than everyone else.”

YES...If I wouldn’t do what YOU do, then I AM better than you are!!!

When the US begins to behead, incinerate, force EVERYONE into ONE religion, force women to sit at home with sheets on their heads, deny women education, force underage girls into marriage, demonize Jews... etc... Well, then we can revisit this conversation!

[SaxxonWoods]

The idea of American exceptionalism is easily defended.

America is the only country or empire in recorded history to have the entire world at its feet (Summer 1945) and not take whatever it wanted. Not only did it not take whatever it wanted, it loaned money to the vanquished to rebuild. Of course that was self-serving (we needed a decent world economy), but it was also world-serving.

[hinckley buzzard]

The author should have taken a few lines to explain how this idiot girl did not even understand the concept of "American exceptionalism."

[Noumenon]

Susan Ladd - another low-rent Howard Zinn kool-aid drinker.

He’s dead. She should join him.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I spent a fair bit of time around university history departments in the mid-1980's, and even at that time, they were absolutely in love with Howard Zinn.

His People's History of the United States is the literal Bible for the Obamaite view that this country is racist/sexist/bigoted/oppressive and not exceptional in the least.

Zinn was one of the most influential people that most of us never heard of.

[SECURE AMERICA]

To her, the idea that the United States of America is better than anyone else, or has even been a positive force for good in world history, is “hypocritical” and just plain wrong. She

These people are so pathetic and easily dealt with.
One question does it.
If America is not exceptional is not a special place, then why do more peoples from more different Country’s come here then go to any other country in the world?

[PATRIOT1876]

Don’t forget the 100 million or so killed by people who think the way that Susan does...

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4230/so_how_many_did_communism_kill

[wbill]

Worth linking to the Original Article.

For those with masochistic tendencies, it's worth a read. I couldn't get through it.

[gusty]

Neither the author or the leftist he takes to task seem to know what American Exceptonalism means. Both seem to have no clue. American Exceptionalism comes from the Jeffersonian concept of the United States as the “Empire of Liberty”. It was later fleshed out by Alexis de Tocqueville in his writings in the 1830’s to show the exceptional ism of our republic in a world of tyranny. It has nothing to do with how we are as a people. It was a description of the United States as the ideal of Classic Liberalism in the 19th Century.

[Carry_Okie]

Yes, we had slavery. But we were also one of the few countries that not only freed our slaves (at great cost to ourselves), but then proceeded to eventually grant that same despised minority the same equal rights of citizenship that the majority enjoys?

And paid them trillions in financial support, and put their kids in front of ours to get into college, and gave them preferences in business, and...

Parity is hardly the case.

[Col Freeper]

Always remember:

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

slavery has pretty been the baseline for the entire world for nearly all of human history up until the 19th century. Everyone in antiquity practiced it in one form or another. Every race and nation, on every inhabited continent, practiced it. The Africans enslaved each other. The Australian aboriginals practiced slavery. So did the Native Americans, and pretty much everyone in Asia, as well as the Muslims. Especially the Muslims. Many more black Africans died making the Trans-Sahara crossing to slave markets in North Africa and Egypt than died in the Trans-Atlantic crossings and in the New World. The Muslims LOVED themselves some slavery. In fact, they still do . . . the only countries with widespread slavery today are Muslim.

This gets to the issue as to whether or not our rights come from God. Liberals, take them as they run, hate themselves some Christianity. But a broad view of history shows that slavery as an institution was so established throughout history and worldwide that there exists now only one literature of defense of slavery (other than the Koran itself). Only one literature of the defense of slavery as an institution exists because it was never under moral attack anywhere else. That literature came from the American South, before/during the Civil War. Just as slavery was about to be abolished nationwide.

Christianity, at its inception, did not abolish slavery. The sum (I dare say) of reference to slavery in the New Testament

1. Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer,

2. And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:

3. Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers,

5. Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints;

6. That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

7. For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.

8. Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient,

9. Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.

10. I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds:

11. Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me:

12. Whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels:

13. Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel:

14. But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly.

15. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever;

16. Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?

17. If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself.

18. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account;

19. I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.

20. Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord.

21. Having confidence in thy obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say.

22. But withal prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.

23. There salute thee Epaphras, my fellowprisoner in Christ Jesus;

24. Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers.

25. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

Epistle to Philemon

does not condemn the institution. It was only in the colonial/revolutionary era that Christians - especially Protestants, and most especially British Protestants - turned against the institution of slavery in principle. Since “the sun never set on the British Empire,” that was crucial in the abolition of the institution of slavery worldwide - to the extent that it has been abolished.

The British Navy, for no reason other than Christian principle, was tasked with the expensive maintenance of a squadron off West Africa to suppress the slave trade there.

William Wilberforce was the leader of opposition to the institution of slavery in Britain.

Thomas Sowell published the above information in the second half of Black Rednecks and White Liberals - Thomas Sowell

Given that slavery is the negation of personal rights, the intelligence that no other cultural system except Christianity - certainly not Islam, and certainly not Atheism with its Gulags - has any claim to opposition to slavery as an institution leaves any basis for the existence of individual human rights apart from the belief of Christians willing to stand for the principle “at any hazard.” Anti-christian activists can claim superiority - claiming moral superiority is what they do - but they lack any track record of lives put on the line for the principle. Rather, they are mere critics, while the “man who has actually been in the arena” has been Christian.

That the American founding, with all the losses involved in the Revolution, considered itself Christian is easily verified by the references to divine Providence and Creator in the Declaration of Independence, and by the reference to Jesus Christ (Who else was conventionally considered to have been born "one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven” years before the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, and referred to as “our Lord?”) in the Constitution.

Substitute any religious/ethical system for Christianity, and you have at best a speculative and utterly untried foundation for respect for individual rights. “If the trumpet shall make an uncertain sound, who shall prepare for battle?” The fantasy upon which denial of the reality that rights come from God or else are illusory is based is that human rights will never need to be defended.

[RWB Patriot]

“American soldiers slaughtered civilians in My Lai during the Vietnam war. By this point, Mizz Ladd’s examples are become rather fatuous. To rephrase her statement for more accuracy, “A small handful of American soldiers slaughtered civilians in My Lai during the Vietnam war.” This was neither official American military doctrine nor was it common practice. The use it as an example is, at best, desperate, if not disingenuous.”

People who keep bringing the up conveniently forget that it wasn’t the VC or the NVA that stopped the massacre, but other American soldiers who were willing to fire on their own men to stop it.

[exDemMom]

In fact, they still do – it is notable that the only countries with widespread slavery today are Muslim.

We still have slavery, except that it is no longer legal, so whatever legal protections slaves once had do not now exist. We call it "human trafficking" now, and it exists all over the world. Liberal American politicians support the practice by not only refusing to stop, but even subsidizing the illegal flow of humans into our country.