[Pelham]

I don’t think the passage is derogatory, it just doesn’t say what the Wikipedia poster argues that it does. If you look at the section of Democracy in America that it comes from you can see that De Tocqueville was defending Americans against the European perception that they were all a bunch of uncultured rubes.

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. I’ve read a lot of political science and history over the last three plus decades and I’ve only seen the phrase pop up recently.

[Das Outsider]

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. I’ve read a lot of political science and history over the last three plus decades and I’ve 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."