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by Donald Schuster

Created on: October 24, 2011

 American Exceptionalism

The term “American Exceptionalism” as it’s bounced around today, invokes both an impassioned sense of patriotism and a wary critique that its meaning is flawed when compared to realities of American history. The term itself was first used by De Tocqueville in his book ‘Democracy in America’ to help explain his observation that “no democratic people will be placed in a similar one” therefore “exceptional”. In the 1920s the communist party used the term to explain that the United States might be an exception to the historical model espoused by the Marxist dialect. They said, “Thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions, America might for a long while avoid the crisis that must eventually befall every capitalist society.”

While some give the term a religious or moral context, I believe that that suggestion is misplaced. The term should embrace a more complete definition of the American narrative; one that accepts that our history has been neither abjectly appalling or morally superior. Many political observers and participants have sanitized our history describing it as a march inspired by God; while others have labeled it a parade of moral hypocrisy. The United States has been both. While we created and sustained a nation based on a group of abstract notions of freedom and equality, we failed to breathe life into them (for too many people) for far too long; and as it was only after many battles both in the streets and the halls of justice that the reality of equality began to conform with the myth of it. We also, at times, willfully ignored our self-created ideals to champion expansion and pushed aside fairness for the sake of wealth building.

In some respects while our founding may have been unique our actions were not. At times we displayed common characteristics that applied to many powerful civilizations of the past; an aggressive dominance that vanquished militarily and economically those perceived as obstacles, a self-centered entitlement, and sense that we had been chosen to lead. All that said, it is difficult to ignore that so few people from so many different ethnic backgrounds accomplished so much in such a short span of history.

The United States of today might not seem to shine as brightly as it might have in the past and it might not live up to the billing “exceptional”.  The America of today seems caught in a political and income schism that grows wider by the day. Add a tough economic downturn, a stubborn Washington gridlock, a trend towards more media with less educational content, and you have a back drop of a society duller and less vibrant than at any time in our history. There also seems be a creeping fatalism that the American future will be one of diminished expectations contrary to the centuries long, almost sacred, embedded trait of optimism.

But even as these developments tend to dominate the landscape it doesn’t negate the fact that for the last one hundred plus years, and maybe even a portion of the 19th century, the American Experience has been by many measures extraordinary. First this is the only nation formed based on a set of concepts as opposed to ethnic and/or cultural evolution or some other dynamic; a nation “conceived in liberty”. Secondly that we exist as a nation at all, and have prospered, is itself - Exceptional. The road of American history has been anything but smooth and the march of equality ragged at best. One has only to look at the bitterness that spawned the civil war which nearly severed the country into parts that might never have been survivable. A war waged to extend liberty for a group bound by the forces of commerce and tradition. Not everyone accepted a universal definition of liberty or keeping the nation whole.  But with the prudent guidance of Lincoln, with his fierce determination that the nation should survive whole- it did survive.

That fierce allegiance to individual freedom flowed not only through acts of governance but into the marketplace of Adam Smith as well. It was as if liberty was the seed that grew into individual self-reliance and self-determination, which in turn spawned an unquenchable motivation for commercial success. The lure of reward and personal freedom along with the model of Capitalism, helped unleash a flow of ideas, fueling more inventions, discoveries, and innovations than history had ever witnessed. The United States by 1900 (100 years after its birth) had become the largest economy in the world; and that spirit of discovery and innovation persisted all through the 20th century, and still exists today.

Americans have more inventions and discoveries patented by twice over any other single group of people in history. Some of these inventions were ones that lent themselves to convenience (the zipper, laxative, false teeth etc.) making life more comfortable; but others truly transformed and altered every person on earth. We live longer because of vaccines that rid us of many of history’s diseases; the world’s manufacturing is so much more productive because of interchangeable parts, standardization, the assembly line; transportation today is unimaginable without air travel; communication is almost instantaneous because of the telephone, TV and the computer; modern urban landscapes would not look the same absent the skyscraper. These are just a small list (over 46,000 in total) of things Americans discovered, innovated, or invented. And let us not forget that a small group of German Americans opened the pathway to the core of energy itself – nuclear fission.

In terms of other tangible accomplishments since World War II, the U.S. has dominated the Nobel Prizes for sciences and medicines, and is still considered the home for the most advanced medical research in the world as well as arguably the best academic Universities. This isn’t to say that peoples from other countries have not made significant discoveries that also transformed. But the fact that Americans represent such a small group compared to the sheer quantities of important discoveries made is a vital element when reviewing the portrait of American history.

But the American Experience is much more than accomplishment, it is truly an experiment in human equality. No other country or region grew from the seeds of concept and embraced (stubbornly at times) peoples from everywhere. As Carl Degler pointed out  Americans are a “melting pot”. American society was and is a patchwork of cultures, ethnic heritages, and personal histories. What seems to keep this ragged quilt together is a strong value for fairness and a strong acceptance for the rule of law.

And those rules stem directly from the cornerstone of the Constitution – The Bill of Rights. While the application of individual rights has been slow and imperfect, and even today more evolutionary than complete, it is “the” one value that stands above all others. The fight against the ravages of unregulated capitalism during the “Gilded Age”, the actions and reactions over Woman’s suffrage, or the brutal movement to overcome the inequalities of Blacks, are all reminders of this ongoing struggle. Every action or decision made by American courts is measured against individual rights. The 14th amendment, Roe, Brown, the 1964 civil rights act, Reynolds, Affirmative action, and countless other actions and court decisions are evidence to the expanding trend to both ensure and expand individual rights.

Yet The American experience is more than sweeping actions based on documents. At the root of the “Grand Experiment” is the story of the struggles of personal mobility and accomplishment. The large brush of American history is based as much on personal stories of opportunity as any other narrative. One only has to look at the notion of The American dream to see how that plays such an important role the American psyche. Many of our greatest leaders (public or private) came from ordinary or humble beginnings defying the expectations of birth and class. These stories were and are as much about talent and effort as race, religion, or class status. The stories of Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King, Samuel Clemens, Langston Hughes, Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama along with thousands more (or millions) of similar stories fill American history. And this narrative is not buried in the past but is just as relevant today as a hundred years ago. Most of the fortune 500 companies are less than fifty years old and many of America’s wealthiest persons began from modest or humble beginnings and are first generation.

Every year thousands of new small business ventures begin and is the engine for most of the new employment. The United States supports over six million small firms; and American self-employment is still considered within reach and a worthy aspiration for millions (27 million people are considered self-employed). Many pundits might discount the reality of personal mobility and state that government or an entrenched elite class creates a vast sea of barriers that prevent small business creation. But records show that small firms represent the largest single source of new employment today (65% of all new employment) with new firms being formed by the thousands each year (over 552,000 in 2009).

I don’t subscribe to the notion that the abundance of American accomplishment was and is a feature of luck, as some have suggested including Stephen M. Walt in his article from Foreign Policy, Nov 2011. Luck of location with an abundance of resources including an almost unlimited supply of cheap arable land. Luck to be far removed from the devastation that Europe wrought upon itself and the colonialism it inflicted on many the other parts of the world. Luck that no natural immediate enemies existed. Those conditions certainly were important. But I strongly believe that it took other ingredients to fill this American pie; it took a value that accepted education, it took a strong dose of individual motivation largely based on personal freedom, a strong value for self-reliance, and a philosophy that accepted and embraced innovation. That same spirit manifested itself into governance that provided the platform of law thereby ensuring stability and serving to protect the rewards of human activity. Simply stated one of the core values was and is effort and personal reward; this cannot be lightly discounted.

Yes I know there was and is a vast sea of Americans self-absorbed with the unrealities of the past given the propensity to overlook the Native American struggle; an over involvement with mindless TV, fast food, or entrainment that can at best can be only be described as shallow and meaningless, and an indistinctive cultural soup that finds too many Americans with only a barest understanding of the broader world. It seems, at times, that we have become locked into a myth that ignores income, social, racial, and religious ideologies that hopelessly divide and have produced a government that appears hopelessly stuck. Stuck in an endless debate as our roads, bridges, and rails deteriorate, as our health care system fails too many, as our secondary educational system falters into irrelevancy; as our crime rates rise at alarming rates, and as our income curve skews upward leaving far too many impoverished. At times it appears that we have too much democracy and freedom caught in a never-ending circle of rhetoric; but after all freedom doesn’t always elicit the best choices or for that matter action, it only ensures the right of choice.

Yet for all of its faults the United States is still the largest economy in the world, the dollar is still bench mark for worldwide trading (66% of all trading exchange is in dollars), still commands the best universities, still the leader in medical research, still the leader in high tech innovation, and the workers of the United States are still considered the hardest working with the longest work hours of any of the industrialized Nations.

This might sound like a script for a poster that champions the American experience without accepting the realities of the literally millions of individual struggles. But to focus narrowly on these struggles is to devalue the broader story of American accomplishment. I believe we have to be careful when people, especially the political class, judiciously throw around American Exceptionalism without understanding that there was and still are struggles being fought, and that not everyone yet shares fully in this American bounty.  

The United States might not be the best place to live for every individual; and we (as in we the Government) are much of the time viewed throughout the rest of world with both a reluctant wariness or a measured envy; but we are still a large powerful magnet that still draws in millions of peoples from all corners of the Earth. As George Will pointed out “America is still the fuse that lights the world.” When polled, those people wanting to relocate another country, 24% of all respondents (one hundred and sixty five million people) said they would prefer to come to United States if they could.

And finally let us not forget that this small group of people for good or bad transcended a humble colonial existence formed a Nation and turned that Nation into a Civilization of unprecedented success. A success that even today values individual liberty and is constantly marching forward to expand it. That this nation still enjoys after more than two hundred years the fruits of liberty, is by itself worthy of the term “Exceptional” .  

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