Transcript The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism

Supporting standards comprise
35% of the U. S. History Test
22 (A)
Supporting Standard (22)
The student understands the concept of American
exceptionalism.
The Student is expected to:
(A) Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values
crucial to America’s success as a constitutional
republic: Liberty, egalitarianism,
individualism, populism, & laissez-faire
American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the
United States is qualitatively different from other
countries. In this view, America’s exceptionalism stems
from its emergence from a revolution, becoming “the
first new nation,” and developing a uniquely American
ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism,
populism and laissez-faire.
This observation can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the
first writer to describe the United States as “exceptional” in
1831 and 1840. Historian Gordon Wood has argued, “Our
beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the wellbeing of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era.”
So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people
with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and
democracy.
American exceptionalism is the oldest and most
contentious of the alleged national exceptionalisms—
arguments that a given nation must be understood in
essentially idiosyncratic fashion.
Supporting Standard (22)
The student understands the concept of American
exceptionalism.
The Student is expected to:
(A) 1 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values
crucial to America’s success as a constitutional
republic: Liberty
LIBERTY
Liberty is the quality individuals
have to control their own actions.
Different concepts of liberty
articulate the relationship of
individuals to society in different
ways.
Wrapped up in the warp and woof of
the American Revolution, the notion
of liberty—freedom—springs from
America’s very beginnings as a
nation.
Supporting Standard (22)
The student understands the concept of American
exceptionalism.
The Student is expected to:
(A) 2 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values
crucial to America’s success as a constitutional
republic: Egalitarianism
EGALITARIANISM
A belief in human equality especially with
respect to social, political, and economic
affairs; a social philosophy advocating
the removal of inequalities among
people.
The statement that the United States is an
egalitarian society obviously does not
imply that all Americans are equal in any
way that can be defined. This proposition
usually means (regardless of which
aspect is under consideration--social
relations, status, mobility, etc.)
Supporting Standard (22)
The student understands the concept of American
exceptionalism.
The Student is expected to:
(A) 3 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values
crucial to America’s success as a constitutional
republic: Individualism
INDIVIDUALISM
A social theory advocating the liberty, rights, or
independent action of the individual;
the principle or habit of or belief in independent th
ought or action. “The individualizing ideology of
Jacksonianism” focused on the “opportunity and
expansion for everyone amide minimal or no
government regulation, a rhetoric of republican
equality that actually masked a profoundly unequal
society.” The Jacksonian Era was one “of minimal
government, emphasizing the individual right to do
whatever, and move wherever, one might please. . .
. Freedom was an absolute” (Stephanson, 30-31).
Supporting Standard (22)
The student understands the concept of American
exceptionalism.
The Student is expected to:
(A) 4 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values
crucial to America’s success as a constitutional
republic: Populism
POPULISM
The political doctrine that
supports the rights and
powers of the common people
in their struggle with the
privileged elite; grass-roots
democracy; a representation
or extolling of the common
person.
Supporting Standard (22)
The student understands the concept of American
exceptionalism.
The Student is expected to:
(A) 5 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values
crucial to America’s success as a constitutional
republic: Laissez-faire
LAISSEZ-FAIRE
A political policy or attitude of letting things
take their own course, without interfering,
particularly as it is applied to the operation of
economic forces and the interplay of a free
market;
the theory or system of government that uphold
s the autonomous character of the economic or
der,believing that government should intervene
as little as possible in the direction of economic
affairs;
the practice or doctrine of noninterference in t
he affairs of others, especially with reference to
individual conduct or freedom of action.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American
Life: “The existing concentration of
wealth and financial power in the hands
of a few irresponsible men is the
inevitable outcome of the chaotic
individualism of our political and
economic organization, while at the same
time it is inimical to democracy, because
it tends to erect political abuses and
social inequalities into a system ”
(Stephanson, 109).
“The position of the
Americans is therefore quite
exceptional, and it may be
believed that no democratic
people will ever be placed in a
similar one.” This quote,
often lifted out of context, is
T. Davidto
Gordon
of Conwell
construed
be high
praise of
Theological Seminary—“Roots
the
relatively
fledgling
of American
Exceptionalism”
American nation.
Alexis de
Tocqueville’s twovolume
classic, Democracy in America,
appeared in 1835
and 1840.
What was “exceptional” about the American “position” is
its peculiar history that had led it to its present (to
Tocqueville) circumstance, in which the American mind
was devoted to almost nothing but pragmatic/practical
interests. Only his religion, Tocqueville sighs,
occasionally relieves the American of his unseemly
mundaneness and bids him to a “transient … glance” at
more transcendent concerns.
Rhetorically, Tocqueville was trying to persuade others
that democracy was a good form of government; and his
problem, rhetorically, was that the American example
appeared to provide counter-evidence, namely America’s
industrious & practical focus on things commercial. Its
egalitarianism, religiosity, & dependency on the
community was counterbalanced by its great neglect of
science as well as artistic & literary pursuits (& according
to Tocqueville only spared from “relapsing into
barbarism” because of its proximity to Europe).
Tocqueville was embarrassed that a free people had
employed their freedom for mundane or commercial
pursuits; so in order to rescue democracy, Tocqueville
argued that it only looks like a bad form of government in
America because of America’s peculiar (“exceptional”)
history. Freed from this peculiar history, Tocqueville
argued, democracy would work fine.
Whether America ever was or is exceptional is a matter
for more discussion, but Tocqueville’s own estimate of
19th-century America was mixed at best and negative at
worst. He would have preferred that democracy had
produced a more learned and refined culture. And that’s
a side of Alexis de Tocqueville, and his view of America,
we don’t often hear or understand.
Others have taken Tocqueville’s
observation as the touchstone of a much
more positive argument.
American exceptionalism is the theory that the U. S. is
“qualitatively different” from other states. In this view, U.S.
exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution,
becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset
called “the first new nation” and developing a uniquely
American ideology, “Americanism,” based on
liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism,
populism, & laissez-faire. This ideology itself is often referred
to as “American exceptionalism.”
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority,
many neoconservative and American conservative writers
have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the United
States is like the biblical shining “City upon a Hill,” and
exempt from historical forces that have affected other
countries.
Historians like Richard Hofstadter reframed the question of
“American exceptionalism” in a more positive manner, as a
way to explain how the U.S. had avoided the bloody conflicts
experienced by Europe in the 20thcentury.
The term “American exceptionalism” has been in use
since at least the 1920s and saw more common use after
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin chastised members of the Jay
Lovestone-led faction of the American Communist
Party for their heretical belief that America was
independent of the Marxist laws of history “thanks to its
natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of
rigid class distinctions.”
In 1989 Scottish political scientist Richard Rose noted
that most American historians endorse exceptionalism.
He suggests that these historians reason as follows:
“America marches to a different drummer. Its
uniqueness is explained by any or all of a variety of
reasons: history, size, geography, political institutions,
and culture. Explanations of the growth of government in
Europe are not expected to fit American experience, and
vice versa.”
However, some American scholars have rejected
American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States
had not broken from European history, and accordingly,
the United States has retained class inequities, racebased inequalities, imperialism and war.
Most importantly, Americans are exceptional
because of the nature of our founding and the
institutions of government that were then created
and which remain today. What those men did was
without precedent. Between 1776 and 1789, the
founders peacefully forged a law-centric republic,
predicated on the separation of powers, using
principles of checks and balances, all based on
representative government. They created a nation
that promoted democratic ideals and personal
liberty, with elected leaders who were accountable
to the people.
The English also bequeathed to the American colonies the
tradition of Protestant dissent, and that has been a very
important part of American exceptionalism—through the idea
that Protestantism is superior to Catholicism, let alone other
religions, in allowing the development of an individual and as
a counter to autocratic and hierarchical power. This idea of
Protestantism’s superiority flourished in 19th century U.S.
exceptionalist ideas. Protestantism, especially evangelical
Protestantism, is still a vital component in American culture
and identity.
Charles Murray, author of American Exceptionalism: An
Experiment in History, writes that American exceptionalism
stems from four elements: geography, culture, ideology and
politics. We were unique in that we were a nation bordered by
non-belligerents on the north and south and by oceans on the
east and west. The very harshness of the environment, in
those early years, meant only people of a certain character
would emigrate. An absence of a state religion allowed for a
“free market” of competing religious sects.
From the very origins of the nation in
the Colonial Era, there was strong
belief in the exceptional nature of
what was being executed by those
who had immigrated to North
America.
The Antecedent—
Winthrop’s City Upon a
Hill
Winthrop & the Massachusetts Bay Colony
were part of a Separatist religious
tradition—“Puritanism”—comprised of
immigrants who literally left their
homeland to create a “bastion of true
religion,” a “place divinely signaled out for
higher missions” like the “Divine purposes
[that] would have to be worked out
elsewhere, in some new and uncorrupted
land” (Stephanson, 4).
City upon a Hill’s
Descendants
Anders Stephanson’s
landmark work,
Manifest Destiny:
American Expansion
& Empire of Right is
perhaps the most
insightful
assessment
connecting Manifest
Destiny to American
exceptionalism.
1. O’Sullivan &
Manifest Destiny
Philosophy of
Expansion
Components of Manifest Destiny & the
“Destinarian” Concept of America
John L. O’Sullivan, founder (1837)
& editor of The United States
Magazine and Democratic Review
• Providence (God)
favored U.S.
expansion
• Free development
and expansion of
American
democracy
• Need for new
territory as an outlet
for an expanding
population
Below, this painting (circa 1872) by
John Gast called American Progress,
is an allegorical representation of the
modernization of the new west. Here
Columbia, a personification of the
United States, leads civilization
westward with American settlers,
stringing telegraph wire as she
sweeps west; she holds a school book.
The different stages of economic
activity of the pioneers are
highlighted and, especially, the
changing forms of transportation.
Above, American westward
expansion is idealized in Emanuel
Leutze’s famous painting Westward
the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
(1861). The title of the painting, from
a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was
a phrase often quoted in the era of
manifest destiny, expressing a widely
held belief that civilization had
steadily moved westward throughout
history.
A highly romanticized
interpretation of
Manifest Destiny in
motion
American exceptionalism was tied to the idea of
Manifest Destiny or destinarian expansion. Manifest
Destiny was a term used by Jacksonian Democrats in
the 1840s to promote the acquisition of much of
what is now the Western United States (the Oregon
Territory, the Texas Annexation, and the Mexican
Cession of California and New Mexico and adjacent
areas).
After de Tocqueville’s usage the theme became
common, especially in textbooks. From the 1840s to
the late 19th century, the McGuffey Readers sold 120
million copies and were studied by most American
students. Skrabec (2009) argues that the Readers
“hailed American exceptionalism, manifest destiny,
and America as God's country. ... Furthermore,
McGuffey saw America as having a future mission to
bring liberty and democracy to the world.”
Manifest destiny was a concept “heavily suffused
with religious overtones” rooted in “old biblical
notions . . . of the predestined, redemptive role of
God’s chosen people In the Promised Land.” The
“genealogy” of the idea “must begin with the
religious sources. . . . Visions of the United States as
a sacred space providentially selected for divine
purposes found a counterpart in the secular idea of
a new nation of liberty as a privileged ‘stage’ . . . for
the exhibition of a new world order, a great
‘experiment’ for the benefit of humankind as a
whole. . . . What unified the sacred and the secular,
then, was precisely the idea of ‘America’ as a unique
mission and project in time and space,” a “New
Canaan, a promised land,” a “Puritan reenactment
of the Exodus narrative.”
The Puritans who came to America had a “perspective of
covenantal chosenness. . . . Surely, it could not have been an
accident either that God had unveiled this New World, this
new continent, hidden for so many ages, precisely at the
moment when the process of purification had begun in the
Old World. . . . The [18th century] idea of translatio imperii
[transfer of rule] . . . was a matter of westward movement.”
By the 1820s, there developed a “notion that the United states
was a sacred-secular project, a mission of world historical
significance. . . . History was a providential plan whose end
was to be played out in the specially designed space of
America. . . . The cause of humanity was identical with that of
the United States. . . . In short, Christianity, democracy, and
Jacksonian America were essentially one and the same thing,
the highest state of history, God’s plan incarnate. . . . The end
of history was American democracy enshrined in the trinity
of ‘free government, free commerce, and free men,’”
including “‘the ceaseless march of free institutions’”
(Stephanson, 5-9, 18, 40, 97, 99).
“Manifest Destiny” became “a catchword for the
idea of a providentially or historically sanctioned
right to continental expansion,” a “providentially
assigned role of the United States to lead the world
to new and better things,” “a special calling or
mission. . . . This vision has been constant
throughout American history.” Indeed, there
historically has been in America a “nationalism
constituting itself not only as prophetic but
universal,” an “idea of providential and historical
chosenness, origins both Protestant and liberal in
nature. . . .Manifest destiny is of signal importance
in the way the United Sates came to understand
itself in the world and still does.” Manifest destiny
is “a tradition that creates a sense of national place
and direction in a variety of historical settings”
(Stephanson, xii-xiv).
2. SpanishAmerican War
How to Justify
Intrusion into
Cuba?
Rev. Josiah Strong,
the religious voice
promoting mission
at home & abroad
On the surface,
America’s behavior
appeared little more
than naked
imperialist
aggression patented
centuries before by
the Old World
countries
John Fiske,
Theodore Roosevelt—
historian—civilization
Invasive action that
parleyed
Cuba into an American
keeping
nation fit enables
conquering
retreating
America
to promote
sugar plantation
was
excused
by the conviction that
barbarism
Columbia
University
progressive
evolution
“God and history were thus
fusedJohn
into the design of
professor,
Burgess—civilized
progressive, linear evolution
of the fittest.” U. S.
states have claim on
involvement exploited the
opportunity
to “spread
uncivilized
ones Alfred
T. Mahan—
the blessings of the Word to non-Christian,
conquest followed by
uplifting
uncivilized areas” (Stephanson, 79).g
“History
appeared
to
Roosevelt
as a linear
movement
from
barbarism
to civilization”
(Stephanson, 106).
3. Wilson’s LiberalDemocratic-Capitalist
World Order
Going to War to
Further a Good
Cause
IDEALISTIC
REASONS
Idealism—the belief in the linear development of history in
a progressive direction toward a world without war, and
with harmony, abundance, and happiness—was a strong
current in 19th century U. S. thought. Many cast the
explanation in terms of “misguided idealism.”
•
•
To make the world safe for democracy, rights of man,
future peace, world security. Wilson viewed U. S.
participation in the war as an opportunity to reform the
world order into a liberal-capitalist-democratic system.
It took on the dimensions of a holy purpose.
The U. S. entered the war not out for profit but as God’s
chosen vessel; He made America strong so she could
achieve selfless aims in a spirit of sacrifice, a rather selfflattering approach.
IDEALISTIC
REASONS
Continued
•
•
This was a “War to End All Wars” and enforce
disarmament
The war was conceived as a struggle of good vs. evil
– Autocracy vs. democracy
– Imperialism vs. self-determination
– Militarism vs. disarmament
Germany came to represent an obstacle in the way to
peace, all things evil and immoral, a threat to
civilization; the Kaiser a symbol of autocracy and
militarism.
IDEALISTIC
REASONS
Continued
•
•
•
Wilson stood on principle for rule of law,
international justice, the rights of man
Wilson saw the League of Nations as an
independent force in the world capable of
overriding old animosities, conflicts as a
rallying point of world opinion.
N. Gordon Levin’s notion of U. S. liberal
exceptionalism
Professor N. Gordon Levin
argued that the U. S. was
unfettered by feudal traditions,
power politics, and hence the
obvious leader of a new world
order based on U. S. values of
free trade, liberalism, rule of
international law, human
rights—Germany threatened the
hope for universal democracy.
Levin argues that Wilson
acted to serve man with a
combination of liberal antiimperialism and missionary
nationalism—he equated
universal human rights with
the U. S. value system. He
envisaged a worldwide
Liberal-Capitalist system with
political liberalism, social
mobility, constitutional
government, capitalist
production.
AN ECHO OF WINTHROP’S “CITY UPON A HILL”:
Wilson (the son of a Presbyterian minister and himself
infused with a strong sense of “the deeper providential
purposes of history”) saw the mission of America “‘to be
the mediator of peace,’ to be the ‘light of the world,’ and
‘to lead the world in the assertion of the rights of
peoples and the rights of free nations’” (Stephanson,
114, 117).
The Road to Good Intentions
Among many noble motives compelling Wilson
to take the nation to war in 1917 was the
bequeathing of democracy to the “successor
states” carved out of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire after war’s end.
Unacquainted with
democratic practice
or tradition, the
successor states
created in the image
of the Western
democracies, these
polities were quite
incapable of using or
preserving those
governments
It would not be the last
time Americans would
break their teeth
attempting to spread
their version of
democracy
Hitler christened them staaten saison—
states for a season . . . and would soon
swallow them up, incorporating them into
his growing Third Reich.
4. Vietnam
An Ongoing
Continuation of
the Cold War
Franklin Roosevelt styled the U. S. as “‘leader of the free
world,’ locked in mortal struggle with the forces of
Communist evil. This act of positioning harped back, not
unnaturally, to earlier themes of election and preordained
mission. Once again American destiny seemed manifest. . . .
Both powers promulgated, and considered themselves to
embody, universal ideologies of right. . . . In the 1840s, the
spatial destination of destiny was clearly continental, a
westward, horizontal movement; and the agent involved was
the United States, separate and along. In the 1890s the
destination was diffusely conceived as a sphere of barbarism
where the gradual struggle for civilization and race might
occur on the way to the final victory that was not that urgent.
. . .In the Cold War, however, every space could in principle
be defined with instantaneous and razor-sharp distinction
either as our side or theirs . . . and the United States was the
global agent of freedom in lethal combat everywhere with a
single, terrifying antagonist. . . . [By the 1980s, President]
Reagan reasserted the true American Way in the world, using
language strongly reminiscent of Jackson and O’Sullivan.
His early jeremiads depicted a nation fallen
temporarily on hard times because of atheism,
welfare liberalism, government meddling,
appeasement of Communism, and other
deviations from the original and timeless faith.”
In launching his political career in 1964, Reagan
proclaimed that “‘America was set apart in a
special way, that it was put here between the
oceans to be found by a certain kind of people,’
that it was chosen by higher authority to be ‘a
beacon of hope to the rest of the world,’ that ‘the
dream of America’ was the ‘last best hope of
man on earth.’ . . . And this destiny and duty to
the world meant above all vigorous prosecution
of the Cold War” (Stephanson, 122).
Reagan’s 1964 Speech
In the fictional universe of Star
Trek, the Prime
Directive, Starfleet’s General
Order number 1, is the most
prominent guiding principle of
the United Federation of Planets.
The Prime Directive prohibits
Starfleet personnel from
interfering with the internal
development of alien civilizations.
It applies particularly to
civilizations which are below a
certain threshold of development,
preventing starship crews from
using their superior technology to
impose their own values or ideals
on them.
Used as allegory:
“The Prime Directive is
not just a set of rules. It
is a philosophy, and a
very correct one.
History has proven
again and again that
whenever mankind
interferes with a less
developed civilization,
no matter how well
intentioned that
interference may be,
the results are
invariably disastrous.”
Jon Luc-Picard
The directive reflected a
contemporary political
view of critics of the
United States’ foreign
policy. In particular, the
US’ involvement in
the Vietnam War was
commonly criticized as
an example of a global
superpower interfering
in the natural
development of
southeast Asian society,
and the assertion of the
Prime Directive was
perceived as a
repudiation of that
involvement.
5. Afghanistan
& Iraq
The Gift of
Democracy?
Among many reasons
that brought U. S.
armed forces to
Afghanistan & Iraq
was the hope of
extending democracy
to the Islamic world.
Only time will tell
whether the sustained
American presence in
those far-flung parts of
the globe will be the
beginning of a new
political era . . . or a
short-lived interlude
as 20th century
Americans witnessed
elsewhere.
The Most Recent
Resurfacing of
“American
Exceptionalism”
The phrase “American exceptionalism” has been much in the news ever since
Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed piece in the New York
Times taking issue with President Obama’s statement that America's foreign
policy “makes us exceptional.” “I would rather disagree with a case he made
on American exceptionalism,” Putin countered. “It is extremely dangerous to
encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”
A Tocqueville
Postscript
Fini