What makes America exceptional

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/?tid=sm_tw

This is an interesting article, and one that helps me understand a distinction I had not previously recognized. I do not believe America is the greatest country on Earth. Even if such a subjective statement could be quantified, there is no possible metric by which America can be said to stand above all others (and yes, the opening monologue from The Newsroom is on point here) ... except, perhaps, for aspiration.

More people want to be in America, to become American, than any other nation. The reason for that is not (or shouldn't be) quality of life; otherwise, the most popular nation on Earth would be Sweden, probably. And yet people aspire to be like us, or like our best vision of ourselves, because moreso than any other country, we aspire to be better too. And as the article says, it's not been the wealthy and privileged who've striven for continuous improvement in America: it's been "the ability of the unsung and the outsiders to challenge the country’s elite and force change."




What makes America exceptional is not our ability to use our overwhelming military power to impose peace on other nations. Britain did that. Rome did that. Motherfucking Genghis Khan did that. Nor is it even clear that we CAN impose peace on other nations: for every Normandy or Kosovo there are three Panamas or Egypts or Irans left poisoned and damaged by our open or clandestine exercise of military power.

The exceptional thing - and only exceptional thing - about America is that we are a nation where, at times, the surface cracks and change bubbles to the surface. We're certainly not the only nation to experience internal revolutions or waves of social reform - Russia and Tunisia - or to have such waves of change turn out badly - Russia and Egypt - but no nation has more consistently simmered with challenges to injustice or more often set the standard for the expansion of liberty than America.

Of course, we've backslid a bit, what with our giant and widening wealth gap and dwindling middle class and outrageous rates of incarceration and blithe disregard for civil liberties. But even in the face of our repeated betrayal of our better nature, there are ongoing struggles to push back. Some are ineffective, like Occupy Wall Street, and others have yet to be fully judged, like Black Lives Matter, but that's what makes America exceptional: not that we always live up to the ideals we hypocritically try to impose on some nations but not on others, but that there are always, always, Americans striving to make the nation better for their children.

Which is no doubt why many conservatives complain that Obama harps on the uglier episodes of American history. (Which I disagree with: acknowledging our darker hours is not the same as wallowing in them.) If American Exceptionalism is rooted in our refusal to accept anything less than our founding principles of liberty and equality, the only way to celebrate American Exceptionalism is to acknowledge all the times people have had to make the choice to do so.

It's helpful to finally have a definition of American Exceptionalism that I can stomach, although it will avail me little in arguing with people who hold to any other possible definition of the term. And it helps me understand and sympathize a little better with Obama, too. I'm still very disappointed with him as a president, and still think he fell short of not just our expectations in 2008, but his own, but it comforts me to think that he might have come up with a way to be proud of America without being toxic, and that he might have planted a seed for a new generation of leaders to build on that and once again refuse to accept anything less than justice for all.

EDIT: http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/republicans-are-wrong-about-obama-s-american-exceptionalism-20150604 is another good response to the first article, by a reporter who definitely is not an Obama cheerleader.