As has happened before, I have, by writing too quickly, failed to explain myself adequately. The phrase “American exceptionalism” refers to a theory that was widely held for a long time by academic American historians and still plays a central role in the public mythology of this country. The theory is this: European countries – England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and so on – all have long legal, political, and economic traditions and institutions grounded in the feudal period, traditions of hereditary land ownership, ecclesiastical courts, special rights for the nobility, various forms of unfree labor such as serfdom, and so forth. The histories of these countries reach back to a time that is shrouded in myth and obscurity. These traditions, according to this view, have weighed heavily on these countries in their modern form, leaving structural and cultural marks that it is impossible to obliterate.
By contrast, so the theory of American exceptionalism goes,
America was brought into existence in a virgin land without the burden of
hereditary land ownership, traditional legal restrictions, ecclesiastical
rights, and the like. For that reason, the theory goes on, American history has
been an exception to the generalizations that historians have formulated on the
basis of their cross national studies of the various nations of Europe. Hence
American Exceptionalism. Indeed, this theory goes on, America is the only
nation founded on an idea, the Idea of Freedom. Hence American
history can correctly be viewed as the slow, painful, but inexorable
fulfillment and realization of this founding Idea.
France has its Revolution, England has its Magna Carta, but
the histories of France and England reach back beyond those defining moments
and permanently shape and (or so it is obviously thought) corrupt their nature
as nations. Only America is the pure embodiment of an idea toward the fulfillment ofwhich its
history majestically moves.
In the second chapter of my book Autobiography of an Ex-White
Man I showed at length the way in which this Myth of American Exceptionalism
found its way into the leading college American history textbooks of the middle
and later 20th-century and then in the third chapter I told the real
story of America as I had learned it from my colleagues in the Afro-American
Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts.
This is what I was alluding to in my all too brief remarks
in my previous post. My apologies for not having been more clear.
I’m sorry I haven’t read that book of yours. And so in search of further clarification: You seem to be suggesting that anterior to the invention of the United States lies a whole murky past that, like the past of the other places you mention, contains much to give one pause. Do you also look critically into the history of the founding ideas? I’m thinking, perhaps erroneously, of the ideas of Locke, which some see as playing a significant part in the US’s founding ideology, ideas which themselves were integral to a particularly violent period in English and more generally British history.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't one argue for qualified exceptionalism?
ReplyDeleteIn the ancient world Athens had an exemplary democracy- but partial and glued to imperialism. Perhaps democracy unleashes our baser instincts and lower natures as well.
Perhaps America is not a bad idea- not total hypocrisy but not universally applied and you can be a prophet who sees darkness where patriots see a pure red, white and blue flag.
I think your struggle in the sixties was to force America to be exceptional for its citizens and the world, without exception.
Perhaps it is wise to see things black and white, but we live in the cave of the real world and not the sunny ether of the philosophers
In your previous post, you wrote: "It will be a while before Americans have the chutzpah to claim that they are a city upon a hill, the only nation created on the idea of freedom, a beacon to the world, etc. etc. etc."
ReplyDeleteThis touches on an important element of the Myth of American exceptionalism as I learned it growing up in the 90's and early 2000's: that it's not just a myth that Americans tell themselves, it's also a myth that the rest of the world buys into.
As a kid, I was taught that the rest of the world looks to and defers to America because America "saved" the world from Nazism in WW2 and Communism in the Cold War. I was told that the millions of people around the world who struggle to move to America do so because it epitomizes freedom and opportunity and enlightened democracy. Melting pots and all that good stuff.
Whether true or not, until the Trump administration plenty of well-educated and well-travelled Americans bought into the myth that the rest of the world is envious of American freedoms, ideals, living standards, and democracy - which reinforced the myth of American Exceptionalism domestically.
But my guess is that Trump will make those people think twice before talking about how awesome America is the next time they find themselves drinking in a bar in a Europe.
"In the ancient world Athens had an exemplary democracy"
ReplyDeleteExcept for all the slaves and non-citizens
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ReplyDeleteI'm putting your book Ex White Man into my rotation (about 22.00 amazon). This as well as the Milleniad by George Vid Tomashevich and A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. A nice trifecta for a the coming week!
ReplyDeleteWe used to burn witches. We used to have slaves. The victims now victimizers, tyrannized once now the tyrannizers, (Neitzsche). Good intentions leading to the road to hell, etc. The persecuted puritans executing innocent people. But here in America, Bin Laden and others are "Bad". The protestants kept out the catholics and jews. Black slaves. Trade across the world contributed to all this. Locke and Voltaire so much for their "feet of clay". Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, King Rhesus, Mohammed all did not condemn slaves. Aristotle liked little boys, Euclid had slaves, and treated them terribly.Van Buren, Fillmore, The Amistad, slave act, fugitive slave law, Nebraska-kansas act.
ReplyDeleteAny condemnation of terrible things that made this country great and you become a freak. Nat Turners insurrection (1831) the south said the north has been infected with a "slave mind" Same as twitter today, we are infected by thought control. The proclamation (1863) was still terrible. This is just the start of our history.
I have not read most of the comments nor the previous remarks that started all this. But in case someone hasn't said it yet, there are different varieties of "American exceptionalism" that emphasize somewhat different things. The academic theory of American exceptionalism discussed in the post and in Autobiography of an ex-White Man is only one version or variety, albeit an influential one.
ReplyDeleteThe non-academic Reaganesque "city on a hill" version of American exceptionalism does not crucially depend on or refer to the absence of a feudal tradition. America could be a "city on a hill" by an act of faith and declarative fiat in this more popular version, irrespective of the details of its history and the absence of a feudal aristocracy.
I doubt Reagan had ever heard of, much less read, Hartz's _The Liberal Tradition in America_ or Henry Nash Smith's _Virgin Land_, just to mention two. Btw an interesting scholarly book that discusses how the Hartzian liberal tradition affected the U.S. approach to what used to be called the Third World is Robert Packenham, _Liberal America and the Third World_ (1973, pb 1976). There is also an extensive literature on the Jeffersonian idea of "an empire of liberty" and how it connects up with the other steam of political thought that influenced the Founders, namely civic republicanism as it traveled from Machiavelli to, e.g., James Harrington. The now-classic work on this stream is J.G.A. Pocock, _The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition_ (1975).
LFC
ReplyDeleteI read Pocock a couple of years ago as background for a study group at OLLI on Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. I can attest to a remark made in connection with another of his works: "Pocock is not for the intellectually faint of heart."
David Palmeter
ReplyDeleteThat's right. I myself have not read through the whole book from start to finish, but I have read substantial parts of it. The chapters at the end, when he reaches the era of the American Revolution, are good, though, as you note, not esp easy going. (Ditto for the rest of the book, though the chapter on The Prince is fairly straightforward, emphasizing among other things M's focus on the problems of the innovator, the "new prince".)
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A Happy and spiritually fulfilling Thanksgiving to all the readers of this wonderful blog (yes, including all the Anonymous who still find me annoying).
You beat me to it by a few minutes, MS. But I second the sentiment that all readers who celebrate it (that will be mainly readers in the U.S.) have a nice and not-crowded Thanksgiving. Mine will be extremely uncrowded, which is just as well, everything considered.
ReplyDeleteThe actual phrase "American exceptionalism" was originally coined by Joseph Stalin in 1929.
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