Over at The Anxious Bench blog, John Wilsey, a professor of history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, explores the various ways that Americans think about the United States as an “exceptional” nation. He compares the form of American exceptionalism espoused by Eric Foner in a recent article in The Nation with the view of exceptionalism recently put forth by Dick and Liz Cheney in the Wall Street Journal and in their new book Exceptional.  Here is a taste:
Foner argued that, if American exceptionalism has any basis of truth to it at all, that basis is found in the concept of birthright citizenship. He noted in his piece that the idea of birthright citizenship arose out of the injustice of slavery and the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Americans had not always acted justly toward non-whites, as seen in the Dred Scott case of 1857 and in attempts to exclude Chinese people (among others) from citizenship in the late nineteenth century. But regardless of those violations of justice, Americans ultimately came to believe that, as Foner wrote, “anyone born here can be a good American.” Foner wrote that Republican presidential candidates now calling for an end to birthright citizenship in the name of American exceptionalism are really betraying it.
The Cheneys’ conception of exceptionalism differs significantly from Foner’s. While the Cheneys and Foner both talk about American ideals as being central to exceptionalism, the Cheneys see those ideals in terms of a global mission and responsibility. For the Cheneys, America is a superpower “because of our ideals and our power, and the power of our ideals.” America has championed causes of “freedom, security and peace for a larger share of humanity than any other nation in history” and is “the most powerful, good and honorable nation in the history of mankind.” And while America did not necessarily seek greatness, greatness was thrust upon her—and America has a profound duty in the world to champion righteousness and freedom wherever these are threatened.
Foner’s conception of exceptionalism is exemplarist. It is a conception that admits flaws, but conceives of those flaws as opportunities for correction. Foner’s conception of exceptionalism is rooted in the founding ideals of individual rights, basic human equality, and the human dignity on which those ideals are based. Foner’s articulation of American exceptionalism is open, inclusive, and expansive. While Americans do not always get it right, Americans remain perpetually unsatisfied with wrong, and seek, by fits and starts, to promote the ideals with which they began their national career.
The Cheneys’ conception of exceptionalism goes beyond mere example. To be sure, the Cheneys wrote that America began as an example, but after World War II, “we became freedom’s defender.” (We could quibble with their historical accuracy—they leave out America’s contribution to Allied victory in World War I and Woodrow Wilson’s messianic vision of American leadership in the Versailles peace, a vision that birthed the Cheneys’ articulation of exceptionalism in the first place. But I digress.)
Two qualities animate the Cheneys’ articulation of exceptionalism—missionary zeal and American innocence. The idea that America has been charged with a global mission to “defend freedom” anywhere and everywhere is not new. It can be traced back to the colonial Puritans in the seventeenth century, American revolutionary sermons in the eighteenth, the manifest destiny of “Young America” in the nineteenth, and Wilson’s messianism of the early twentieth. In the Cold War, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles saw the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States in Manichean terms, part of a cosmic conflict of good versus evil. And everyone remembers Reagan’s “evil empire speech” of 1983. Reagan was fond of loosely quoting Abraham Lincoln, calling America “the last best hope of humanity” and advocating for America’s indispensability and innate goodness in a world perpetually threatened by forces of wickedness.
In this closed form of exceptionalism—this form of exceptionalism that is largely informed by religiosity and nationalism—America has two things that no other nation has, or ever has had. The first is immense power, and the second is innate innocence. Only America has the ability to defeat threats to freedom, and only America has the righteous credibility to do so.
Read the rest here.
I encourage you to check out Wilsey’s forthcoming book, American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea.
Since Cheney's version of American Exceptionalism involves getting American troops killed for no reason other than lining his own pockets as well as his friends, I have a real issue with it. We can point to the disaster of the Vietnam War as a form of that same type of Exceptionalism. What good came out of that for the US? None. Just more than 50,000 Americans and 1,000,000 Vietnamese killed for nothing. People like Cheney see the world in black and white. They've caused more problems than they have solved because they fail to understand history for one thing among many.
“Two Forms of Exceptionalism: Foner and Cheney”
Actually, there is only one. Foner's is a rhetorical counterfeit.
His essay mentions neither freedom nor liberty, which are essential to “American exceptionalism. That it includes “birthright citizenship”–a nuanced issue on which patriotic Americans can conscientiously disagree–is quite a bridge too far.
If we leave the black-hatted Dick Cheney [& Daughter] out of this, a more palatable expression of American exceptionalism might be
“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe–the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge–and more…”
John Kennedy's inaugural speech, of course. Better to argue Foner against Kennedy to put this into its proper context.