At National Review, Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru have a valuable essay on “the Obama administration’s assault on American identity”:
What do we, as American conservatives, want to conserve? The answer is simple: the pillars of American exceptionalism. Our country has always been exceptional. It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth. These qualities are the bequest of our Founding and of our cultural heritage. They have always marked America as special, with a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.
The survival of American exceptionalism as we have known it is at the heart of the debate over Obama’s program. It is why that debate is so charged. In his first year, Obama tried to avoid the cultural hot buttons that tripped up Bill Clinton and created the “gays, guns, and God” backlash of 1994. But he has stoked a different type of cultural reaction. The level of spending, the bailouts, and the extent of the intervention in the economy contemplated in health-care and cap-and-trade legislation have created the fear that something elemental is changing in the country. At stake isn’t just a grab bag of fiscal issues, but the meaning of America and the character of its people: the ultimate cultural issue.
February 23rd, 2010 | 12:50 pm
This is the kind of thing that requires more than just a pass-through link. I hope you’re formulating a response and will post again about it.
But I can start with something:
“They have always marked America as special, with a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.”
Exceptionalism in foreign policy = promoting and retaining hegemony = Imperialism enforced with guns
What does a vindicator of freedom mean? Arming the Contras? The problem with using military power when absolutely necessary, is that lots of things become absolutely necessary.
February 23rd, 2010 | 1:52 pm
“It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth.”
This is Stockholm Syndrome. Morally conservative institutions are under a growing de facto ban in this country, thanks in large part to the individualist mindset and marketing-derived platitudes about “openness” and “dynamism.” As soon as we stop pretending we’re as free as ever, we can work to return to a more free, just and virtuous society.
February 23rd, 2010 | 4:34 pm
Of course, traditionalist Catholics are generally very hostile to the idea of American exceptionalism.
February 23rd, 2010 | 7:47 pm
American Exceptionalism = American Imperialism. Lowry and Ponnuru are crude apologists for the War Party. In their minds, the American ideal is the Military Industrial Complex.
Their essay is indeed valuable. Because it demonstrates the mindset of militarism that Catholics should reject.
If Joe Carter subscribes to that mindset, FT should review its standards for recruiting contributors.
February 24th, 2010 | 3:09 am
What about those conservatives who believe that there is no hope of conserving American Exceptionalism, because the ideology of exceptionalism, even among the founders, was frail and self defeating?
It might be reasonable to think that the threats which worry contemporary conservatives are not some outside infection, but are instead natural consequence of our founding principles. Or, more accurately, they are the consequence of those principles when certain other circumstances are altered (e.g. industrial capitalism replacing frontier agrarianism, or scientific rationalism and subjectivism replacing Christian metaphysics).
If that is the case, then instead of trying to conserve the seeds that led us to where we are today, we should either be trying to restore some of those broken circumstances, or if that is impossible, working on new ways of defending the good things that American exceptionalism was originally formulated to protect. Goods such as autonomous local community, familial stability, personal virtue, and lack of state interference in non-state matters.
American Exceptionalism, as a political idea, was never more than a means to an end in the first place. If it has failed to continually achieve its purpose, then perhaps it should be abandoned or radically revised rather than simply defended.
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