|
November 24, 2006
In the article entitled Neoconservatism's Liberal Legacy in Policy Review mentioned below Todd Lindberg says that neoconservatism generally shared American exceptionalism. He says:
They were unabashed partisans of the American side, because they thought the United States best embodied (did embody) the ideals for which they stood: liberty, equality of opportunity, and so on. Moreover, they believed the United States had a unique role to play in the protection of and (to the extent possible) the spread of freedom on account of its position as a global power.
So what was specifically American about this "exceptionalism", which on the surface appears to be just liberalism that favours individual freedom above equality? What needs to be factored in is the manifest destiny of the US and its nationalism.
Lindberg does spell out American exceptionalism when he says:
the Americanness of the exceptionalism, it was clearly rooted in the strong attachment in the United States to liberal democratic principles and the market economy, as well as the ability of the United States to defend those principles against all comers ---- and more broadly, to defend the security of the free world. This Americanness stood in contrast not only to the communist world but also, in certain respects, to the rest of the free world. The perceived deficiencies abroad were various, from socialist economic policies said to have brought on stagnation, to the tenuousness of democracy, to the very fact that the rest of the free world could not (and perhaps would not try to) defend itself in the absence of the United States. One could say that this exceptionalism pitted an idealized vision of the United States against (sometimes somewhat tendentiously described) realities elsewhere in order to declare reality abroad deficient by comparison.
So a social democratic Australia is deficient because it does not come up to the ideals of free market capitalism. Therein lies American nationalism: one based on the belief in the supremacy of U.S. democratic institutions and free market capitalism rather than ethnicity.
|
Gary, Therein lies American nationalism: one based on the a belief in the supremacy of U.S. democratic institutions and free market capitalism rather than ethnicity.
I agree with that. The US is very comfortably multi-ethnic and multi-cultural; as long as people join in economically they are accepted. The American dream I guess. Personally I quite like it and that attitude.