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This is a common misunderstanding of the meaning of the word 'exceptional'. The origins of the phrase "American exceptionalism" had nothing to do with greatnes

by starkd 4y ago

This is a common misunderstanding of the meaning of the word 'exceptional'. The origins of the phrase "American exceptionalism" had nothing to do with greatness or thinking one country is better than another. It is exceptional only in that the country was concieved as an exception to the rule of where its power ultimately comes from. The normal foundation for the state was upon a divinely anointed monarchy. America was founded by the people who loan their power to representatives. That power can be revoked at any time by the people. It was a dramatic departure from the expactations of sovereignty at the time.

mikkergp 4y ago
While this may be true originally or historically, I don’t think it’s what most people today mean colloquially when they say American Exceptionalism, and I think there’s a large group of people that agree more with the colloquial definition.
- starkd 4y ago
  Yes, I understand that. But it's very different from its origins. When America was founded, it consisted of mostly farmers. Basic agriculture. It produced nothing extraodinary and in relation to other countries. Britain was the financial powerhouse of the world, and there were no monoliths present. I just wanted to point out how language has been distorted to make the notion of exceptionalism something that it is not and never was.
  - the_lonely_road 4y ago
    Most humans were illiterate and had a small vocabulary consistently of only a tiny portion of their languages actual vocabulary. The modern world with its high literacy rates is exceptional. As a direct result many words have completely lost their meaning and in some cases even taken on opposite meaning to their original intention! I believe this a direct result of people fighting to be accepted by the small elite that could read. Write a paper in the 1700’s using the phrase “literally famished” to mean you haven't eaten since lunch and you would be laughed out of the building. Write it now on Twitter and no one in your in group is going to call you out because they know what you mean and ‘sanctity’ of the language is much less important to them then social cohesiveness, if they even care at all.
- elevation 4y ago
  The "colloquial" definition has been popularized by those who demean the US rhetorically. You can paint as a fool anyone who claims that "American Exceptionalism" even exists by contrasting the phrase to any statistic that makes the US look less than "exceptional." However, the classical definition, that the U.S. has a historically unique operating agreement, is generally understood in politically conservative contexts.
oblio 4y ago
The thing is, the common misunderstanding is one of the core American tenets. It's one of the core American myths which is directly transmitted through American education, and the vast majority of Americans believe it. Even those that say they don't will recoil when you disprove or contest some key aspects, it's a very ingrained idea. Everyone wants to be part of an exceptional nation because then there's a chance they're personally exceptional, too :-)
- starkd 4y ago
  Well, any successful nation cannot be successful without believing in itself. True.
  - oblio 4y ago
    True, but ask the average Brit or German and compare notes with the average American ;-)
- bitshiftfaced 4y ago
  The "misunderstanding" that the parent poster was referring to was the meaning of "exceptionalism." Correct me if I'm wrong, but the misunderstanding that you seem to be referring to is whether or not the nation actually is the thing that people misunderstood exceptionalism to mean, which is "great," "superior," etc. That's more of an opinion, so I wouldn't say "misunderstanding" is the right word for it.
  - starkd 4y ago
    Many people use the phrase with the assumption of extraordinary greatness or superiority. Like in that aaron sorkin video clip the article references. Exceptional can mean better performance or better results, but it can also mean that its exceptional to the rule of what a nation state was traditionally founded on. That's what the revolutionary origin of it intended. The criticism people make of it is founded on a strawman, because it was never meant that America is superior.
- cowtools 4y ago
hathawsh 4y ago
The second paragraph of the Wikipedia article [1] about the term agrees with you, although I think you stated the idea more clearly than Wikipedia currently does. You could propose some enhancements. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
masswerk 4y ago
Also, when this term was coined, most (if not all) attributes of greatness listed in the article still applied to the British Empire, rivalled only by France.
Tainnor 4y ago
There are a number of examples of non-monarchies that existed before the US did, such as Switzerland or the United Provinces, and at least the former had some elements of democracy built in early on (Landsgemeinde). Undoubtedly, the American Revolution was huge and created something novel, but it's not like it all happened in a vacuum.
- pishpash 4y ago
  I mean, confederacies are older than monarchies in human history. Even in N. America there was the Iroquois Confederacy right there. Not to take away from the rebellion and the formalization of political philosophy, but this is typical puffery by the ascendent Anglo-Saxons who were looking for a superiority narrative to serve the need of colonial nation-building and subsequently world domination.
  - yucky 4y ago
    >this is typical puffery by the ascendent Anglo-Saxons who were looking for a superiority narrative By what metric was there not superiority?
    - pishpash 4y ago
      At the time? The Revolution-era US was none of the things that the linked article quotes as examples of exceptional greatness. It was a relative backwater, facing internal and external security threats and struggling to get a national government working.
      - yucky 4y ago
        Even then you had superiority over the native population in every metric (economic, health, education etc) unless I'm missing something.
yongjik 4y ago
The idea was exceptional (and revolutionary) in 1776, but it's 2022 now. Practically every country has a constitution stating that its power derives from the people, and a number of countries do make good on that promise. If anything, what's exceptional about America is how its citizens are treating fossilized details of a 246-year-old system as critically important, conveniently ignoring that America's founding fathers couldn't foresee everything, and that dozens of other democratic countries function without these details just fine.
- ghufran_syed 4y ago
  “ Practically every country has a constitution stating that its power derives from the people, and a number of countries do make good on that promise.” Interesting claim - how would you square that with, say, the fact that majorities of “the people” in the UK support the death penalty for child murderers, and yet both main political parties have conspired to ban the death penalty? Does “power deriving” from the people differ somehow from actually implementing policies that they want? https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/03/30/britons-dont-tend-support-death-penalty-until-you- https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/0...
  - Tainnor 4y ago
    That's a pretty ridiculous take on what "power derived from the people" means. Neither the UK nor the US are direct democracies. In fact, unlike the Ancient world, there are almost no direct democracies today (even federal Swiss democracy has representative elements). You can find in any representative democracy positions which, at some time, are majority positions yet not implemented in law. In the US, you have a recent example with the legality of abortions.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

by starkd 4y ago

mikkergp 4y ago

While this may be true originally or historically, I don’t think it’s what most people today mean colloquially when they say American Exceptionalism, and I think there’s a large group of people that agree more with the colloquial definition.

starkd 4y ago
Yes, I understand that. But it's very different from its origins. When America was founded, it consisted of mostly farmers. Basic agriculture. It produced nothing extraodinary and in relation to other countries. Britain was the financial powerhouse of the world, and there were no monoliths present. I just wanted to point out how language has been distorted to make the notion of exceptionalism something that it is not and never was.
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  Most humans were illiterate and had a small vocabulary consistently of only a tiny portion of their languages actual vocabulary. The modern world with its high literacy rates is exceptional. As a direct result many words have completely lost their meaning and in some cases even taken on opposite meaning to their original intention! I believe this a direct result of people fighting to be accepted by the small elite that could read. Write a paper in the 1700’s using the phrase “literally famished” to mean you haven't eaten since lunch and you would be laughed out of the building. Write it now on Twitter and no one in your in group is going to call you out because they know what you mean and ‘sanctity’ of the language is much less important to them then social cohesiveness, if they even care at all.
elevation 4y ago
The "colloquial" definition has been popularized by those who demean the US rhetorically. You can paint as a fool anyone who claims that "American Exceptionalism" even exists by contrasting the phrase to any statistic that makes the US look less than "exceptional." However, the classical definition, that the U.S. has a historically unique operating agreement, is generally understood in politically conservative contexts.

oblio 4y ago

The thing is, the common misunderstanding is one of the core American tenets. It's one of the core American myths which is directly transmitted through American education, and the vast majority of Americans believe it. Even those that say they don't will recoil when you disprove or contest some key aspects, it's a very ingrained idea. Everyone wants to be part of an exceptional nation because then there's a chance they're personally exceptional, too :-)

starkd 4y ago
Well, any successful nation cannot be successful without believing in itself. True.
- oblio 4y ago
  True, but ask the average Brit or German and compare notes with the average American ;-)
bitshiftfaced 4y ago
The "misunderstanding" that the parent poster was referring to was the meaning of "exceptionalism." Correct me if I'm wrong, but the misunderstanding that you seem to be referring to is whether or not the nation actually is the thing that people misunderstood exceptionalism to mean, which is "great," "superior," etc. That's more of an opinion, so I wouldn't say "misunderstanding" is the right word for it.
- starkd 4y ago
  Many people use the phrase with the assumption of extraordinary greatness or superiority. Like in that aaron sorkin video clip the article references. Exceptional can mean better performance or better results, but it can also mean that its exceptional to the rule of what a nation state was traditionally founded on. That's what the revolutionary origin of it intended. The criticism people make of it is founded on a strawman, because it was never meant that America is superior.
cowtools 4y ago

hathawsh 4y ago

The second paragraph of the Wikipedia article [1] about the term agrees with you, although I think you stated the idea more clearly than Wikipedia currently does. You could propose some enhancements. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

masswerk 4y ago

Also, when this term was coined, most (if not all) attributes of greatness listed in the article still applied to the British Empire, rivalled only by France.

Tainnor 4y ago

There are a number of examples of non-monarchies that existed before the US did, such as Switzerland or the United Provinces, and at least the former had some elements of democracy built in early on (Landsgemeinde). Undoubtedly, the American Revolution was huge and created something novel, but it's not like it all happened in a vacuum.

pishpash 4y ago
I mean, confederacies are older than monarchies in human history. Even in N. America there was the Iroquois Confederacy right there. Not to take away from the rebellion and the formalization of political philosophy, but this is typical puffery by the ascendent Anglo-Saxons who were looking for a superiority narrative to serve the need of colonial nation-building and subsequently world domination.
- yucky 4y ago
  >this is typical puffery by the ascendent Anglo-Saxons who were looking for a superiority narrative By what metric was there not superiority?
  - pishpash 4y ago
    At the time? The Revolution-era US was none of the things that the linked article quotes as examples of exceptional greatness. It was a relative backwater, facing internal and external security threats and struggling to get a national government working.
    - yucky 4y ago
      Even then you had superiority over the native population in every metric (economic, health, education etc) unless I'm missing something.

yongjik 4y ago

The idea was exceptional (and revolutionary) in 1776, but it's 2022 now. Practically every country has a constitution stating that its power derives from the people, and a number of countries do make good on that promise. If anything, what's exceptional about America is how its citizens are treating fossilized details of a 246-year-old system as critically important, conveniently ignoring that America's founding fathers couldn't foresee everything, and that dozens of other democratic countries function without these details just fine.

ghufran_syed 4y ago
“ Practically every country has a constitution stating that its power derives from the people, and a number of countries do make good on that promise.” Interesting claim - how would you square that with, say, the fact that majorities of “the people” in the UK support the death penalty for child murderers, and yet both main political parties have conspired to ban the death penalty? Does “power deriving” from the people differ somehow from actually implementing policies that they want? https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/03/30/britons-dont-tend-support-death-penalty-until-you- https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/0...
- Tainnor 4y ago
  That's a pretty ridiculous take on what "power derived from the people" means. Neither the UK nor the US are direct democracies. In fact, unlike the Ancient world, there are almost no direct democracies today (even federal Swiss democracy has representative elements). You can find in any representative democracy positions which, at some time, are majority positions yet not implemented in law. In the US, you have a recent example with the legality of abortions.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]