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Supporting standards comprise 35% of the U. S. History Test 22 (A) Supporting Standard (22) The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism. The Student is expected to: (A) Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: Liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, & laissez-faire American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other countries. In this view, America’s exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming “the first new nation,” and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. This observation can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as “exceptional” in 1831 and 1840. Historian Gordon Wood has argued, “Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the wellbeing of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era.” So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy. American exceptionalism is the oldest and most contentious of the alleged national exceptionalisms— arguments that a given nation must be understood in essentially idiosyncratic fashion. Supporting Standard (22) The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism. The Student is expected to: (A) 1 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: Liberty LIBERTY Liberty is the quality individuals have to control their own actions. Different concepts of liberty articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways. Wrapped up in the warp and woof of the American Revolution, the notion of liberty—freedom—springs from America’s very beginnings as a nation. Supporting Standard (22) The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism. The Student is expected to: (A) 2 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: Egalitarianism EGALITARIANISM A belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic affairs; a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among people. The statement that the United States is an egalitarian society obviously does not imply that all Americans are equal in any way that can be defined. This proposition usually means (regardless of which aspect is under consideration--social relations, status, mobility, etc.) Supporting Standard (22) The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism. The Student is expected to: (A) 3 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: Individualism INDIVIDUALISM A social theory advocating the liberty, rights, or independent action of the individual; the principle or habit of or belief in independent th ought or action. “The individualizing ideology of Jacksonianism” focused on the “opportunity and expansion for everyone amide minimal or no government regulation, a rhetoric of republican equality that actually masked a profoundly unequal society.” The Jacksonian Era was one “of minimal government, emphasizing the individual right to do whatever, and move wherever, one might please. . . . Freedom was an absolute” (Stephanson, 30-31). Supporting Standard (22) The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism. The Student is expected to: (A) 4 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: Populism POPULISM The political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite; grass-roots democracy; a representation or extolling of the common person. Supporting Standard (22) The student understands the concept of American exceptionalism. The Student is expected to: (A) 5 Discuss Alexis de Tocqueville’s five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: Laissez-faire LAISSEZ-FAIRE A political policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering, particularly as it is applied to the operation of economic forces and the interplay of a free market; the theory or system of government that uphold s the autonomous character of the economic or der,believing that government should intervene as little as possible in the direction of economic affairs; the practice or doctrine of noninterference in t he affairs of others, especially with reference to individual conduct or freedom of action. LAISSEZ-FAIRE Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life: “The existing concentration of wealth and financial power in the hands of a few irresponsible men is the inevitable outcome of the chaotic individualism of our political and economic organization, while at the same time it is inimical to democracy, because it tends to erect political abuses and social inequalities into a system ” (Stephanson, 109). “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” This quote, often lifted out of context, is T. Davidto Gordon of Conwell construed be high praise of Theological Seminary—“Roots the relatively fledgling of American Exceptionalism” American nation. Alexis de Tocqueville’s twovolume classic, Democracy in America, appeared in 1835 and 1840. What was “exceptional” about the American “position” is its peculiar history that had led it to its present (to Tocqueville) circumstance, in which the American mind was devoted to almost nothing but pragmatic/practical interests. Only his religion, Tocqueville sighs, occasionally relieves the American of his unseemly mundaneness and bids him to a “transient … glance” at more transcendent concerns. Rhetorically, Tocqueville was trying to persuade others that democracy was a good form of government; and his problem, rhetorically, was that the American example appeared to provide counter-evidence, namely America’s industrious & practical focus on things commercial. Its egalitarianism, religiosity, & dependency on the community was counterbalanced by its great neglect of science as well as artistic & literary pursuits (& according to Tocqueville only spared from “relapsing into barbarism” because of its proximity to Europe). Tocqueville was embarrassed that a free people had employed their freedom for mundane or commercial pursuits; so in order to rescue democracy, Tocqueville argued that it only looks like a bad form of government in America because of America’s peculiar (“exceptional”) history. Freed from this peculiar history, Tocqueville argued, democracy would work fine. Whether America ever was or is exceptional is a matter for more discussion, but Tocqueville’s own estimate of 19th-century America was mixed at best and negative at worst. He would have preferred that democracy had produced a more learned and refined culture. And that’s a side of Alexis de Tocqueville, and his view of America, we don’t often hear or understand. Others have taken Tocqueville’s observation as the touchstone of a much more positive argument. American exceptionalism is the theory that the U. S. is “qualitatively different” from other states. In this view, U.S. exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called “the first new nation” and developing a uniquely American ideology, “Americanism,” based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, populism, & laissez-faire. This ideology itself is often referred to as “American exceptionalism.” Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the United States is like the biblical shining “City upon a Hill,” and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries. Historians like Richard Hofstadter reframed the question of “American exceptionalism” in a more positive manner, as a way to explain how the U.S. had avoided the bloody conflicts experienced by Europe in the 20thcentury. The term “American exceptionalism” has been in use since at least the 1920s and saw more common use after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin chastised members of the Jay Lovestone-led faction of the American Communist Party for their heretical belief that America was independent of the Marxist laws of history “thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions.” In 1989 Scottish political scientist Richard Rose noted that most American historians endorse exceptionalism. He suggests that these historians reason as follows: “America marches to a different drummer. Its uniqueness is explained by any or all of a variety of reasons: history, size, geography, political institutions, and culture. Explanations of the growth of government in Europe are not expected to fit American experience, and vice versa.” However, some American scholars have rejected American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States had not broken from European history, and accordingly, the United States has retained class inequities, racebased inequalities, imperialism and war. Most importantly, Americans are exceptional because of the nature of our founding and the institutions of government that were then created and which remain today. What those men did was without precedent. Between 1776 and 1789, the founders peacefully forged a law-centric republic, predicated on the separation of powers, using principles of checks and balances, all based on representative government. They created a nation that promoted democratic ideals and personal liberty, with elected leaders who were accountable to the people. The English also bequeathed to the American colonies the tradition of Protestant dissent, and that has been a very important part of American exceptionalism—through the idea that Protestantism is superior to Catholicism, let alone other religions, in allowing the development of an individual and as a counter to autocratic and hierarchical power. This idea of Protestantism’s superiority flourished in 19th century U.S. exceptionalist ideas. Protestantism, especially evangelical Protestantism, is still a vital component in American culture and identity. Charles Murray, author of American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History, writes that American exceptionalism stems from four elements: geography, culture, ideology and politics. We were unique in that we were a nation bordered by non-belligerents on the north and south and by oceans on the east and west. The very harshness of the environment, in those early years, meant only people of a certain character would emigrate. An absence of a state religion allowed for a “free market” of competing religious sects. From the very origins of the nation in the Colonial Era, there was strong belief in the exceptional nature of what was being executed by those who had immigrated to North America. The Antecedent— Winthrop’s City Upon a Hill Winthrop & the Massachusetts Bay Colony were part of a Separatist religious tradition—“Puritanism”—comprised of immigrants who literally left their homeland to create a “bastion of true religion,” a “place divinely signaled out for higher missions” like the “Divine purposes [that] would have to be worked out elsewhere, in some new and uncorrupted land” (Stephanson, 4). City upon a Hill’s Descendants Anders Stephanson’s landmark work, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion & Empire of Right is perhaps the most insightful assessment connecting Manifest Destiny to American exceptionalism. 1. O’Sullivan & Manifest Destiny Philosophy of Expansion Components of Manifest Destiny & the “Destinarian” Concept of America John L. O’Sullivan, founder (1837) & editor of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review • Providence (God) favored U.S. expansion • Free development and expansion of American democracy • Need for new territory as an outlet for an expanding population Below, this painting (circa 1872) by John Gast called American Progress, is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Here Columbia, a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she sweeps west; she holds a school book. The different stages of economic activity of the pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the changing forms of transportation. Above, American westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of manifest destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. A highly romanticized interpretation of Manifest Destiny in motion American exceptionalism was tied to the idea of Manifest Destiny or destinarian expansion. Manifest Destiny was a term used by Jacksonian Democrats in the 1840s to promote the acquisition of much of what is now the Western United States (the Oregon Territory, the Texas Annexation, and the Mexican Cession of California and New Mexico and adjacent areas). After de Tocqueville’s usage the theme became common, especially in textbooks. From the 1840s to the late 19th century, the McGuffey Readers sold 120 million copies and were studied by most American students. Skrabec (2009) argues that the Readers “hailed American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and America as God's country. ... Furthermore, McGuffey saw America as having a future mission to bring liberty and democracy to the world.” Manifest destiny was a concept “heavily suffused with religious overtones” rooted in “old biblical notions . . . of the predestined, redemptive role of God’s chosen people In the Promised Land.” The “genealogy” of the idea “must begin with the religious sources. . . . Visions of the United States as a sacred space providentially selected for divine purposes found a counterpart in the secular idea of a new nation of liberty as a privileged ‘stage’ . . . for the exhibition of a new world order, a great ‘experiment’ for the benefit of humankind as a whole. . . . What unified the sacred and the secular, then, was precisely the idea of ‘America’ as a unique mission and project in time and space,” a “New Canaan, a promised land,” a “Puritan reenactment of the Exodus narrative.” The Puritans who came to America had a “perspective of covenantal chosenness. . . . Surely, it could not have been an accident either that God had unveiled this New World, this new continent, hidden for so many ages, precisely at the moment when the process of purification had begun in the Old World. . . . The [18th century] idea of translatio imperii [transfer of rule] . . . was a matter of westward movement.” By the 1820s, there developed a “notion that the United states was a sacred-secular project, a mission of world historical significance. . . . History was a providential plan whose end was to be played out in the specially designed space of America. . . . The cause of humanity was identical with that of the United States. . . . In short, Christianity, democracy, and Jacksonian America were essentially one and the same thing, the highest state of history, God’s plan incarnate. . . . The end of history was American democracy enshrined in the trinity of ‘free government, free commerce, and free men,’” including “‘the ceaseless march of free institutions’” (Stephanson, 5-9, 18, 40, 97, 99). “Manifest Destiny” became “a catchword for the idea of a providentially or historically sanctioned right to continental expansion,” a “providentially assigned role of the United States to lead the world to new and better things,” “a special calling or mission. . . . This vision has been constant throughout American history.” Indeed, there historically has been in America a “nationalism constituting itself not only as prophetic but universal,” an “idea of providential and historical chosenness, origins both Protestant and liberal in nature. . . .Manifest destiny is of signal importance in the way the United Sates came to understand itself in the world and still does.” Manifest destiny is “a tradition that creates a sense of national place and direction in a variety of historical settings” (Stephanson, xii-xiv). 2. SpanishAmerican War How to Justify Intrusion into Cuba? Rev. Josiah Strong, the religious voice promoting mission at home & abroad On the surface, America’s behavior appeared little more than naked imperialist aggression patented centuries before by the Old World countries John Fiske, Theodore Roosevelt— historian—civilization Invasive action that parleyed Cuba into an American keeping nation fit enables conquering retreating America to promote sugar plantation was excused by the conviction that barbarism Columbia University progressive evolution “God and history were thus fusedJohn into the design of professor, Burgess—civilized progressive, linear evolution of the fittest.” U. S. states have claim on involvement exploited the opportunity to “spread uncivilized ones Alfred T. Mahan— the blessings of the Word to non-Christian, conquest followed by uplifting uncivilized areas” (Stephanson, 79).g “History appeared to Roosevelt as a linear movement from barbarism to civilization” (Stephanson, 106). 3. Wilson’s LiberalDemocratic-Capitalist World Order Going to War to Further a Good Cause IDEALISTIC REASONS Idealism—the belief in the linear development of history in a progressive direction toward a world without war, and with harmony, abundance, and happiness—was a strong current in 19th century U. S. thought. Many cast the explanation in terms of “misguided idealism.” • • To make the world safe for democracy, rights of man, future peace, world security. Wilson viewed U. S. participation in the war as an opportunity to reform the world order into a liberal-capitalist-democratic system. It took on the dimensions of a holy purpose. The U. S. entered the war not out for profit but as God’s chosen vessel; He made America strong so she could achieve selfless aims in a spirit of sacrifice, a rather selfflattering approach. IDEALISTIC REASONS Continued • • This was a “War to End All Wars” and enforce disarmament The war was conceived as a struggle of good vs. evil – Autocracy vs. democracy – Imperialism vs. self-determination – Militarism vs. disarmament Germany came to represent an obstacle in the way to peace, all things evil and immoral, a threat to civilization; the Kaiser a symbol of autocracy and militarism. IDEALISTIC REASONS Continued • • • Wilson stood on principle for rule of law, international justice, the rights of man Wilson saw the League of Nations as an independent force in the world capable of overriding old animosities, conflicts as a rallying point of world opinion. N. Gordon Levin’s notion of U. S. liberal exceptionalism Professor N. Gordon Levin argued that the U. S. was unfettered by feudal traditions, power politics, and hence the obvious leader of a new world order based on U. S. values of free trade, liberalism, rule of international law, human rights—Germany threatened the hope for universal democracy. Levin argues that Wilson acted to serve man with a combination of liberal antiimperialism and missionary nationalism—he equated universal human rights with the U. S. value system. He envisaged a worldwide Liberal-Capitalist system with political liberalism, social mobility, constitutional government, capitalist production. AN ECHO OF WINTHROP’S “CITY UPON A HILL”: Wilson (the son of a Presbyterian minister and himself infused with a strong sense of “the deeper providential purposes of history”) saw the mission of America “‘to be the mediator of peace,’ to be the ‘light of the world,’ and ‘to lead the world in the assertion of the rights of peoples and the rights of free nations’” (Stephanson, 114, 117). The Road to Good Intentions Among many noble motives compelling Wilson to take the nation to war in 1917 was the bequeathing of democracy to the “successor states” carved out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after war’s end. Unacquainted with democratic practice or tradition, the successor states created in the image of the Western democracies, these polities were quite incapable of using or preserving those governments It would not be the last time Americans would break their teeth attempting to spread their version of democracy Hitler christened them staaten saison— states for a season . . . and would soon swallow them up, incorporating them into his growing Third Reich. 4. Vietnam An Ongoing Continuation of the Cold War Franklin Roosevelt styled the U. S. as “‘leader of the free world,’ locked in mortal struggle with the forces of Communist evil. This act of positioning harped back, not unnaturally, to earlier themes of election and preordained mission. Once again American destiny seemed manifest. . . . Both powers promulgated, and considered themselves to embody, universal ideologies of right. . . . In the 1840s, the spatial destination of destiny was clearly continental, a westward, horizontal movement; and the agent involved was the United States, separate and along. In the 1890s the destination was diffusely conceived as a sphere of barbarism where the gradual struggle for civilization and race might occur on the way to the final victory that was not that urgent. . . .In the Cold War, however, every space could in principle be defined with instantaneous and razor-sharp distinction either as our side or theirs . . . and the United States was the global agent of freedom in lethal combat everywhere with a single, terrifying antagonist. . . . [By the 1980s, President] Reagan reasserted the true American Way in the world, using language strongly reminiscent of Jackson and O’Sullivan. His early jeremiads depicted a nation fallen temporarily on hard times because of atheism, welfare liberalism, government meddling, appeasement of Communism, and other deviations from the original and timeless faith.” In launching his political career in 1964, Reagan proclaimed that “‘America was set apart in a special way, that it was put here between the oceans to be found by a certain kind of people,’ that it was chosen by higher authority to be ‘a beacon of hope to the rest of the world,’ that ‘the dream of America’ was the ‘last best hope of man on earth.’ . . . And this destiny and duty to the world meant above all vigorous prosecution of the Cold War” (Stephanson, 122). Reagan’s 1964 Speech In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive, Starfleet’s General Order number 1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations. It applies particularly to civilizations which are below a certain threshold of development, preventing starship crews from using their superior technology to impose their own values or ideals on them. Used as allegory: “The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous.” Jon Luc-Picard The directive reflected a contemporary political view of critics of the United States’ foreign policy. In particular, the US’ involvement in the Vietnam War was commonly criticized as an example of a global superpower interfering in the natural development of southeast Asian society, and the assertion of the Prime Directive was perceived as a repudiation of that involvement. 5. Afghanistan & Iraq The Gift of Democracy? Among many reasons that brought U. S. armed forces to Afghanistan & Iraq was the hope of extending democracy to the Islamic world. Only time will tell whether the sustained American presence in those far-flung parts of the globe will be the beginning of a new political era . . . or a short-lived interlude as 20th century Americans witnessed elsewhere. The Most Recent Resurfacing of “American Exceptionalism” The phrase “American exceptionalism” has been much in the news ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times taking issue with President Obama’s statement that America's foreign policy “makes us exceptional.” “I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism,” Putin countered. “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” A Tocqueville Postscript Fini