Randi Rhodes Forums

An interesting discussion on 7/3's show, but Nicole -- and, apparently, Rick Santorum, don't seem to understand exactly what American Exceptionalism is.
The US being the best country is only marginally related to American Exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism is a meme; a religious doctrine; a mindset. It's a subset of Manifest Destiny -- the 19th century doctrine that America was destined by divine mandate to spread from coast to coast.
Exceptionalism, likewise, is the doctrine that the US is God's chosen country. It's the belief that America has a sacred mandate to lead or manage the world; that the ordinary political rules don't apply to us as they do to other countries. It's the belief that we're mandated to make and impose the rules others must live by.

Discussion?

Published by Request
ROCHESTER: PRINTED BY LEE, MANN & CO., AMERICAN BUILDING.
1852.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ESQ.

...

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.-There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

According to Wikipedia, the first person to use those words was Joseph Stalin, in 1929.

Lovestone, an American Communist, claimed that America was uniquely "immune" to some of the Marxist laws of history, as could be applied in Europe.

Stalin criticized his claim and called it "American exceptionalism".

But the first writer to describe America as "exceptional" (using it as an adjective) was not an American either, it was European observer Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831.

Anyway, I think it's interesting to see people make claims like "the U.S. has the best health care system in the world". They were doing it on the floor of Congress just recently. By any major index, and I would say the most important, which is "bang for the buck" (i.e. how much do people pay for health care per capita, and then on average, how long do they live/longevity), the U.S. scores pretty low among comparable nations.

I think the ACA will move us up a few notches, but then we still have much further to go.

Some of the best takedowns of the concept come, not surprisingly, from within.

This is making the rounds today. Many have already read it or read parts of it.

ORATION, DELIVERED IN CORINTHIAN HALL, ROCHESTER, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JULY 5TH, 1852.



...

Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?

The question proceeds, of course, from an assumption -- i.e., that America is, indeed, the greatest nation on Earth. When it is posed by a chipper college student to Will McAvoy, the dyspeptic cable news anchor played by Jeff Daniels in the new HBO series "The Newsroom," he gores that assumption with acid glee.

By no standard -- or at least, no standard he cares to acknowledge -- does McAvoy believe America is still the world's greatest nation. Freedom? That's hardly unique, he says, noting that Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan are all free. And he ticks off a number of other measures -- literacy, life expectancy, math, exports, infant mortality -- by which, he says, America now lags much of the world.

Therefore, he says, America is, in fact, not the greatest nation on the planet. There is something telling and true in the crestfallen expressions with which the audience greets that declaration. It's as if someone has switched off the sun.

America believes in nothing quite so deeply as its own greatness.

There is something quintessentially us about that belief. The Japanese, we may presume, love Japan. Surely the Canadians feel a swelling pride at the sight of their flag, and the Spanish stand a little straighter at the playing of their national anthem. But does any other nation feel the need to so routinely assure itself and..........

This is more a personal pet peeve than anything, but go to another country any country and you can hear American songs being played occasionally, while American radio stations seem to have a blackout on any foreign music. Very noticeable and very fucking strange.