J's Cafe Nette

I wanted to discuss American exceptionalism as a companion piece to TLS’ excellent post at Be John Galt this morning, Transnationalism v. The Constitution.  Earlier this week, Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru published:  An Exceptional Debate: 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….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.

Our Republic came from the hearts and minds of men who had thought and debated long and hard about law, liberty and government. The structure of our government was not superimposed on a people. The specific historical and religious heritage of this nation yielded in men the substance of thinking that gave birth to the structure of our government.  From the strands the Founders drew together to form our Republic they created an archetype of government.

Thomas Paine wrote:

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.

To paraphrase Thomas Paine, these were men who not only possessed the spirit of liberty, but had also inculcated the principle of liberty.  Without our unique British heritage of hundreds of years of hammering out the curtailment of the power of kings, the rights of men and the rule of law through words and revolutions (the Charter of Liberties, the Magna Carta, Oliver Cromwell, Lex Rex, John Locke, the Glorious Revolution, William Blackstone) we would have had no free Englishmen ready for the American Revolution. In addition, without the influence of the Judeo-Christian understanding of the nature of man and the drive for power, of personal responsibility and accountability to God, of the nature of integrity and character, we would have had no Founders ready to sign their names to a document stating that unalienable rights are endowed by God; we would have had no men such as George Washington ready to stay the course for liberty.

Lowry and Ponnuru discuss details of our British heritage of liberty, differentiating between England and Europe and write:

These endowments made it possible for the Americans to have a revolution with an extraordinary element of continuity. Tocqueville may have been exaggerating when he said that Americans were able to enjoy the benefits of a revolution without really having one, but he wasn’t far off the mark. The remnants of old Europe that did exist here — state-supported churches, primogeniture, etc. — were quickly wiped out. Amer­icans took inherited English liberties, extended them, and made them into a creed open to all.

Exact renderings of the creed differ, but the basic outlines are clear enough. The late Seymour Martin Lipset defined it as liberty, equality (of opportunity and respect), individualism, populism, and laissez-faire economics. The creed combines with other aspects of the American character — especially our religiousness and our willingness to defend ourselves by force — to form the core of American exceptionalism.

They tie our economic heritage to our heritage of liberty.

This framework of freedom made possible the flourishing of the greatest commercial republic in history….

…In New En­gland, the Puritan merchants wrote at the top of their ledgers, “In the name of God and of profit.” Even before the Revolution, we were the most prosperous country per capita in the world.

In a telling coincidence, the publication of Adam Smith’s world-changing free-market classic, The Wealth of Nations, coincided with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Many of the Founders read the book. Without the medieval encumbrances and the powerful, entrenched special interests that plagued other countries, the United States could make Smith’s ideas the basis of its economic dispensation….

In the latitude provided by this relatively light-handed gov­ernment, a commerce-loving, striving, and endlessly inventive people hustled its way to become the greatest economic power the world has ever known….

Many of you may already know that the Pilgrims, having nearly starved to death at Plymouth Colony through an experiment in communal farming, prospered when each family was responsible for their own garden.  At Big Government, Kerry Byrne, in Pilgrims and Minutemen: Lessons for the Left from 1623 and 1776, reiterates this early history and also has several quotes from David McCullough’s book, 1776, that Byrne uses  to demonstrate continued American prosperity.

Upon their invasion of Brooklyn:

“The Hessian and British troops alike were astonished to find Americans blessed with such abundance – substantial farmhouses and furnishings. ‘In all the fields the finest fruit is to be found,’ Lieutenant von Bardeleben wrote … ‘The peach and apple trees are especially numerous … The houses, in part, are made only of wood and the furnishings in them are excellent. Comfort, beauty, and cleanliness are readily apparent’”

This quote from McCullough corroborates Lowry and Ponnuru.

“Americans of 1776 enjoyed a higher standard of living than any people in the world. Their material wealth was considerably less than it would become in time, still it was a great deal more than others had elsewhere.”

Lowry and Ponnuru briefly touch on our religious heritage and foreign policy before examining the history and thinking of critics of American exceptionalism.

Many of America’s European critics hoped that, over time, America would lose its distinctiveness. It would become just another developed Western country: more centralized, more elitist, more secular, less warlike, and less free. In short, a quieter, more civilized place.

The American Left has shared this maddened perplexity at its country’s character and this hope for its effacement. Marxists at home and abroad were always mystified by the failure of socialism in the U.S.

The history they discuss is worth noting, as is their extensive evaluation of Obama which clearly places him with the American Left.  I highly recommend Lowry’s and Ponnuru’s work.  For further reading  Victor Davis Hanson adds a few comments to their article, and Conrad Black has a critique to which Lowry will later respond.

Lowry and Ponnuru write:

…one can only regard with wonderment what America stands for and all that it has accomplished in its amazing, utterly distinct adventure in liberty.

The United States of America is an exceptional nation.  I say that with gratitude and with both pride and humility.  Never forget it, and never quit fighting for it.

__________
H/T:  NRO, Big Government.

Crossposted to Be John Galt.

Written by INC

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