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Sep-22-2013 15:04printcomments

What Vladimir Putin Got Wrong About American 'Exceptionalism'

American exceptionalism, Mr. Putin may eventually come to understand, lies in the fact that our ancestors came from every corner of the world---with every race, ethnicity, religion and language represented.Our free society---this great mixing together---has produced unprecedented creativity and ingenuity.

Russian President Vladimir Putin
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(WASHINGTON DC) - In his much discussed Op-Ed piece in THE NEW YORK TIMES, Russian President Vladimir Putin had a lot to say about the concept of American "exceptionalism."

He wrote that, "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

WASHINGTON POST columnist Dana Milbank, addressing Putin, noted that, "I'm guessing what went wrong here is your translators let you down when they defined exceptional for you as luchshyy (better) rather than razlichnyy (different)."

Few remember that in the 1920s, 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." American Communists started using the term "American exceptionalism" in factional fights. The term slowly moved into more general use.

The term---and the concept---has a long history. American exceptionalism is the theory that the U.S. is qualitatively different from other nations. In this view, America emerged from a revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation," developing a unique ideology based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism and republicanism. The English writer G.K. Chesterton pointed out that, "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed."

The theory of exceptionalism can be traced to Alexis de Toqueville, the visitor from France in the 1830s who wrote in "Democracy In America," that, "The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional."


America is more than simply another country. Visiting New Amsterdam in 1643, French Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues was surprised to discover that 18 languages were spoken in this town of 8,000 people. In his "Letters From an American Farmer," J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur wrote in 1782: "Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world."

In the 1840s, Herman Melville wrote that, "We are the heirs of all times and with all nations we divide our inheritance." If you kill an American, he said, you shed the blood of the whole world.

Many of our leading thinkers have speculated about American uniqueness, from the very beginning. Thomas Jefferson declared that, "The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride the people legitimately, by the grace of God." In his book, "The Liberal Political Tradition In America" (1955), Harvard political scientist Louis Hartz argued that the American political tradition lacked the left-wing/socialist and right-wing/aristocratic elements that dominated in most other countries because colonial America lacked any feudal traditions, such as established churches, landed estates and a hereditary nobility.

Historians David Potter, Daniel Boorstin and Richard Hofstadter followed Hartz in emphasizing that political conflicts in American history remained within the tight boundaries of a consensus regarding private property, individual rights and representative government. The national government which emerged was far less centralized than its European counterparts.

There are also Puritan roots to the idea of American exceptionalism. The Puritans believed that God had made a pact with their people and had chosen them to provide a model for the other nations on earth. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, expressed this idea as creating a "city upon a hill"----that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the world.


Historian Gordon Wood writes that, "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the revolutionary era. So too did the idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy."

Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land, a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity. These sentiments laid the intellectual foundations for the revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism and were closely tied to republicanism, the belief that sovereignty belonged to the people, not to a hereditary ruling class. Religious freedom characterized the new republic in unique ways----at a time when major nations had state religions.

The U.S. is unique in that it was founded on a set of republican ideals (not wholly realized in its early days, in particular, with the existence of slavery) rather than on a common heritage, ethnicity or ruling elite. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln declared that America is a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

During the radicalism of the 1960s, when many young critics of America denounced their own country, although they knew little of its history, author Mario Puzo wrote: "What has happened here has never happened in any other country in any other time. The poor who had been poor for centuries...whose children had inherited their poverty, their illiteracy, their hopelessness, achieved some economic dignity and freedom. You didn't get it for nothing, you had to pay a price in tears, in suffering, why not? And some even became artists."

As a young man growing up in Manhattan's Lower East Side, Puzo was asked by his mother, an Italian immigrant, what he wanted to be when he grew up. When he said he wanted to be a writer, she responded that, "For a thousand years in Italy no one in our family was even able to read." But in America everything was possible---in a single generation.


Puzo writes: "It was hard for my mother to believe that her son could become an artist. After all, her own dream in coming to America had been to earn her daily bread, a wild dream in itself, and looking back she was dead right. Her son an artist? To this day she shakes her head. I shake mine with her."

In 1866, Lord Acton, the British Liberal party leader, said that America was becoming the "distant magnet." Apart from the "millions who have crossed the ocean, who shall reckon the millions whose hearts and hopes are in the United States, to whom the rising sun is in the West?"

Vladimir Putin seems not to understand that America has been a nation much loved. Germans have loved Germany. Frenchmen have loved France. Swedes have loved Sweden. This, of course, is only natural. America has been beloved not only by its own citizens but by men and women throughout the world who have yearned for freedom. America dreamed a bigger dream than any nation in the history of man, and welcomed men and women of every background who shared that dream and wanted to be part of it.

American exceptionalism, Mr. Putin may eventually come to understand, lies in the fact that our ancestors came from every corner of the world---with every race, ethnicity, religion and language represented.Our free society---this great mixing together---has produced unprecedented creativity and ingenuity. It is not for no reason that America looms so large in the world. As the German Jewish song-writer, Kurt Weill, who found refuge here during World War II, wrote, "Every name is an American name." That very fact alone makes America unique---and exceptional. Perhaps most revealing is the fact that Americans themselves don't think this is unusual at all.

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Salem-News.com contributor Allan C. Brownfeld received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary, his J.D. degree from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law of the College of William and Mary and his M.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland. He has served on the faculties of St. Stephen's Episcopal School, Alexandria, Virginia, and the University College of the University of Maryland.

The recipient of a Wall Street Journal Foundation Award, Mr. Brownfeld has written for such newspapers as THE HOUSTON PRESS, THE RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, THE WASHINGTON EVENING STAR and THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER. For many years he wrote three columns a week for such newspapers as THE PHOENIX GAZETTE, THE MANCHESTER UNION LEADER, and THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER. His weekly column appeared for more than a decade in ROLL CALL, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. His articles have appeared in such journals as THE YALE REVIEW, THE TEXAS QUARTERLY, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, ORBIS and MODERN AGE.

Mr. Brownfeld served as a member of the staff of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and was the author of that committee's 250-page study of the New Left. He has also served as Assistant to the Research Director of the House Republican Conference and as a consultant to such members of Congress as Reps. Phil Crane (R-Il) and Jack Kemp (R-NY) and to the Vice President of the United States.

He is a former editor of THE NEW GUARD and PRIVATE PRACTICE, the journal of the Congress of County Medical Societies and has served as a Contributing Editor AMERICA'S FUTURE and HUMAN EVENTS. He served as Washington correspondent for the London-based publications, JANE'S ISLAMIC AFFAIRS ANALYST and JANE'S TERRORISM REPORT. His articles regularly appear in newspapers and magazines in England, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries. You can write to Allan at abrownfeld@gmail.com

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Vic September 23, 2013 5:55 pm (Pacific time)

Everyone is different... The idea of a country or race of people being "exceptional" is vanity at best and racism at best. Americans are exceptional ? At what ? Developing new weapons? Nuking cities ? Legalizing torture? I am an American and I am not exceptional. The belief that one person is somehow "chosen", "exceptional", "superior" or in any way better than others is the stuff that genocide is made of...pure dangerous bullshit thinking. Think you are exzceptional ? Good luck proving it...


Ralph E. Stone September 23, 2013 8:40 am (Pacific time)

Maybe the author misunderstood what Putin when he used the term exceptionalism to describe the U.S. To many people and to too many Americans, exceptionalism means that the U.S. is the greatest nation in the world and, therefore, has special privileges and responsibilities. Those privileges and responsibilities include not bothering with international law or processes when the government decides that the “world” (meaning itself and a few European nations and a couple of their client states) will take responsibility to enforce global order according to its own interpretations, values and needs. A kind of moral hypocrisy if you will.


John Atkins September 23, 2013 7:26 am (Pacific time)

I find it interesting that a Jewish writer, in a Jewish owned newspaper conglomerate, would seek to insult Mr. Putin for his advancement of the truth (not to mention his own right to his own opinion). I, personally, find it refreshing, and encouraging, that a world leader is capable of such in depth thinking. Compare that objectivity to that of the writer of this rebuttal. In his tireless ranting and raving, the author provides the very evidence to support Putin's assertion that we are a nation of people who suppose themselves to be special. Kudos to Mr. Putin and boo to the idiot who wrote such a moronic rebuttal.

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