Abraham Lincoln described the United States as “the last best hope of earth.” More than 230 years earlier, before there was a United States, John Winthrop told those who would found the Massachusetts Bay Colony that “we shall be as a city upon a hill” – a phrase Ronald Reagan invoked throughout his political life. Reagan devoted himself to restoring and protecting America, noting in 1967 that “We defend freedom here or it is gone. There is no place for us to run, only to make a stand.”
Each of these men invoked American exceptionalism—the belief that the United States is unique in not only its design and history but also its purpose. That purpose is the establishment of the rarest condition of man in his history: liberty.
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" For most Americans and almost all American presidents, our status as a unique force in history has been more than rhetoric. It has been a key principle of what the United States is and ought to be. It was also largely a consensus opinion in America until the emergence of the post-modern left. " |
For most Americans and almost all American presidents, our status as a unique force in history has been more than rhetoric. It has been a key principle of what the United States is and ought to be. It was also largely a consensus opinion in America until the emergence of the post-modern left. Indeed, only two presidents in U.S. history have tacitly rejected American exceptionalism. One was Jimmy Carter, who called on Americans to accept our decline. The other is the current occupant of the White House. And while it might seem to be a minor factor, the deprecation of America’s special role by President Obama is the key driver of the domestic and foreign dangers to which he is exposing the United States. Restoring the exceptionalist principle in the White House, in the Congress and across America is critical to renewing American leadership.
The roots of American uniqueness and liberty are often ascribed to the faith possessed by America’s pioneers and founders. Winthrop was a Puritan. The Declaration of Independence lists unalienable rights endowed by our Creator. The document invoked a “reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” Indeed, the basic concept of American liberty is that rights are bestowed by God to the individual, and that government should exist to protect these rights—a radical concept at this country’s creation, and one that remains so in today’s world. But beyond faith, a belief in the ideal of human liberty is the most significant pillar of the exceptionalist principle. The publisher Henry Luce, who coined the phrase “American Century,” wrote that Americans are the “inheritors of all the great principles of Western Civilization – Justice, the love of Truth, the ideal of charity.” The extension of these virtues to more and more people has been the consistent theme of America.|
"To them, our Founding Fathers were not visionaries, but hypocrites and slave-owning aristocrats. And the subsequent history of America was not an unparalleled record of growth, invention, progress and liberty, but a fiction meant to mask genocide, racism, imperialism and oppression." |
And yet our imperfections at this task—despite being less imperfect than any other major human endeavor—are the overriding obsession of the post-modern left. To them, our Founding Fathers were not visionaries, but hypocrites and slave-owning aristocrats. And the subsequent history of America was not an unparalleled record of growth, invention, progress and liberty, but a fiction meant to mask genocide, racism, imperialism and oppression.
Indeed, the critics of America—the most self-critical civilization in history—have gone wild. Much of our contemporary political class and the elites of academia, law, the arts, government and even business, came of age during, and were affected by, the confluence of Vietnam, Watergate, the civil rights movement, and the perception of American decline that stained the 1970s. These events heralded the dawn of the post-modern era and were deeply hostile to traditional views of the United States. They shattered the consensus previously held by an unsilent majority that America was special and the growth of America’s strength and reach was a virtue unto itself.|
"Never again could schoolchildren in a country founded on freedom of religion pause silently to beseech the Creator just as our Founders did so conspicuously. " |
Henceforth, displays of conspicuous patriotism and faith, were they not ridiculed openly, would be met by the knowing glances of liberals enlightened to the fact that such activity was at best profoundly uncool and at worst dangerously naive. Never again could schoolchildren in a country founded on freedom of religion pause silently to beseech the Creator just as our Founders did so conspicuously. Never again could a Frank Capra make films that were unabashedly and unashamedly pro-American. Never again could an American president place our military in harm’s way without the post-modern left disparaging his command, while casting our enemies as victims destined for victory.
And so when President Obama took the stage in France last April, after noting apologetically that, “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” he went on to declare that “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, Mr. Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism at all. The President was tacitly admitting a belief held broadly by the post-modern left. In 2006, scholars at the liberal Pew Research Center lamented that, “Nothing is more vexing to foreigners than Americans’ belief that America is a shining city on a hill—a place apart where a better way of life exists, one to which all other peoples should aspire. And, compared with Western Europeans, average Americans are more likely to express their pride and patriotism.” How dreadfully uncouth of us.
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"Mr. Obama’s peculiar habit of bowing before foreign leaders is not merely an unprecedented breach of protocol; it is a potent manifestation of his critique of America. It carries with it a message of apology, weakness and commonality. " |
Herein lies a problem for Mr. Obama. The majority of the American people do not share his belief that their country is basically the same as every other big power that preceded it in history. And they never voted for the policies that inevitably stem from this view of America.
Mr. Obama’s peculiar habit of bowing before foreign leaders is not merely an unprecedented breach of protocol; it is a potent manifestation of his critique of America. It carries with it a message of apology, weakness and commonality. It gains no friends. When combined with Mr. Obama’s other dangerous missteps—the betrayal of Poland and the Czech Republic to “reset” relations with Russia, severe cuts to important defense systems, a refusal to support friends of freedom and democracy in Iran, China, North Korea and Cuba, aiding the attempt of a Chavez ally to subvert democracy in our own hemisphere, expressing repeatedly a foolish belief that nuclear weapons can or should be abolished, undermining those who defend us against terrorists, and adopting a policy of managed failure in Afghanistan—his supplication further encourages our adversaries and augments the image of America as a flawed nation in decline, unique only in the danger it poses to the world.The alternative to this is renewed American leadership in the world through a foreign policy grounded in our founding principles. Restoring principled U.S. leadership is the calling of America’s loyal opposition. We will heed Montesquieu’s 1748 admonition that “the deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principle on which it was founded.” While our national policies historically have been guided by what is pragmatic and prudent, realizing that nations tend to be guided by interests rather than a moral compass, our policies have nonetheless made prominent reference to our principles of liberty and justice. They must do so again. The alternative we offer is not blind idealism, but a prudent, pragmatic, long-term policy of promoting our national interests. Advancing our ideals over the long term is prudent and pragmatic policy.
No nation is perfect and no human endeavor is without fault. But our faults are not the totality or the majority of the American story, and we must again realize the unrivaled quality of our principles, history and role in the world. We must turn the tide against those at home and abroad who wish to weaken America and separate us from our founding principles. The alternative is worse than mediocrity: it is a state of peril and failure.Christian Whiton was a State Department official in the George W. Bush administration. He is a principal at D.C. Asia Advisory in Washington and a fellow at the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. Click here to follow Christian on Twitter.
