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American exceptionalism

American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations.[1] Proponents argue that the values, political system, and historical development of the U.S. are unique in human history, often with the implication that it is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.[2]

This article is about the theory that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations. For the ideology that the U.S. has an exceptional mission in the world, see Americanism (ideology).

It originates in the observations and writings of French political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, most notably in his comparison of the United States with Great Britain and his native France. Tocqueville was the first writer to describe the country as "exceptional" following his travels there in 1831.[3] The earliest documented use of the specific term "American exceptionalism" is by American communists in intra-communist disputes in the late 1920s.[4]


Seymour Martin Lipset, a widely cited political scientist and sociologist, argues that the United States is exceptional in that it started from a revolutionary event. He therefore traces the origins of American exceptionalism to the American Revolution, from which the U.S. emerged as "the first new nation" with a distinct ideology and having a unique mission to transform the world.[5] This ideology, which Lipset called Americanism, but is often also referred to as American exceptionalism, is based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy, and laissez-faire economics; these principles are sometimes collectively referred to as "American exceptionalism".[6] As a term in social science, American exceptionalism refers to the United States' status as a global outlier. Critics of the concept claim that the idea of American exceptionalism suggests that the US is better than other countries, has a superior culture, or has a unique mission to transform the planet and its inhabitants.[7]

History of concept[edit]

Alexis de Tocqueville and others (1835)[edit]

The first reference to the concept by name, and possibly its origin, was by the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835/1840 work Democracy in America:[17]

Occupational: children could easily choose careers that were not based upon their parents' choices.

[80]

Physical: geographical location was not seen as static, and citizens often relocated freely over long distances without a barrier.

[81]

Status: as in most countries, family standing and riches were often a means to remain in a higher social circle. America was notably unusual because of an accepted wisdom that anyone, from poor immigrants upwards, who worked hard could aspire to similar standing, regardless of circumstances of birth. That aspiration is commonly called living the . Birth details were not taken as a social barrier to the upper echelons or high political status in American culture. That stood in contrast to other countries in which many larger offices were socially determined and usually difficult to enter unless one was born into the suitable social group.[82]

American dream

Effects[edit]

Critics of American exceptionalism argue that it has led to some of the expansion that is seen during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Americas.[117] Deborah Madsen argued that the effects of American exceptionalism have changed over time, from the annexation of Native American lands then to the ideas of Manifest destiny (which encompassed the Mexican–American War and the purchases of land in the 19th century).[117]


Madsen also cited Frederick Douglass, a prominent black abolitionist before and during the American Civil War (1861–1865), who argued that the idea of American exceptionalism was absurd because the inherent nature of slavery still existed at the time.[118]


Critics of American exceptionalism have argued that the bipartisan political class believes that one purpose of the United States is to spread democracy to nations that are under tyrannical governments. This can be seen in the contemporary 2001 invasion of Afghanistan[119] and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[120]

Bacevich, Andrew (2008). . Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-8815-1.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Bender, Thomas (2006). . Hill & Wang. ISBN 978-0-8090-9527-8.

A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History

Cheney, Dick and Liz Cheney (2015). . Threshold Editions. ISBN 978-1-5011-1541-7.

Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America

Churchwell, Sarah. Behold, America: The Entangled History of 'America First' and 'the American Dream' (2018). 368 pp.

online review

Dollinger, Marc. "American Jewish Liberalism Revisited: Two Perspectives Exceptionalism and Jewish Liberalism". American Jewish History (2002) 90#2 pp. 161+.

Dworkin, Ronald W. (1996). The Rise of the Imperial Self. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.  978-0-8476-8219-5.

ISBN

Ghazal Aswad, Noor (2023). "The U.S. American left and reverse moral exceptionalism: when do villains become heroes?". . 109 (4): 354–375. doi:10.1080/00335630.2023.2250580. ISSN 1479-5779. S2CID 261651039.

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Hilfrich, Fabian (2012). Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of the Spanish–American War. Palgrave Macmillan.  978-0-230-39289-2.

ISBN

Hodgson, Godfrey (2009). The Myth of American Exceptionalism. Yale University Press.  978-0-300-12570-2.

ISBN

Hughes, David. "Unmaking an exception: A critical genealogy of US exceptionalism." Review of International Studies (2015) 41#3 pp. 527–51

Madsen, Deborah L. (1998). American Exceptionalism. University Press of Mississippi.  978-1-57806-108-2.

ISBN

Glickstein, Jonathan A. American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety: Wages, Competition, and Degraded Labor In The Antebellum United States (2002)

Ferrie, Joseph P. The End of American Exceptionalism: Mobility in the US Since 1850, Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer, 2005)

Hellerman, Steven L. and Andrei S. Markovits (2001). Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism. Princeton University Press.  978-0-691-07447-4.

ISBN

Ignatieff, Michael, ed. (2005). . Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11647-1.

American Exceptionalism and Human Rights

Kagan, Robert (2003). . Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4093-3.

Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order

Kammen, Michael. "The problem of American exceptionalism: A reconsideration." American Quarterly (1993) 45#1 pp. 1–43.

online

Koh, Harold Hongju. "On American Exceptionalism" 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1479 (2003)

online

Krugman, Paul (2007). . W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06069-0.

The Conscience of a Liberal

Lang, Andrew F. A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era (U of North Carolina Press, 2021).

LeBlanc, Paul and Tim Davenport (eds.), The "American Exceptionalism" of Jay Lovestone and His Comrades, 1929–1940: Dissident Marxism in the United States, Volume 1. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2015.

Libby, Ronald T., The Church of Woke Vs. American Exceptionalism: The Struggle Over America's Ciivil Religion, 2023.

Lipset, Seymour Martin (1997). American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. W. W. Norton & Company.  978-0-393-31614-8.

ISBN

Lipset, Seymour Martin. The First New Nation. Basic Books, 1955.

Lipset, Seymour Martin. "Still the Exceptional Nation?" The Wilson Quarterly. 24#1 (2000) pp. 31+

Lloyd, Brian. Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890–1922. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Noble, David (2002). Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism. University of Minnesota Press.  978-0-8166-4080-5.

ISBN

Restad, Hilde Eliassen, "Old Paradigms in History Die Hard in Political Science: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Exceptionalism", American Political Thought (Notre Dame), (Spring 2012), 1#1 pp. 53–76.

Ross, Dorothy. Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ross, Dorothy. "American Exceptionalism" in A Companion to American Thought. Richard W. Fox and James T. Kloppenberg, eds. London: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1995: 22–23.

Schuck, Peter H., , Eds. Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation, 704 pp, 2008, ISBN 978-1-58648-561-0

Wilson, James Q.

Shafer, Byron E., ed. Is America Different?: A New Look at American Exceptionalism (1991) endorses exceptionalism

Soderlind, Sylvia, and James Taylor Carson, eds. American Exceptionalisms: From Winthrop to Winfrey (State University of New York Press; 2012) 268 pp; essays on the rhetoric of exceptionalism in American history, from John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" to the "war on terror".

Swirski, Peter. American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History. New York, Routledge (2011)

Tilman, Rick. "Thorstein Veblen's Views on American 'Exceptionalism': An Interpretation". Journal of Economic Issues. 39#1 2005. pp. 177+.

Tomes, Robert. Archived November 18, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. "Survival." 56#1. pp. 26–50.

"American Exceptionalism in the Twenty-First Century"

Turner, Frederick Jackson (1999). Richard W. Etulain (ed.). The Significance of the Frontier in American History, in Does The Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional?.

Tyrrell, Ian. "American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History", American Historical Review Vol. 96, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 1031–55

in JSTOR

Voss, Kim. The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (1993)

Wilentz, Sean. Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790–1820, 26 Int'l Lab. & Working Class History 1 (1984)

Wrobel, David M. (1996). The End Of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety From The Old West To The New Deal. University Press of Kansas.  978-0-7006-0561-3.

ISBN

(2011). A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters. Regnery Publishing. ISBN 9781596982710

Newt Gingrich

"The Strange Career of American Exceptionalism", The Nation, January 2/9, 2017, pp. 22–27.

Greg Grandin

"Noam Chomsky on George Orwell, the Suppression of Ideas and the Myth of American Exceptionalism". Democracy Now!. Retrieved June 12, 2020. Included video discusses subject.

Noam Chomsky

– Washington Post Feature

How the World Sees America

"The American Creed: Does It Matter? Should It Change?"

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Obama and American exceptionalism

Shelby Steele, WSJ.com

Obama and the Burden of Exceptionalism

Debate between Grover Norquist and Will Hutton

The right to be different

Booknotes interview with Seymour Martin Lipset on American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, June 23, 1996.

, by Eric Foner (The Montreal Review, January, 2013)

American Exceptionalism, American Freedom

American Exceptionalism