Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Open Letter to America about American Exceptionalism

A Facebook friend writes:

Paul, I hope you can post this on your blog. It's my response to Rod Dreher's muted support for Vladimir Putin's op-ed in the New York Times about the Middle East and American Exceptionalism. No, I didn't write it but I'm getting sick of Dreher's poseurish tendencies, myself.

Here's the link he sent me. I'm not sure which post of Dreher's he is a responding to, but you guys might since you monitor his blog more. My friend might come over here and comment—he seems pretty incensed. It's very powerful and successful at conveying the truth. It is written by an Australian named Nick Adams, here's his website. Here's an excerpt:

Historically, you—the people of America—have been the most enterprising, market-oriented, individualistic, and averse to taxation and regulation. You have shown yourselves to be the least likely people in the world to look on the state as either the provider of benefits or the guarantor of equal outcomes.

Why is this? It’s simple. You fostered a state that allowed its citizens the widest latitude for creativity and innovation, where success gets rewarded without government approvals and bureaucratic interference. And where religious faith, aspiration and risk are embraced. You have your founders to thank.

When it is understood what America stands for, and the moral dimension to a smaller government is appreciated, it becomes not an economic question, but a moral question. For example, it’s why, per capita, you are the most charitable or philanthropic people on earth. The bigger the government, the worse the citizen.

You have a moral superiority. America is great because America is good.

See, you believe in equality of birth, but not equality of result. All humans are equal but all not nations and cultures are not. It’s why poor Mr. Putin is confused.

In sum, the American model has offered a greater chance for dignity, hope and happiness for more people than any other system of government has offered its own. But even its promise can be threatened by those that do not share these ideals, whether domestic or foreign sources. That’s why you have to be vigilant.

I'm sure a lot of the wordsmith intellectuals over at TAC are as much poseurs as Dreher on this topic even if his writing is ten times better. They think if America was a little more like Europe or Russia then they would be paid commensurately with their awesome brainpower rather than based on what they could actually produce. If I had my wish, all the people who thought this way would write for inconsequential web rags like TAC. Unfortunately many of them are teaching our kids in schools and universities—public AND private.

19 comments:

  1. Pauli, I'm assuming your friend is referring to this, which I in turn am assuming Dreher wrote after Pooty-Poot had already had him from the nipples.

    Keith

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  2. The key sentence:

    "As I see it, the problems with 'American exceptionalism' are 1) a tendency to believe that we Americans are immune to making the same mistakes other countries make because we believe too strongly in our own goodness; 2) a tendency to conceal our own foreign-policy motivations from ourselves beneath a veneer of moralism; and 3) tone-deafness to how our own foreign-policy actions appear to others, because we mean well."

    He writes not a word about the dangers of denying American exceptionalism, such as the enervating effects that would result from our denying the self-evident truth that self-rule is more moral than tyranny.

    In the comments, he adds, "Look, I love my country, and would rather live here than anywhere else. But I don't think we were immaculately conceived."

    Yes, because that's the basis of American exceptionalism.

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    1. Bubba the "I don't think we were immaculately conceived" rubbish comes straight from that beacon of intellectual clarity and truth, Mark Shea, as in...

      "I merely reject the propositions that ... Israel is immaculately conceived and preserved from all sin, both original and actual..."

      That herring is so red that it would make Karl Marx look like Ayn Rand.

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  3. Elsewhere, Dreher bemoans the barbarism of being ignorant about our own past.

    (In doing so, he mentions a book he cannot recommend: "this is not a very good book, only because it’s a mess." Heh.)

    State school standards are too narrowly focused on skills that are directly linked to economic productivity:

    "Look, for example, at how the state evaluates 8th graders in US history: there’s nothing there about the ideas behind the founding of America, our constitutional order, or anything like it."

    Without teaching about the founding principles of our country, students might draw the wrong conclusions about our country, such as the notion that belief in our exceptionalism is more trouble than it's worth.

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    1. Of course, from that same website from where Dreher concluded that Louisiana students won't be taught the ideas behind the founding, we have a description of the "Civics" standards. Including:

      Explain the influence of Enlightenment philosophers, the Great Awakening, and the American Revolution on the American founding documents. Examples: Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau

      That sort of thing maybe has something to do with "the ideas behind the founding of America". Maybe.

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    2. Pik, I've come to the conclusion that what Dreher produces can best be described as no more than 'word foam', similar to some of those manufacturing processes you see on those how-do-they-make-this shows.

      Dreher randomly stumbles across raw material idea batches expressed in words and dumps them into what professional writers like him call "the hopper".

      He then blasts powerful jests of air from whatever orifice is handiest into the now homogenized idea-pulp to break the words free, where they then float to the top and according to their natural grammatical properties link back up, subject with verb, conjunctions gluing other things together, etc.

      Voila!, a fresh and frothy new word foam which has never been seen before that trips tastily across the undiscriminating reading palate.

      The fact that the broken ideas remaining that haven't already settled into the tank sludge often stick out like fractured fish bones is a problem only for the overly-cruel discriminating reader or those who write for less fluffy venues.

      In Rodworld, though, it's latte-free word foam being served 24/7.

      Keith

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    3. ...jests of air...

      Freudian slip?

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    4. Aaaa, typo, but I do get the feeling all the time that Dreher holds the entire world outside himself in savage contempt and may frequently be ironically mocking anyone or anything he writes about.

      Thus mission accomplished with this review, or "look how charming my coon-eating neighbors are", etc., etc.

      Such an approach would be consistent with the passive-agressive bully who used ironic, mocking humor in place of a far riskier to him straightforward criticism.

      More than you asked, eh? Sorry, lol.

      Keith

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  4. Joe, I thought of Mark Shea as well. And, yes, he is dichotomizing in the same flase way with this breathless "We're not perfect! That's blasphemy!" GMAB.

    Ironic how champions of a windmill-tilting "third way" in politics can't see that there is a "third way" to see the United States not as a love-it-or-leave-it perfect paradise or an decadent and debauched empire run by the awful 1%. We see it as a flawed (no country is perfect) yet exceptional country which millions of people worldwide have continuously voted to be the best nation on earth -- with their feet.

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  5. I think y'all are going to enjoy this one from the RodBlog in which reader Douglas C. makes it to the Fanboy Hall of Fame (i.e., being identified by name in the body of a Dreher post). What earned him that honor? This request to Working Boy did the trick:

    I have to ask: Have you thought about doing a post, or multiple posts, asking your audience straight out about the impact of your blog in their lives?

    Oh, my. Of course, Dreher oh-so-modestly grants his subject's request.

    P.S. The post includes a classic picture of a copy of Crunchy Cons rotting in the donated used books bin at a NYC book store. Which Dreher narcissistically takes delight in -- rather than rationally concluding that someone tired of his crap and no one else wants it.

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    1. Douglas c = Douglas Coupland? author of Generation x? what a convenient name for a commenter who suggests that Dreher is the *real* voice of Generation X. I wonder where "Douglas C." lives...perhaps in the brain of Dreher.

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    2. Douglas c = Douglas Coupland? author of Generation x?

      Oh, gosh, I hope not. Territorial slumming for sure if that's the real Coupland.

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    3. If he actually exists, my money would be on this guy from Beliefnet days.

      Fictional or fortuitous, my reading also is that in the aftermath of Unz's revelation that Dreher is doing all the heavy blog hit lifting - for who can resist a post about why 12-year-old girls should be publicly shamed? - for no more than TAC scale, this is Dreher laying the groundwork to hit Wick Allison up for a raise. After all, Allison lives in an exclusive bubble city within a city, while Dreher finds himself now marooned among natives who eat coon.

      Keith

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    4. Oh, goody! Lookee who's Dreher's new bff:

      Patrick Adkins, web designer now advanced to driver for a major trucking company:

      http://thoughtsandrantings.com/

      (I didn't link out of respect for Pauli)

      If Dreher had mono before, he just NFRd himself a big old dose of shingles.

      Keith

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    5. Pikkumati: "'I have to ask: Have you thought about doing a post, or multiple posts, asking your audience straight out about the impact of your blog in their lives?' … Oh, my. Of course, Dreher oh-so-modestly grants his subject's request."

      And all of this might get turned into his next book.

      I think that RD's biggest obstacle to becoming a successful writer is himself, because he is always wanting to make himself the center of the picture. In the long run, doing that makes for poor, obnoxious, and boring writing that most normal people do not want to read. The sad thing is that he apparently still hasn't figured this out.

      If I were his agent (thankfully I am not), I would tell him, "Rod, on your next book, whatever you write about, please, please write about something that is NOT ABOUT YOU!"

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  6. oh definitely not the real one. just a reflection of Dreher's fondest wishes in a probable made-up name.

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  7. American exceptionalism was a term invented to describe why the US, because of its Enlightenment foundations and lack of a feudal past, resisted the class struggle rebellions of Europe. IOW it is the reason put forward of why we don't have a "proper" proletariat. It is difficult to determine whether it originated with marxists (perhaps Jsy Lovestone) or ex-marxists like Irving Kristol or Seymour Lipset.
    That it has morphed into a jingoist call to American superiority is a degradation of the english language.

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    1. Steve, I think this is well put. In a sense, we shouldn't even use the term "middle-class" because in a opportunity-rich environment like America there is no permanent middle-class. Instead we should say middle-income, IMO. There is no permanent under-class either, which annoys leftists and far-right types alike.

      Whenever a list of the richest Americans is published annually it is interesting to note that something like 70% or more is different than the previous year.

      I know somebody who is basically transitioning from upper-middle to lower-middle income and it's pretty sad to watch. In my opinion it is mostly due to his failure to adapt to a changing environment. He does have a sense of entitlement to his father's life-style which strikes me as being very "pre-American".

      It is possibly a cause of the misunderstanding as jingoist that the word exceptional has a positive connotation. Is this true in English English or just American English? I don't know. Someone says "exceptional child" and everyone thinks "above average". Maybe there's no way to overcome this tendency, but we can point out that the child didn't make himself exceptional. If it can't be made neutral point out that it's mostly descriptive and almost entirely passive. Americans living today are not the cause of American Exceptionalism, just the beneficiaries.

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  8. I, for one, am still trying to figure out why Rod keeps trying to look like Sonic the Hedge Hog. I did hear that he is very upset that it is getting out that his Church home in Dallas St. Seraphim Cathedral is smack dab in the center of the Gay Ghetto of Dallas. Poor Rod. Its all about self acceptance.

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