What is American Exceptionalism?

  • It’s grounded in America’s founding principles: natural law, liberty, limited government, individual rights, the checks and balances of government, popular sovereignty, the civilizing role of religion in society, and the crucial role of civil society and civil institutions in grounding and mediating our democracy and our freedom.
  • We as Americans believe these principles are right and true for all peoples, not just for us.
  • America is the only country in the world that derives its legitimacy from natural rights and natural law.
  • American is not perfect but our system of government is self-correcting.
    • When we fail to live up to our ideals, as we did with slavery before the Civil War, and during the era of Jim Crow, we can appeal as Lincoln did to our “better nature” to correct our flaws.
  • Is it not a specific religion? We are indeed a religious country, but no, we have freedom of religion, not one official religion.
  • Is it our ethnicity? Well, that does not work, because there is no such thing as a common American ethnicity. Even in the beginning, Americans were a mixture of English, Scots-Irish, Highland Scot, German, African, Native American, French, Dutch, and other ethnicities.
  • We believe that Americans are different because our creed is both universal and exceptional at the same time. We are exceptional in the unique way we apply these universal principles.
  • There is no other country in the world that embodied the blend of classical philosophy, Christianity, and even Enlightenment ideas in the unique way America did in the founding of the republic from 1776 to 1789. It was an exceptional (meaning uncommon) mix of liberty, limited government, natural rights, and religious liberty that made the American founding unique.
  • America is the only country in the world that derives its legitimacy from natural rights and natural law.

There is no other country in the world that represents the blend of classical philosophy, Christianity, and even Enlightenment ideas in the way America did in the founding of the republic from 1776 to 1789. It was an exceptional (meaning uncommon) mixture of liberty, limited government, natural rights, and religious liberty that made the American founding unique.

American exceptionalism was illustrated in a commencement address given at Notre Dame in 1981 by our then President, Ronald Reagan.

“This Nation was born when a band of men, the Founding Fathers, a group so unique we’ve never seen their like since, rose to such selfless heights. Lawyers, tradesmen, merchants, farmers — 56 men achieved security and standing in life but valued freedom more. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Sixteen of them gave their lives. Most gave their fortunes. All preserved their sacred honor.

They gave us more than a nation. They brought to all mankind for the first time the concept that man was born free, that each of us has inalienable rights, ours by the grace of God, and that government was created by us for our convenience, having only the powers that we choose to give it. This is the heritage that you’re about to claim as you come out to join the society made up of those who have preceded you by a few years, or some of us by a great many.

This experiment in man’s relation to man is a few years into its third century. Saying that may make it sound quite old. But let’s look at it from another viewpoint or perspective. A few years ago, someone figured out that if you could condense the entire history of life on Earth into a motion picture that would run for 24 hours a day, for one year (365 days) — this idea that is the United States wouldn’t appear on the screen until 3 1/2 seconds before midnight on December 31st. And in those 3 1/2 seconds not only would a new concept of society come into being, a golden hope for all mankind, but more than half the activity, economic activity in world history, would take place on this continent. Free to express their genius, individual Americans, men and women, in 3 1/2 seconds, would perform such miracles of invention, construction, and production as the world had never seen.”

Ronald Reagan

If you want to read his entire address (I highly recommend) you can click 1981 Notre Dame Commencement address by Ronald Reagan.

Enjoy your Independence Day holiday.

Signature

Dave Conley, CFP