American exceptionalism

David A. Bell Discusses "American Exceptionalism" with the Professor Buzzkill Podcast

"Dr. David Bell relates the long and strange history of the concept of “American Exceptionalism,” analyzing various interpretations of the phrase from the Puritan John Winthrop to President (and non-Puritan) Donald Trump."

No, Liberal Historians Can't Tame Nationalism

by Eran Zelnik

Liberal historians confronted with both right-wing nationalism and renewed "history wars" have tried to thread a needle by telling a positive story of nationalism. The author contends the exclusionary and belligerent aspects of nationalism can't be domesticated by surrounding them with the right narrative.

America *IS* Exceptional. It's Not a Good Thing

by Aviva Chomsky

The climate emergency requires Americans to reject the nation's exceptional consumption of resources and hoarding of wealth in favor of a political economy that enables a global good life for all within the limits of the planet. 

The Threat of the US Becoming an "Anocracy" Again? Civil War

by Barbara F. Walter

Anocracies combine the superficial trappings of democracy, like elections, with the suppression of civil liberties and the press and the hardening of factions in place of a common civic culture. By some measures, the US is now an anocracy, like Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. 

The Capitol Siege wasn’t like the ‘Third World.’ It was Uniquely American

by Benjamin R. Young

American leaders who compared the Capitol riots to "Third World" politics were right, but not in the way that they meant: the US has long used political violence as a tool to sustain right-wing leadership in the developing world. 

The New Comedy of American Decline

Two new comedy series revisit the trope of the American abroad; one works because it looks critically, if humorously, at the idea of American exceptionalism. 

What Do Foreign Correspondents Think of the U.S.?

Journalists from around the world are reporting on the 2020 Presidential race—and offering perspectives not found in American media coverage.

American Exceptionalism Gives Voters a False Sense of Security about the Election

by Melissa J. Gismondi and Shira Lurie

American democracy won’t endure just because it always has. In this moment, American exceptionalism could prove fatal.

Is America a Myth?

Writer Robin Wright looks to historians Richard Kreitner and Colin Woodard to explain that the idea of a unified American nation has not been the historical norm. 

But Why Is America Exceptional?

by Guy Chet

Political separation from Britain allowed old English traits to remain preserved in America, like a bug in amber, even as they were whittled away by change in the old country. 

Will a Pandemic Shatter the Perception of American Exceptionalism?

Historians including David Kennedy, Andrew Bacevich, David Oshinsky and Wilfred McClay discuss whether the idea of American uniqueness has hurt national preparedness for an epidemic, if it will help or hinder recovery, and if the COVID-19 crisis will dislodge the idea from popular consciousness.

The Tangled History of Illness and Idiocy

by Jessi Jezewska Stevens

Opining in public on things you don’t really understand is a form of idiocy in which Americans, in particular, are known to indulge.

American Exceptionalism and Why We Must Impeach Trump

by Greg Bailey

The weight of our heritage and the promise of our future demand that we act in the present to restore our exceptional place in the world and in our hearts.

Winthrop's "City" Was Exceptional, Not Exceptionalist

by Jim Sleeper

There are compelling anthropological reasons why almost every society in history has invented “special covenant” and “origin” myths, or “constitutive fictions.” 

How Trump Is Making Us Rethink American Exceptionalism

by Joshua Zeitz

This past year has shown that the U.S. is far from immune to the forces shaping the rest of the world.

Trump and American Exceptionalism

by Stephen Wertheim

He may be the first president to take office who explicitly rejects American exceptionalism.

Donald Trump and the Death of American Exceptionalism

by Jelani Cobb

The problem of Trump is not simply that his opinions far exceed his knowledge; it’s that what he does know is so hostile to democracy, not only in the Republican Party or the United States but in the world.

Did the Founding Fathers Believe In American Exceptionalism?

by Sheldon Stern

Like John Adams, they were for the most part confident that the new United States was on the cusp of a brilliant future. But they did not believe that Americans, as a people, were exempt from the flaws and faults of other nations and peoples.

Obama’s New Patriotism

by Greg Jaffe

How Obama has used his presidency to redefine ‘American exceptionalism’

Sticks, Stones, and American Exceptionalism

by R. B. Bernstein

How are we to take polemicists’ rhetoric seriously, when it celebrates a past and a nation that never was?