American Exceptionalism

Last weekend, Thanksgiving Day Weekend, I did something that took very little effort on my part. I watched all of the Band of Brothers movie. I had seen part 1 and 2 before more than once but never made it beyond and always felt the need to start from the beginning at each attempt. This time I committed myself on Saturday evening and most of the day Sunday to the couch and plowed through the all 10 hours plus the documentary. The thing that I keep coming back to is the bravery and exceptionalism of these men. You could say "They don't make them like that anymore" and in a way this is true. I am not taking away anything from our current generation of brave men & women. Bravery & exceptionalism are qualities that typically expose themselves when circumstances & environment create the opportunity. We have many soldiers and everyday Americans who if in the same situation would respond in the same way.

When you talk about American exceptionalism, there seems to be a discomfort in the concept and it comes from both sides. Both Liberals & Conservatives will squirm at the idea of us claiming the mantle of superiority. I would agree, it sounds egotistical and boastful. To claim that we are better as individual people than any other of God's Children around the globe would be to say that all men are not created equal. What needs to be explained is what it is that makes us, as Americans, exceptional. It is just like those soldiers in World War II. The circumstances and the environment in which they were thrust into created the opportunity for those things they had inside of them, as humans, to expel. It is hard to say that one could ever equal the bravery of a soldier advancing against an enemy in a hail of bullets when one has never been in a war.

What makes Americans exceptional is the environment in which we live. Freedom to pursue our dreams whatever they may be allowes us to excel to our fullest potential as human beings. The protection of our individual rights creates the circumstance where we have been able to achieve much more in a short period of time than many civilizations that have existed for thousands of years. People from all corners of the earth have risked everything and given all they had including their lives to simply live on this soil. American exceptionalism simply represents human exceptionalism given the freedom to flourish. Americans are not better than anyone else in the world but to be American is exceptional!