I made no comparison. I used the lower case “h” on “holocaust” on purpose to indicate that these were two of many that have happened in the world’s history (and future probably and sadly).
Otherwise your sentiments pretty much make my point. What happened in the United States to native Americans and slaves and their descendants wasn’t so bad, according to you, that we have anything to feel guilty or ashamed about; and other countries did it too. Am I expressing your sentiments accurately? Please correct me about your actual views if I am wrong.
Yeah, you have your problems with some cultures, Muslims, it seems, in particular, but I don’t know one black person who either lives or has visited France who doesn’t laud it. Black people, from what I have seen, love France. Heck, I’ve been to Paris and Lyon a number of times and, if it weren’t for the inexplicable ubiquity of foie gras, coquilles st jacques, and baguettes {shudder}, I would consider a stint there.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
If we’re willing to work hard, make tough decisions, and not automatically believe we’re right about everything everywhere, maybe we can be as good as you believe.
Proof that a one-two punch of plague and ethnic cleansing in a continent’s middle latitudes with a desert on your southern border can build an impressive empire.
Historically, underneath it all,* genocide and weird dumb luck *made the difference. And the USA is plutocratic, not democratic.
Do you want to tell us we need genocide and plutocracy? No? Me neither. But if you’re going to make an argument that America was made great by our ancestor’s practices, then don’t be surprised that conservatives want ethnic cleansing, large families to outbreed the hated Others, and a plutocratic class system.
I lived the first 35 years of my life in the USA before choosing to move here (Ireland) over a decade ago. There’s no way in hell I would ever voluntarily go back to live in the US. As I have said to Irish friends many times, living in Ireland is like Candyland, whereas in America it’s Welcome to the Jungle.
I can go into nauseating detail about exactly why I think life is better in Europe in general, and Ireland in particular, if you’d like. Your call.
And furthermore, when asking about so-called American Exceptionalism, the last opinion that matters is that of an American. It’s like asking a guy if he thinks that he’s handsome. He probably thinks he ain’t that bad. Nevermind what he thinks, what does someone else think?
ummm nobody except demagogues and anti-Semites use the word “holocaust” to describe things aside from what happened to the Jews from 1941-1945 at the hands of Hitler and his collaborators (who spanned the entire European continent).
I never said that, but you used the word “holocaust,” which is mainly used to describe what happened to the Jews. Only fringes use it for other purposes. America never committed such things; only Europe, the Caliphates, and other political entities.
There is “The Holocaust.” And then there is “a holocaust.”
Kind of like “The Civil War” versus “a civil war.”
It would seem perfectly acceptable to me to call something a holocaust, it’s a real word that has application to other events. I don’t consider myself a demagogue or an anti-Semite, but maybe I am.
Reduced religosity among SOME Europeans, namely the Christian ones. I’m also not sure that’s a good thing, as the non-religious are more prone to jumping on the bandwagon of ideological fads, like fascism and communism. It’s probably a good thing that the ideological fad of 1776 was republican government and the rights of man. The 19th and 20th centuries saw a societal deevolution from a “philosophy of government” perspective. Truly nothing useful has come from our greatest minds since the 18th century on the subject of how we govern ourselves.
(emphasis added) We don’t have to use the word if you stick at it so much, although **Human Action’s **list that you quoted makes nonsense of your assertion (see the 4th definition). Let’s call them Evil Actions if you like. foolsguinea used the word “genocide” which is fairly accurate at least for the fate of native Americans.
So you say “America never committed such things.” If you mean that America never persecuted the Jews in a systematic manner, that was never in question, and is irrelevant to my posts in this thread.
So let’s see if you can answer directly a direct question: Do you, or do you not, believe that the treatment of native Americans and slavery and its aftermath are events in the history of the United States for which Americans of the present day should be ashamed? And that these actions cast some blight upon America’s “city on the hill” image that you wish to emphasize?
I think the problem is that Americans misunderstand the greatness of our country. It does not mean we’re always right, and it does not mean we’re the strongest. America was the exceptional country long before we had a military that could fight overseas. World’s policeman is not a role we’re well suited for, that’s more the Brits’ specialty.
What we do well is make sure that the people who live here are guaranteed certain inalienable rights. And we created a government that makes it hard to infringe on those rights, or do anything in particular without wide consent of the governed. The US isn’t majority rules. It’s “super majority”, sometimes “super duper majority” rules, as we’ve seen with health care. You not only need Congress to pass the law(by supermajority in the Senate), you also need the states to be willing to participate, and various parts of the law have to survive the kinds of Supreme Court scrutiny that would never occur in any other country. Many liberals believe this is a bug, but it was designed that way precisely to make sure that Americans couldn’t be forced to participate in a government scheme without the vast majority consenting to it.
Another of my semi-long posts coming up, so here’s the tl;dr:
The premise of the OP is unthinking, vapid, mawkish, jingoism. Nothing more. One doesn’t promote progress or reverse social and economic decay by subjugating critical thinking to closed-minded myopia and jingoistic slogans.
I have a few more things to add below, particularly with respect to the ridiculous premise of the OP, but let me just say first that as another Canadian, I agree with this wholeheartedly. For all its faults, the US is probably the best country to have as a friend and neighbor and as a player in global affairs. It’s probably also the best country with which to have a closely linked economy and a large exchange of workers. Along with my own country and with Britain, the US completes my list of the three countries in the world for which I have the greatest affection. This is no reason, however, to fail to look at its considerable faults with a critical eye, or to assume that no other country in the world can offer an equivalent or indeed superior lifestyle by most important metrics.
Pretty grim assessment, yet it’s hard to disagree with because it’s true. Of course it has to be balanced against America’s considerable strengths, but the OP’s uncritical mawkish jingoism does no one any favors, nor his arrogant dismissal of all of Europe as one monolithic entity and a failed one at that (yes, Sarah Palin thought Europe was a country, too). Reminds me of the doting parent whose precious child can do no wrong, ever, and if s/he is ever in trouble, it must be someone else’s fault or some poopyhead is just being unfair.
The biggest problem with the myth of American exceptionalism is that it’s essentially a device used – usually by conservatives – to justify policies that have no rational justification. For instance, in international relations, why rules that apply to other countries don’t apply to the US (like reserving the right to invade other countries or refusing to recognize the binding authority of the International Court of Justice and barely giving a damn about the entire UN itself; but this is not new – see Monroe Doctrine). Or on domestic issues, how universal health care or gun control can never work in the US even though they work in every civilized country on the planet – because American exceptionalism.
The doctrine of exceptionalism leads to things like finding nothing strange about everyone having the constitutional right to get shot but no intrinsic right to get medical care for being shot, except commensurate with ability to pay. This encapsulates a great many aspects of the socioeconomic culture, everything from disdain of government to corporatist plutocracy and over-valuing individualism over common interests.
Tangentially related, perhaps, is this article I was just looking at in the New York Times, headlined Refugees Encounter a Foreign Word: Welcome – How Canadian hockey moms, poker buddies and neighbors are adopting Syrians, a family at a time. This stands in stark contrast, not just to the almost insignificantly tiny numbers of these desperate refugees that the US has admitted, but to widespread public hostility against it and popularly supported calls for outright immigration bans. I hesitate to claim that this demonstrates lack of empathy, because Americans have sometimes been the most generous and giving people of any nation, but it certainly demonstrates an uncharitable intolerance that characterizes a significant proportion of the populace. It’s one that has propelled one particular bigoted demagogue to become the presumed Republican nominee for president, the sort of mindless cretin who in other countries wouldn’t be nominated for dogcatcher.
It was interesting browsing some of the comments on that article, a large number of which observe the rather startling difference in the national psyches of the two countries. Several of the commenters attempted to defend the US position on immigration by basically saying that many Americans have themselves become victims of economic hardships and inequalities, and when so many are struggling to make ends meet, it’s hard to find empathy for refugees. Aside from the vast difference in magnitude of the two kinds of problems, that observation of the tribulations of the poor in America and the collapsing middle class isn’t much of an endorsement of the myth of exceptionalism.
While the large swathes of the Western world responded to the cow bells of race baiting, xenophobia and the politics of fear, taking a huge step towards nativism. Abandoning many of their lofty and admirable founding principles out of fear. While my nation stepped left, not right. Back toward, reason, compassion and higher ideals.
