“Lesser” nations? :dubious:
How else should we refer to the vassals of the USA?
Non-US nations. Same thing.
I’m trusting in woosh. Please, please be a woosh.
To be honest when people spoke of American exceptionalism it was really more based on comparisons in social class and mobility between European states of the 19th century and American in the 19th century. Andrew Carnegie was born the poor son of a weaver in Scotland, emigrated to America at 13 or so, and died one of the richest man’s of his day–or any day. He could go from “bottom to top” in one lifetime. Doing so in Britain or France or most European states was very, very difficult due to an entrenched class system.
Part of what allowed for this is that America had no “entrenched” social classes, that doesn’t mean it had no classes–there has always been an upper/middle/lower class, but by birthright you weren’t locked in to any of them. Lincoln was born solidly lower class and worked his way into middle class by early adulthood, and as President would have to be considered upper class.
This class mobility isn’t just economic, but also political. Someone not born to significant means and influence in Europe would have had no chance of becoming say, Prime Minister in the United Kingdom during the 19th century. Yet several men did just that in 19th century America–Andrew Jackson, Millard Fillmore, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant and several others.
This mobility also related to land–which was dear in Europe but literally free for many years in the United States (if you were willing/able to travel to it, clear it, and maintain it.)
This is really the genesis of American exceptionalism, the early 20th century saw dramatic social changes in Europe that rendered a lot of these comparisons no longer valid. In the present tense America isn’t all that socially or economically mobile at all, and is probably the least so at any point in its history.
You are wrong on usage. Words evolve. So “holocaust” does now refer in general to successful genocidal campaigns. This usage is more accepted than the new definition of “anti-Semite” as anyone who criticizes Israeli policy.
You exaggerate both of these things. Parts of America were founded on slavery, but not all–and there’s a reason the South lost the civil war. It was vastly smaller than the rest of the country, and most slavery was in the South (the border states and a few odd balls like New Jersey may have still had slavery, but in small enough numbers saying they were “founded on it” is asinine and untrue.) Slavery is a bad thing, that still goes on today, and is not at all unique to America. The unique thing about American slavery I think is that most of Americans seem to regard it as the most terrible, worst thing to ever happen. Most people around the world tend to move on and forget sins of long dead generations as what they were–brutalities from a brutal time.
Most Native Americans were killed by disease, not by genocide. Again, what’s exceptional about America is that its people somehow think our killing of people to take land is some unique monstrosity. That’s actually how every country extant on Earth came to exist. It’s unfortunate and sad, but acting like we’re some uber evil country that has done these things that no one else has (when in fact, everyone else has) is weird to me–and frankly, suggests the very premise of your post is faulty since I actually find these views you express common place, not rare. The more recent a country was birthed the more recent the violent conquest at the core of its history is present, and other comparable countries I’d argue seem to care even less. Turkey committed serious genocides right at its birth to push out long-accepted minorities that the new State of Turkey decided didn’t fit in with the new Turkish experiment (while they had fit in under the Ottoman imperial government.) Turkey to this day gets pretty mad if you even call this a genocide–and I don’t mean just their loud mouths, like their President and most of their political leaders.
How much territory and how many people has Russia stolen or dispossessed in the past 150 years? I’d argue the Russians not only haven’t done a lot of soul-searching about it, they essentially celebrate this stuff. Same for the Chinese.
And I’m not bashing Russia, China, or Turkey–I’m just saying all countries are built on violence, and comparatively speaking I think America does a better job than many when it comes to “feeling bad” about it. Not that it means a hell of a lot to people dead and dispossessed before my great-great-great grandfather was born.
This is a patently ridiculous statement. For a start, it would mean that David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, & John Rawls were neither useful nor novel. It would also mean that modern constitutional systems are either the same as or inferior to the 1787 Constitution, which is obviously wrong. And that’s the fuzzy ball on the tip of the hat of the brave sailor standing on the tip of the iceberg.
You may as well claim that nothing of use has been written since the prophecies of Malachi. You may as well claim that nothing need be read but L. Ron Hubbard!
I mean, I’ll happily concede that Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard were neither useful nor great minds.
Rather than thinking we’ve got a fairly decent governmental system (based on the Constitution), too many Conservatives try to block most government operations for no other reason than hating the President. (The non-white Democratic President, particularly.)
For example, why won’t the Senate discuss the President’s Supreme Court nominee then take a vote? Per the Constitution. Why pout like little kids & refuse action?
Why blather about Making America Great Again? We’ve always got room to improve but I don’t see that the country has Fallen From Some Great Height.
(Oh, that “City on the Hill” thing came from the Puritans. Who sought their own religious freedom in* their* colonies. Which involved things like hanging Quakers.)
In many ways America wasn’t one country until the mid-19th century, the history of the founding of the New England colonies the Mid-Atlantic, and Southern ones is all quite different. Then the settling of the Northwest Territories (the current Mid-West) and the far West created pretty distinct histories and cultures as well. It took a more unified Federal government and technology to really forge a more unified America. Which is part of why it’s sometimes silly to cherry pick aspects of one part of the early United States and extrapolate it on to everyone else.
All I know is it’s an exceptionally stupid system of Government: 240 years later how many countries copied it - ffs, take a clue.
Well, someone has to attend to the White Man’s Burden, don’cha know.
You can’t claim you’re being satirical when you said X, then follow-up with “But seriously, X.”
“Exceptionally stupid” is a pretty grave slur considering how successful America has been. Most powerful country on earth, the only large country that is also extremely wealthy (only tiny, politically irrelevant countries are wealthier per capita–and none is wealthier in aggregate.) It’s also by far the freest of the really large countries. If you look at the top 10 countries by population, America’s only competitor in terms of personal freedoms would be Japan (at #10, we’re #3, and about 2.5 times as big as Japan.)
You have to go down to Germany at #17 to find another. This suggests that large, complex countries with lots of people and lots of wealth, combined with lots of freedom–aren’t all that easy to make happen.
I’ve been a long advocate of some constitutional reforms to make American government work better (there’s a reason the U.S. Constitution is more or less the oldest one in the world that is still functional and still works pretty damn similar to how it did in 1789–it’s because most countries have realized you need change and sometimes dramatic ones) but you really go quite too far. As people often do when criticizing America. Everything is exaggerated when it comes to the United States, our faults are made to be “the worst thing ever” and our positives are likewise exaggerated.
The extermination of the North American nations was not done with spears and clubs. It was mostly done by infectious disease, actually.
The English were lucky enough and cussed enough to exploit it. The big difference between the English in North America on one hand, and the French and Spanish on the other hand, is that the French and Spanish largely intermarried with the natives, blending their cultures, while the English passed anti-miscegenation laws and physically displaced the remnants of the depopulated nations.
At various points there was some [del]sporadic[/del] attempt at actual extermination by armed forces. (ETA: Septimus detailed some of this upthread. “Sporadic” was too kind on my part.) But a lot of it was just pushing people out and refusing to assimilate with “non-whites.”
This is fairly true. Part of the difference in New Spain is that it was always seen as a man’s location, where he’d go to make his fortune. Of course many stayed, and being men, they needed women, and the only ones available were natives.
Fairly early on, like literally the Mayflower for one, English colonization in North America tended more toward entire families. But interestingly this wasn’t universal, several of the Southern colonies started out more as get-rich-quick dreams by men, and societal acceptance of miscegenation with natives was consequently higher there, and consequently decreased as families and large numbers of European women started coming over.
You saw this repeated in the settling of the West, while out East it was considered a black mark to marry an Indian woman, men out west could do so and it was pretty accepted out there and even “more tolerated” if he came back East since it was understood the circumstances. Although a lot of men who did this actually tended to abandon their native wives when they moved back east. George Pickett (of Pickett’s Charge) being a pretty representative sample of this phenomenon. He was a widower when his military career took him out West, and married and fathered a child with a native woman.
I think an additional factor in the intermarrying of natives and Europeans in Mexico and on South, is also that there were just far more natives to begin with. Number vary wildly but the population of South America + Southern Mexico (where the large Aztec Empire and its tributaries and Mayan civilians were centered) had a much higher population than Canada + Continental U.S.
Do you think the USA could have explicitly conquered Europe in 1946? And held it? I bet Truman didn’t think so.
240 years and no other nation touches it with a barge pole. Duh.
Gosh, what else happened in the middle of the 19th century to unify the country? From Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address, March 1865:
The Founders knew the golden words of the Declaration were not fulfilled in the Constitution. Slavery was an open wound but it was hoped that it could be finished–soon. It was ended quickly in the Northern states where it was not economically important (although slave ships had sailed out of Yankee ports); but Thomas Jefferson found other pastimes–in his long retirement.
Lincoln saw the resulting war as a judgment on* all* Americans. The Union was preserved & slavery ended–but racial inequality did not end. There is continuing struggle for justice; and young black men are not just shot down by police in Southern cities. I still see the whole country improving, although the racist/xenophobic candidate has fans all over.
Making the USA fulfill its promise is a continuing project–not to be solved by saying “La La La–we’re perfect!” But I have hope.
That’s 1) non-responsive to the argument I made, 2) factually incorrect (lots of countries have actually emulated our constitution over the years) and 3) not worthy of much further discussion.