That is not special. You are basically taking the few instances where America has been the best or first at something, weighted them accordingly, and used that as the basis for your comparison. It would be like if China said they were the best because they invented fireworks.
What makes the Constitution so special? The Magna Carta was even more exceptional, I think. Or Hammurabi’s Code. Or the first time a monkey ate something from a fire and thought it tastes better than the raw crap they’ve been eating before
Only superpower for a short time. China’s coming up, and the USSR just fell. This period is a very short one, but it lasted longer than a single person’s memory . So there’s an illusion it’s how things are. It’ll be a 60-year blip in history. It’s really a tiny amount of time.
This happened just as we reached global media and the intrawebz. So for the first time in the world, it’s a globally repeated status quo on a minute to minute basis.
I always thought the real key to “American Exceptionalism” was stumbling on to an entire continent of staggeringly vast natural resources, without anyone occupying it able to defend it. What the gold of Mexico and Peru were to Spain (launching it to European pre-eminence for a time) the forests, fields, mines, and furs of North America were to the young U.S. It isn’t anything in the American people, so much as the huge bounty that they obtained.
(That said, we were incredibly lucky in having George Washington as our founding spirit. Imagine if Hamilton or Adams had been the big wheel at the time!)
(re natural rights, hogwash. No such thing. Nor “inalienable” rights, as people suffering under totalitarian rule can aver. The best we can do is put together various lists of consensual ideals, things that large numbers of people agree with, and then generalize these as “universals.” They aren’t, but they do seem to be a pretty good basis for civilized governments.)
People break laws when they are motivated to. Wanting to live is a desire written into me by billions of years of adaptation. Mammals who try to live longer, tend to live longer.
Is there a natural right to food, since I want that too? Is there a natural right to sex, because I crave that? The very notion is nonsense.
No, the desire to defend oneself is incorporated into humanity by virtue of that fact that we want to live longer.
Simply asserting nonsense doesn’t make it true. In what way would the universe be different if there weren’t a natural right to self-defense? Would people not want to defend themselves?
Would deer stand there blinking while lions closed in? You are asserting something that has no effect on the universe and demanding it exists. Why?
A good deal of that is population though, we have about 7-10x more people than most other wealthy nations, which means a bigger GDP and a bigger talent pool to draw upon. I wouldn’t qualify that as exceptionalism.
If you want national exceptionalism, nations like Israel are pretty good bets (IMO). They built a first world economy out of nothing, are surrounded by hostile neighbors but still not only survived but have a better human rights record than their neighbors, have an incredibly high per capita % of scientists, engineers and physicians, etc. Nations like Taiwan could probably count too. They developed rapidly and became liberal, free nations despite authoritarian, hostile, larger neighbors wanting to keep them down.
[QUOTE=Wesley Clark]
The US just has a bigger population.
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You make that sound like it’s no big deal, but the reality is that having a larger population makes it tougher to act in a cohesive and coherent way. As does having a continental sized nation. It’s easier to make stuff work when you have a more homogenous and smaller population, as it is when you have a smaller country.
See, that’s one of the things that MAKES us exceptional. When China and India (both with larger populations) are able to get the majority of their populations up to the standards of living that the US has…well, THEN you can come back and say that the US is no longer exceptional. Or when Russia does it (since they have more area under control than the US), then the same.
Yeah, I forgot all 300 million of us just materialized out of thin air. Or maybe it’s because for the past 200+ years people from all over the world have been pounding down the door to come hear because it’s so awesome.
A lot of nations are divided by class, race, religion, political belief, etc but still function. I don’t see how that makes us exceptional. We had a civil war over our differences, plus our racial and class differences play a core role in our divisions in national politics.
Canada and Australia have continential sized nations too. They do fine.
But the fact that we are bigger means our talent pool is bigger. We have more cities and companies that talented people can work for. This also creates incentives for foreigners to come here (because there are more options in a nation of 300 million with dozens of tech saavy metro areas and hundreds of good universities than in a smaller nation with a couple of tech saavy metro areas and a few dozen good universities). A nation of 300 million has more jobs, more universities, more cities and more opportunities. That attracts the best in the world, which makes the nation even better. But I don’t think that makes a nation exceptional.
The right not to be killed is kind of a no-brainer. But where is there a comprehensive list of rights handed down by God? At what point did this “endowment” take place. How do we account for differences on what should or should not be considered an inalienable right?
Should Gays have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
I think the Newtster should take a second look at the line from the DoI he’s exploiting. The God he’s sticking up for is the that’s believed in by faith. The Declaration only acknowledges divine activity insofar as it is “self evident”.
