American Exceptionalism Summary
Tamara Bassi
Professor G. Gherasim
American Political Ideas
June 20, 2013
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Time and time again the world has heard of this seemingly strange and wafty idea called “American exceptionalism”. This concept is anchored in the origins of the United States from their birth to their on-going completion. However, it is a concept which requires clarification due to its volatile nature and the fact that its meaning isn’t obvious enough for one to assure a firm grasp of it. It has been subject to many debates and differences in opinions as each person practices their own individual interpretation of it. From a strictly domestic point of view, Americans, for the most part conservative, recognize it as natural notion …show more content…
However, Tocqueville touches on many aspects of a different American genesis, like the lack of feudalism and the impact it had on the centralization of power and the social conditions that reverberated into the laws of the people. He then exemplifies the feudal system as one of caste order, where progress may be made but never to an expansive degree and never in the interests of the people outside of the caste.
Another issues he touches on is that of the aboriginal population, the Indians, for whom the process of civilization will be too precocious as it a process which takes a very long time and is dictated by the need for common well-being of the people, the desire for self preservation and for overcoming the human condition through self expression. This is to say that the settlers had already gone through the process and bore the necessary ingredients for the formation of a new …show more content…
In this respect America differs from other countries based on what Americans believe. “Born out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society. . . . [The American] ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez‐faire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state‐church‐formed cultures.”
Professor G. Gherasim
American Political Ideas
June 20, 2013
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Time and time again the world has heard of this seemingly strange and wafty idea called “American exceptionalism”. This concept is anchored in the origins of the United States from their birth to their on-going completion. However, it is a concept which requires clarification due to its volatile nature and the fact that its meaning isn’t obvious enough for one to assure a firm grasp of it. It has been subject to many debates and differences in opinions as each person practices their own individual interpretation of it. From a strictly domestic point of view, Americans, for the most part conservative, recognize it as natural notion …show more content…
However, Tocqueville touches on many aspects of a different American genesis, like the lack of feudalism and the impact it had on the centralization of power and the social conditions that reverberated into the laws of the people. He then exemplifies the feudal system as one of caste order, where progress may be made but never to an expansive degree and never in the interests of the people outside of the caste.
Another issues he touches on is that of the aboriginal population, the Indians, for whom the process of civilization will be too precocious as it a process which takes a very long time and is dictated by the need for common well-being of the people, the desire for self preservation and for overcoming the human condition through self expression. This is to say that the settlers had already gone through the process and bore the necessary ingredients for the formation of a new …show more content…
In this respect America differs from other countries based on what Americans believe. “Born out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society. . . . [The American] ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez‐faire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state‐church‐formed cultures.”