American Exceptionalism: Who Owns It?

In a recent LA Times Op-Ed, NYU’s Jonathan Zimmerman argues that the idea of American exceptionalism rests in the American Left’s fight for social justice. Straight away, Zimmerman draws his battle lines:

Left = exceptional social warriors, Right = arrogance.

“Is America ‘exceptional’?” Zimmerman asks. Why yes, he argues, but only because of the great left-wing social justice warriors who fought slavery, big business, and racism.

What Zimmerman fails to acknowledge in the first instance is that even though the U.S. did abolish slavery, almost every other country in the Western world did the exact same thing, most of them prior to the 13th Amendment. So, while laudable, there really was nothing exceptional about America ending slavery in the 19th century. In fact, America was relatively late to the party. The same applies to the American labor movement, which never made gains anywhere near those made by European labor. This example too misses the mark. Finally, the modern Western world is rife with movements toward greater social equality and justice… the gains of the American civil rights movement, while honorable, were hardly exceptional. The definition of “American exceptionalism” cannot be effectively moved to where Zimmerman tries to take it; it just doesn’t add up.

Zimmerman maps out how today’s Democrats can appropriate the idea of American exceptionalism and use it to their advantage:

… the president should invoke America’s long tradition of left-wing exceptionalism. The great warriors for social justice in our history all insisted that America had a providential destiny. Unlike present-day conservatives, however, they also indicted the nation for abandoning this mission. They used American exceptionalism to critique America’s vices, not just to sing its virtues.

I can get aboard the general point here, that turning a critical eye on oneself and making improvements is a good thing. What should be questioned, as long as we’re playing the game of connecting people in the present with historical actors, is the idea that “present-day conservatives” are in no way ideologically connected to the historical figures cited by Zimmerman.

I maintain that many Americans, both left and right, did and do sing America’s virtues and critique its vices. A more straightforward analysis would not force such a partisan frame onto this historical exploration, as Zimmerman does here. Then again, this is politics.

Via this paradoxically dismissive and larcenous appropriation of “American exceptionalism,” Zimmerman denies to all non-lefties their own valid connections to American exceptionalism as they define it (it’s not true!) – even in the way he wants to define it (it’s not yours!). According to this schema, “Obama’s Republican critics” have it all wrong; they only think that American exceptionalism is “synonymous with American superiority.” Got that, you malevolent conservatives?

Forget that William Lloyd Garrison was a pious Christian, supported free trade, flirted with anarchism, and burned the Constitution; any conservatives who hold Christian values, support free markets, favor smaller government, and do not support federal power could not possibly have anything in common with Garrison or the abolitionist movement in general, because they’re on the right wing, of course.

Garrison was not a “left winger” by any current sense of the term; he was an American Christian moralist, exceptional in his passion for an ideal, which in no way is the exclusive domain of the American Left at any point in U.S. history. If anything, Garrison would be politically aligned with current Conservative Libertarians, not today’s Democratic Party, which possesses a destructive fetish for state power. American Christians can lay a much more substantial claim to Garrison than any other group.

In a larger historical context, yes, the fight against bondage and inequality is exceptional; yes, the individuals who risked life and limb were indeed exceptional, but emancipation and equality were certainly not rarities in the modern world, which is the context America simply must be placed in. America’s rise as the greatest economic, military, and scientific power over the last two centuries, however, is exceptional… again, in the modern world. I’ve yet to read a convincing argument to the contrary. Being aware of and stating the obvious does not equal arrogance.

Finally, Obama :

… should reply with a full-throated defense of a different kind of exceptionalism, one that underscores America’s historic struggle to realize its proclaimed values.

That doesn’t make us better than anyone else. But it does give us a special duty to fight injustice, wherever we find it. Especially in ourselves.

Therefore, according to Zimmerman, America is not exceptional, but some Americans were, and we now have a duty to fight injustice. I think most Americans agree, on both sides of the aisle, that fighting injustice is desirable. However, considering how the current left-wing social justice warriors have not been speaking much truth to power lately, one can assume this principle applies only if the person in the White House has an R next to his name… see, Anti-War Movement, 2003-2009, Abrupt Disappearance Of.” Unfortunately, the establishment of a “special” left-wing group of Americans as exclusive heirs to a morally superior history employs a similar logic which fueled the very discrimination that was fought against by exceptional Americans like Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. and Alice Paul in the first place.

In Zimmerman’s analysis, we are left with the American Right’s illegitimate competitive/national character exceptionalism versus the American Left’s genuine moral/social justice exceptionalism. I’d promote a more balanced approach: I’d argue that what is widely seen today as the mainstream American right is perfectly in line with all of the examples of alleged “left-wing exceptionalism” Zimmerman presents. Mining history in order to make partisan points can be effective, as long as your readers don’t know the history too well.

Many people in the 19th century believed America to be exceptional, notably Frederick Jackson Turner and Alexis de Tocqueville, to name but a few. I’d say a perusal of primary sources by thinkers such as these, works that are closer to the nation’s founding, provide a fruitful place to begin an examination of why people thought America was unique. I think Dr. Zimmerman would agree.

I maintain that America is exceptional for its competitive accomplishments and its unique founding; this, coupled with both a unique physical and political environment, led to an exceptional society. America is also honorable yet ordinary for its social justice accomplishments, which were perfectly in line with the emancipatory impulses of the modern world. America eventually did the right thing regarding inequality and discrimination and concurrently helped create, in a profound way, a standard of living of which kings in centuries past would have been envious. We are all heirs to that legacy. No side of the political spectrum has exclusive right to it, no matter how much the “Left = good, Right = bad” binary is promoted in the media, academia, and popular culture.

I don’t think it’s the responsibility of anyone to point out that “It doesn’t mean we’re better”, especially while adding, “… but we are better than you.” This approach is indeed exceptional… in its arrogance.