Barack Obama, 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, on why the US should bomb Syria:
But when would modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional.
Vladimir Putin, New York Times, September 11, 2013:
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Barack Obama, to the United Nations, September 25, 2013:
Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional – in part because we have shown a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interests of all.
What do Americans mean when they claim that the United States is exceptional? President Putin warns that belief in one’s own exceptionalism is dangerous. In Obama’s case, he evidently believes that the United States must act because it is morally superior to all the other nations in the world. Indeed, many Americans, not all, act in such away as to suggest that they believe they are superior to the rest of the world. Most Americans persist in believing that the United States is the greatest country in history. Others, such as Rush Limbaugh, would concede that Americans are not better than other people, but that the principles of liberty and freedom is what makes them exceptional:
American exceptionalism has nothing to do with anything but freedom and liberty. … The vast majority of the people of this world since the beginning of time have never known the kind of liberty and freedom that’s taken for granted every day in this country. Most people have lived in abject fear of their leaders. Most people have lived in abject fear of whoever held power over them. Most people in the world have not had plentiful access to food and clean water. It was a major daily undertaking for most people to come up with just those two basic things.
Well, for me living in Canada, I have to say I don’t stand in fear of the prime minister, the premier of Ontario, or even the mayor of Vaughan (do I even know his name?)–except at tax time. I think my water is clean, and last I checked, I’m eating very well. I should proclaim Canadian exceptionalism. Except, when Americans claim their version of exceptionalism, there is not really room to say that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western European countries, UK, and whatever other countries claims to have a decent standard of living, are all exceptional. Syndrome said,
“When everyone’s super, no one is!”
So I disagree with Limbaugh. The concepts of freedom and rights are older than the United States. The founding principles of the United States depend on a long tradition of rights in the English-speaking world, having its roots in the Magna Carta. Before that, the Romans, who had clean water and food, had a concept of rule of law and the rights of citizens, though its potentates often abused those rights. In some countries today, the government actually respects the rights of their citizens, at least better than does the current United States federal government.
In history, every nation that ever had an empire believed in its own exceptionalism. Take for example the Romans, the English, and the French. But in such cases, the thing that made these empires great was never their moral superiority but their willingness to use their military might and violence to assert their dominance in the world. To be sure, at times it is necessary to use violence to stop violence. But the victors in such cases should remain humble and light-handed in the wielding of power, lest they fall into the trap of thinking that they can do no wrong. On this point, Putin is right.
Yet I have to say Putin is wrong too, but only in the sense that “exceptional” can mean “deviating from the norm: as a: having above or below average intelligence” (Webster’s Collegiate, 11th ed.). Exceptional can also mean exceptionally bad in some or all respects. And here I would like to enumerate a points on which I can easily affirm the concept of American exceptionalism:
- The United States enjoys the highest obesity rate among 28 major nations. This is due in large part because of the government sponsored carbohydrate bubble.
- The United States has killed thousands of people through unmanned drones; the ratio of innocent to terrorists is perhaps 50 to 1.
- The United States is running the biggest budget deficit and borrows over 40 cents for every dollar it spends. It must borrow more money to be able to claim that it is not a banana republic.
- The United States alone enjoys the ability to print or otherwise create the reserve currency of the world and is able to export inflation to the rest of the world, thus taxing the foreign holders of its currency.
- The United States enjoys the largest trade deficit in the world, as its fiat currency is able, for now, to purchase goods from other countries.
- The United States alone has a system of citizenship-based taxation, threatening its expats with extortionate fines for non-compliance with its filing requirements. The Eritrean 2% expat tax requires the filing of a simple form and is in no wise comparable to the United States’ violation of its expats universal human rights. This means that the United States believes that it is best to rob the wealth of other nations in order to try to stop-gap its own budget deficit, and is currently trying to enforce this extortion through FATCA, a law forcing banks around the world to rat out their alleged US clients to the IRS. The United States has become a beggar nation full of worthless bums.
- The majority of the US homelanders, whether labeling themselves left, right or moderate, seem incapable of seeing what the rest of the world can see. This is the state of believing that you still live in the best country in the world, even though by many measures that country has fallen from its pinnacle. Today, depending on who is doing the measuring, several other countries have better standards of living or more freedom.
This last point, I would support with anecdotal evidence. When I have complained that I’ve had to expatriate, many Americans say something like, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” I again had this experience when I claimed at a right-wing website that the United States was not exceptional, since I had to relinquish my US citizenship in order to protect my family from the biggest threat to its well-being, the IRS. The response of one commenter, Debra Blouin was as follows:
I just want to extend my thanks to you. Not for your well-written post, mind you.
I want to thank you for leaving!
Americans, when confronted with the truth of how far their country has fallen, become defensive and rude. This I find to be indeed exceptional.
“I just want to extend my thanks to you. Not for your well-written post, mind you.
I want to thank you for leaving!”
The above is just the kind of comment a Homelander would make. For Homelanders it’s nearly always a case of sour grapes when people decide to leave and make their life abroad.
Homelanders should wish them luck and welcome them back if they return. Burning bridges will do the US economy any good in future.
We will never know how much investment money has been lost because people have handed in the “blue book.”
I just feel pity for those who make such comments regarding the situation their fellow citizens found themselves in due to FATCA. They are really blind and utterly uneducated. It’s hard to be angry at some of these commenters when you realize how myopic they have been taught to be. When I was growing up in the U.S. the general consensus in education instruction was “Question Everything” I can’t count the many times I was told to do this. How inquiry was encouraged. I’m grateful for that. Nowadays it seems it’s to blindly follow whatever the last talking head ramped you up to believe in. Maybe it’s because the U.S. has fallen on such hard times and so many are living in constant fear, also ramped up by what passes for news there these days. Who knows but, I notice a complete difference in the way Canadians disagree with one another most of the time compared to the way Americans choose to discuss everything from FATCA to health care.
I’ve paid little attention the last few months to either side of their political spectrum. From Limbaugh to Van Jones and all in between. I guess I just no longer really care what they think, how they see themselves. It’s hard to care when you can’t have a civil conversation. They SO convinced they are right in all they do. I don’t care for Limbaugh and I don’t care for “The people for whatever Obama wants” either.
@Petros , thanks for the excellent post on exceptional ism. I have read on several sites on comments , including democratic underground when FATCA is brought up. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
@Don, You are so correct about the USA losing investment money…I took all my money investments out of US stocks since before the bank and credit card and housing crashes. I turned down real estate investment in Florida since FATCA… And now I have no intention to return to the USA for even just a visit. @Atticus. I feel the same as you. “I notice a complete difference in the way Canadians disagree with one another most of the time compared to the way Americans choose to discuss everything from FATCA to health care.”
I have become more concentrated on FATCA the last few months to care about the right or the left. I am an observer now. IBS and sandbox are my most looked at websites.
This is almost too tedious to have to point out, but Canada chose to go to war with Hitler in 1939 (on its own timetable, not the British one, after a parliamentary free vote.) In 1940, the First Canadian Division was the only remaining army formation standing between the SS and the Parliament of Westminster. In that period, the FBI would track down and prosecute Americans who were going to Canada to enlist. (There were many.) The U.S. only declared war on Germany when they were forced to after Pearl Harbour, and only because Germany declared war on them. If Hitler had repudiated the Japanese in 1941 (a really interesting counterfactual), I don’t think they would have.
So. After the Nazis rolled over the democracies of Western Europe and threatened the conquest of Britain, who”showed a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interests of all? Well, Canada did, Britain, Australia and New Zealand did, and a lot of brave Americans who broke the Neutrality Act and risked federal prison time did too. The United States itself? Not so much.
Re: “Americans, when confronted with the truth of how far their country has fallen, become defensive and rude. This I find to be indeed exceptional.”
I used to find it very frustrating responding to the ignorant, rude comments, especially when it became apparent that nothing I could say would change the myopic mindset of certain individuals. Now, I try to think about the people (Americans and non-Americans alike) who read the dialogue, and how my responses and arguments are an opportunity to educate the ones who can reason and empathize, and are not too caught up in the ‘USA is exceptional’ mantra; most don’t take part in the commentary, but I do think they are reading.
All great empires have believed themselves exceptional. The US is not exceptional in this.
A new example of exceptionalism –
I heard an interesting stat today. In 2000 the US dollar accounted for 70.5% of capital reserves held by countries’ central banks, In 2012 that has slipped down to 63%.
FATCA could accelerate this process putting more pressure on the US dollar to lose reserve status. At current tread rates the US won’t fall below 50% until around 2030.
However it’s entirely possible FATCA and the general shift of the world’s economic power to the East will accelerate this process. If the rate doubles, the US dollar could be less than 50% by 2023.
Not great news for the US Government. The next economic upheaval/recession will not allow them to ‘print’ their way out of trouble, but make real cutbacks and have to live within their means. Translation – lower living standards, more people below the poverty line.
Based on people I know, I don’t think most Americans really care whether the US is exceptional or not. Most of them like and support the US, but it’s usually just for fun, like cheering for a sport team, or simply a kind of affection, like an extended family. There is a joke that the 4th of July is the day when people pretend to be patriotic. A few really think that the US is the best in everything, but most recognize that it’s far from perfect, I’ve even heard one of my friends say “this country sucks”. And when things gets serious, they tend to leave irrational patriotism aside, see for example the low public support for intervention in Syria. However, politicians aren’t exactly representative of the overall population in this sense.
The exceptionalism thing is a conservative thing. Obama chose to ignore the world’s opinion in order to again recover from opening his mouth earlier on when he said that all countries believe they are exceptional. He will say anything necessary to keep himself above 49% popularity—especially anything that keeps him from being ridiculed by the right.
@Shadowraider, Thanks. Yet the only true exception that I’ve encountered to the American homelander who believes that the United States is the greatest country in the world, is the democrat who threatens to move to Canada every time a republican is elected president. Other than that, the prevailing notion seems to be Lee Greenwood.
This is kind of like the point I was trying to make with yesterday’s quote of the day.
More and more, leaders of other countries are standing up and saying to the USG, “Um, no. You aren’t so great and you shouldn’t think that “exceptionalism” alone gives you the right to unilaterally force or enforce anything beyond your own borders.”
And it wasn’t just the Brazilian President yesterday. The new Iranian President also gave a speech calling out the politics of hegemony as a failed policy that has bankrupted (literally and morally) the US and the countries of the Middle East, and that one nation shouldn’t be allowed that much power and it’s a double standard to allow the US to use force but condemn the same actions of other nations as evil.
Andrew Sullivan has a nice take on that worth a read.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/09/24/listening-to-rouhani/
Gone are the days of bowing down and good riddance to them.
And no, it might not cause the USG to change right now but every time Obama or one of his minions is forced to spew lies and hypocrisy to defend something or action that everyone else in the world knows is arrogant overreach or just plain flat out wrong – it weakens them on the world stage and emboldens others to stand up.
Ignore the bleating sheep on those comment threads. Regardless of their blindness, other people are reading the truth you write, thinking about it, researching and changing their minds. You will never know who you’ve saved but you are doing it.
@A broken Man on a Halifax pier…..Thanks for that history lesson…Never learned that in my US History classes, which I loved. I guess it is history that is overlooked because it is too controversial..FBI after Americans for joining up to fight WWII under Canadian flag…yet the Canadian government didn’t go after Canadians who joined up for Viet Nam…
@all
Since we are discussing how Americans feel so exceptional, not realizing that other countries don’t share their feelings about America. Yesterday I was at my painters group and someone there , my American person friend who is very religious and very frustrated with FATCA surprised me with maybe we should not be saying God Bless America…..another non American Canadian answered her with “we should be saying God Help America” .. We all commented how stupid FATCA was and how the violence in America has grown so much.. Yes, America needs help… and I think they only way they can change is when countries start taking out their people and investments in America.
I’ve never heard the suggestion “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” used other than defensively. It’s often accompanied by “go ahead and leave”,”you’ll regret it”, “you’ll never meet anyone like me”, and sometimes unfortunately, “I’ll make your life miserable”.
A great number of Americans are threatened by our choice to renounce because it conflicts with their core belief that the US is the best country on earth. But because they are too lazy or scared to think about it too much they wrap themselves in their patriotism and find it much easier to think of us as either traitors or not being American enough anyway. It doesn’t help that the US is in such a state of panic that everything that happens outside the US borders has to be analyzed as to whether it’s a threat or not.
The renunciations are just one of a growing list of things that chisel away at the notion that they are #1. They hate it.
bubblebustin, I think you are right on when you point out that expats leaving and giving up citizenship forces people to think about why even at the same time they are defensively rejecting those who have left.
No one likes having their core values, and the very fabric of their existence, held up to harsh light.
Pingback: Putin was wrong: The exceptionalism of the United States is alive and real | The Freedom Watch
It’s pitiful and should be deeply embarrassing for Americans that their president needs to continually reiterate such self-congratulatory drivel. If the USA were worthy of all the praise Obama claims they are, it should be coming from outside the country. Anyone? Anyone at all? Over here, the silence is deafening.
Part of being exceptional is never needing to feel embarrassed or ashamed.
Michael Moore says in a youtube clip “You want to run healthcare for a PROFIT? You mean you want to make money off of a sick person?”
How should a country with this mindset towards its own people care about anything but profit?
@Polly
I agree with Michael Moore. America can not claim to be the greatest country in the world when millions of their people have no health care. I saw a video of Krystal Ball of MSNBC saying how the Republicans don’t want government in health care yet they ready to order women to undergo certain probes done by their doctors. I know what is like to have two immediate family members have terminal cancers at the same time. We concentrated on their health, not medical bills. God bless Canada.
@Petros
Would you say that believing that one is exceptional is showing narcissism?
@northernstar, narcissism is a problem today.
As for healthcare, I think that has become something of carnard today. Do I have healthcare? Yesterday, I went to my family dr and was told that my LDL was up and I had to go on statins. I refused. Since my last blood work in November, my triglycerides are down 40%, my HDL is up 30%, my hbA1C is in the normal range (5.5%) instead of the prediabetic (6.0%); my weight is down 50 lbs; my blood pressure is normal; I’m feeling better than for the last ten years and now she wants to put me statins? I am feeling better thanks to a low carb high fat diet, which “healthcare” rarely recommends. Yet for my doctor, the calculated LDL reading is a black box–she has no idea if this is dangerous LDL or not (, but is simply following the ministry guidelines which have not really improving anyone’s health. Thus, I am not big fan of healthcare, and especially not of the view that the governments involvement in healthcare improves matters. Government intervention, in fact, has led to serious premature death in millions of people and slows the rate at which the medical profession is willing or able to respond to new research.
So do we in Canada have healthcare? I consider that question very debatable. We do have public access to the sorcerers potions that they dispense, provided that we have private insurance or adequate personal means to pay for them. But when it comes to my health, I consider myself to be pretty much on my own.
@Petros
I agree with your choice not take statins. My friends hsve done the same.
In my son and husband they were healthy all their lives and rarely saw the doctor. My son had a brain tumour and my husband had non Hodgkins lymphoma. They chose to fight it and try to live. My son lived longer than ted kennedy who had the same tumour and they had the same treatments as read up on kennedy’s treatments. Imagine doing your job and suddenly getting seizuresmyou never had in your life and then getting a brain operation 3 days later. He lived for 18 months. 2 months after he was diagnosed my husband was getting an operation for a little lump. He lived 3 years. My son was 26 and my husband 54 when they died. Our health care system helped them live longer and the family cope and support each other. We also got psychotherapy, individually and as a family. There were no medical bills to bankrupt us. I am very grateful to live in Canada to have this health care. Recently I went to my optometrist for an eye problem . He sent me that same day to an eye surgeon a detached retina. The surgeon did the surgery that same evening. My is 100 percent. I am grateful for my health care in Canada.
Petros, I agree with you about healthcare. The government guidelines and such wouldn’t be so bad if doctors weren’t just as much sheep as the general public can be. I battle with mine all the time and it’s frustrating because I am a careful person who researches and knows that a lot of what goes into “guidelines” is theory and guess work and is as often wrong as it is right.
Healthcare would be healthier for us is people had ALL the information and actually made choices rather than simply being told what to do by DR’s who know less about the meds they prescribe than the salespeople who bring them the samples and other goodies.
Don’t get me started on the evils of statins (which basically haven’t been proven to prevent anything although there is a tiny bit to support their use AFTER you’ve had some sort of heart incident. Before? You are better off eating properly and exercising. Odds are probably better with the latter actually).
Northernstar, comparing Canadian healthcare to the US is a straw man. In some states, access and coverage is very good and in others it’s not. Kind of like in Canada though, I guess, because how good the access is and the level of care (and the wait times) depends on the province. We don’t actually have a national healthcare system. We have provincial one. When my husband’s late wife had cancer, he ended up with 10s of thousands of dollars in bills because only inpatient is covered and a lot of the homecare and things she needed weren’t. He was fortunate to work for a big US owned company that offered supplemental healthcare coverage (like prescription drugs) or it would have been more.
His nephew has two disabled children and if it weren’t for community fundraisers and The Shriners, they’d be in a whole lot more debt than they are.
I think it’s great that we can go to the hospital without worry here but there are a lot of people without any access to primary care and just as many who can’t afford what the doctor prescribes for them because they don’t have jobs that offer supplemental healthcare. As Canadians, we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back too much because we could probably do better with a little reform and organization and discussion about what is and isn’t important. imo.
Sorry Petros for the off-topic. And now, back to calling out the USG on their stunning hypocrisy!
@petros
Sorry for the typos. Health care is emotional for me. So many memories. There are good doctors and not so good ones, as in people. We must be informed and aware what we are getting. 5 of us in the family did lots of research and would come to the health appts with tons of printouts of various treatments. We were never denied anything. Our doctors listened to us, even though they were rushed with so many patients.
It is not like we were wealthy either. Just lower middle class.
@thanks northernstar, I recognize that people believe that the health care system has helped them, and certainly, most who serve intend to help their patients. The good will and service in Canada is unquestionable, and I think that you make a very good point. Also it is emotional for me too: my diabetic mother, a dermatologist, passed away from cancer at the age of 47 and my father, an otolaryngologist, passed away, presumably, last summer as a result of Alzheimer’s disease.
My position is very contrarian, I admit. Just as I am contrarian towards the experts on cross-border tax issues, who may as well be selling snake oil. I am a student of treatments which are out of the mainstream but which actually help to prevent the major killers today: e.g., heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimers. This takes place by curing metabolic syndrome and taking super-control over insulin and blood sugar levels; and my main source for the dietary regimen that I follow is Dr. Richard K. Berstein. Now if I could find a doctor in my area who was a proponent of low carbing (they exist, I just don’t know where and I am “lucky” even to have found a family doctor at all), and OHIP paid for her/his services too, and the government changed its position on what is a healthy diet, then perhaps I’d be less negative too. If I continued in the way of the food pyramid, instead of following the advice of Wheat Belly, I too would soon become a casualty, going the way of James Gandolfini and Tim Russert. Forget the trillions that will be spent on Obamacare and go out and buy Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution for $20, and see who gets better and stays healthy.
To me the medical profession resembles the homelanders clinging to the notion of exceptionalism. Try to tell them that their treatments are out of date, based upon a lack of knowledge of the latest research, or that because of the type of diet you are on their lipid profiles may be giving them a false understanding of your risk, they become defensive and say that they are unwilling to consider your point of view. That’s what happened yesterday in my appointment. Now, admittedly, she was willing to refer me to a lipid specialist, yet she is treating many people without a basic understanding of what is in the black box. Peter Attia writes about this problem as such in series of articles that I read yesterday:
My doctor didn’t seem to know that LPL-P is the greater risk factor than LDL-C and that a person with high LDL-C may be at little risk at all because LDL-P (particle count) is low. Peter Attia explains this at length.
Thanks again for your testimony. May the Canadian system serve you and all the rest of as well!