Leadership & American Exceptionalism

Nonprofits began in this country, primarily because of America's marvelous sense of itself as a land where the ability of individuals was not hampered by ancient class systems and cultural narratives of ineffectiveness.

This article from the American Spectator briefs us on the history—and connection with the other English speaking peoples—that underlies the importance of American exceptionalism remaining a vital strain within the American character.

An excerpt.

"I do not think America is going to smash,” Winston Churchill told his American stockbroker in the depths of the Great Depression. “On the contrary I believe that they will quite soon begin to recover…. They carved it out of the prairie and the forests. They are going to have a strong national resurgence in the near future.”

"Churchill’s own belief in the massive regenerative power of the United States was a constant in his life. He believed that given the will, Americans could achieve anything, because America was special. Yet today it is precisely this trust in the exceptionalism of America that is currently being called into question. History shows that nations that retain self-belief are indeed capable of astonishing feats, but those that suspect their time in the sun has passed cannot be saved, however rich they are or successful they have been.

"Joyce Carol Oates, the award-winning novelist and Princeton professor, has written in the Atlantic: “How heartily sick the world has grown, in the first… years of the 21st century, of the American idea! Speak with any non-American, travel to any foreign country, and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids, consequently low on natural testosterone, deranged and myopic, dangerous.” Such searing hatred of the American Idea from within American society—indeed from inside its cultural elite—is far more dangerous than what non-Americans feel. Of course, it couldn’t matter less what one writer feels if she does not represent the zeitgeist, but much more worrying was President Barack Obama’s reply in April to a question from a Financial Times reporter about whether he believed in American exceptionalism. He said: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

"This is reminiscent of what the Dodo says in Alice in Wonderland: “Everyone has won and all must have prizes.” Yet that is simply not how international relations work. Greeks might indeed believe in their own exceptionalism, as might Belgians, Thais, or Finns for that matter, but they are not truly exceptional in the light of global current affairs. The West once again looks to America for leadership in a risky world, as we so often have in the past. Although the U.S. economy was in recession in the second quarter of 2009, she pulled out of it in the third quarter. My country, Britain, is still heavily mired in recession, but nothing so cheers our markets as much as knowing that you are finally out of it. American optimism, free market beliefs, and the can-do spirit will raise the Western world out of these doldrums—at least, they will if they are permitted to by your Congress and administration."