American exceptionalism

The good, the bad, the ugly

Every evening, ESPN produces a list of the top 10 plays of the day. Every December, newspapers and magazines compile their top 10 stories of the year. In 1999, 1899 and perhaps 1799, various groups reflected on the major developments of the century. Big thinkers occasionally identify the greatest hits of the millennium.

On a time scale between the last century and the last millennium—let’s say a quarter-millennium—one of the most remarkable stories in global history has been the transformation of the United States from a backwater pipsqueak in the 1770s to the linchpin of world affairs it is today.

One measure of this transformation is all the arguing it’s produced. In America the shouting has centered on the concept of American exceptionalism. Is America fundamentally different from other countries? Americans who feel puffed up by their nation’s story answer “yes," with the tacit or spoken corollary “and better." Americans uneasy about what America's rise has entailed sometimes answer “no, it's just as bad as other countries," and sometimes “yes, and worse." Non-Americans have their own answers, but few think the question unreasonable.

Merely tracing the outline of the American story makes the case for its importance. The population of the United States in 1776 was about 2.5 million. It grew more than a hundred-fold in the next quarter-millennium. The American economy grew even more rapidly, giving the United States the largest GDP in the world by 1900, a ranking it retained for more than a century and by most measures still holds.

How this growth was accomplished is where the arguing starts. It involved the displacement of peoples living in the middle latitudes of North America. Many died of disease, while most others moved under compulsion to less appealing spots. Proud exceptionalists treat this as inevitable. The critics of exceptionalism call it America's original sin.

Except when they reserve that term for the introduction of African slaves into America. Some of the critics give great weight to slavery in the growth of the American economy. The exceptionalists counter with the oddly anti-exceptionalist argument that every country back then had slavery, so it wasn't a big deal. 

For most of American history, growth of population and of the economy was accompanied by a liberal immigration policy. From colonial times until 1924, the policy opened a door to all comers–other than Chinese after 1882. The immigrants weren’t universally loved. Scots-Irish were disdained by the English. Germans were resented by the Scots-Irish. Irish were damned as the worst of the worst, until Italians and Greeks and Poles and Russians arrived. Yet each group found its niche and each provided brawn, at first, and increasingly brains to the American economy.

America wasn't unique in encouraging immigration. Many countries of the western hemisphere did so, and likewise Australia. But no country ever turned immigration to such positive effect on wealth creation. A cycle of reinforcement set in. Immigrants spurred growth, which created demand for more immigration, which spurred more growth.

Two institutions—democracy and capitalism—emerged amid the growth, shaping it and encouraging more of it. Democracy posited a fundamental equality among Americans. This equality was sometimes honored more in the breach than in the observance, but it promised greater opportunity than the immigrants had experienced elsewhere. Capitalism offered opportunity, too, but here the opportunity was coupled with risk. You might get rich, but you might get poor. Immigrants understood the terms of the bargain–most of them, anyway–and took the chance.

In fact, almost no immigrants became poorer by coming to America. If they didn’t get as rich as John Rockefeller, they were better off than cousin Jan or Giovanni back in the old country. This was the measure that mattered to them.

Until the 20th century the American story and the question of American exceptionalism were largely confined to America. But by the 1940s, the United States was reshaping the world-—for the better, in the view of the exceptionalists, and for the worse, in the eyes of their critics. The former boasted how America defeated the fascists in World War II and the communists in the Cold War. The latter lamented America’s bullying of its hemispheric neighbors and assailed its misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The exceptionalists pointed to the dramatic decline in world poverty under the free-trade system America sponsored. The critics complained of the erosion of American manufacturing and the export of American jobs.

Yet the fact that the argument continued testified to the continuing importance of the American story. The British had once debated their world role, but no longer, for Britain no longer had a world role. America’s moment would pass, too, if the histories of previous hegemons and empires were any guide.

Maybe they weren’t, said the exceptionalists. After all, America is exceptional.

Oh yes they were, said the critics. America isn’t that special.

Time would tell. Probably before another quarter-millennium had passed. But maybe not.