This posting was delayed from last night due to lack of access to the ATT Server
How do you spell exceptionism?
Tonight I read an article by historian Bernard Weisberger called Taking Exception to Exceptionalism. He was focused on President Obama’s speech last Tuesday to the nation on the crisis in Syria. The president proclaimed near the end of his speech that we could act alone in bombing Syria because “That’s what makes America different,” said the president. “That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.”
The doctrine of “exceptionalism” is one that Republicans and Democrats embrace and has lead to war and violence around the world. At home here I see no evidence of American’s exceptionalism. In every major western country I know about each citizen has a ‘right to health care” and a “right to education”. In the USA we must pay dearly for our health and profit is made on our illnesses. Education is the USA is become more and more out of the financial reach of most Americans. As the per student expense spent in Milwaukee Public School system and a good education is more and more out of the reach and only Milwaukee Public Schools suffers from a ‘failure rate’ in school districts in Wisconsin.
Does ‘exceptionalism’ mean that as our culture of violence increases we refuse to look at the cause of crime? We arrest more and more persons and fail to heed what our Republican governor’s commission said in 90’s: “Prisoners and Prisons are bound to grow as long as the root cause of crime—poverty, lack of education and lack of family support—go unaddressed.”
We Americans are not ‘exceptional”. We did not invent democracy and I have a hard time saying our elections are truly democratic. Censorship, neglect of basic human rights, segregation, the high homicide rate, the top 400 persons earning more money than the value of the entire economy of Russia are not signs of exceptionalism but of greed and pride. I too take exception to exceptionalism.
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