Do you believe in American Exceptionalism?

[ringil]

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

 

[Tzimisce]

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

I think posting inflammatory statements just because you’re entertained by picking fights is sinful.

I think the Knights of Columbus would be better off without someone who’s driven by empty hubris and self righteousness.

 

[ringil]

I think posting inflammatory statements just because you’re entertained by picking fights is sinful.

I think the Knights of Columbus would be better off without someone who’s driven by empty hubris and self righteousness.

Excuse me?

This is a very uncharitable post.

 

[Tzimisce]

Excuse me?

This is a very uncharitable post.

You wanted a fight.

You got it.

 

[DAML72]

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

I do not believe in American Exceptionalism. That said, I do believe that the Constitution and the establishment of this country was led by the hand of God. We’ve just messed it up - badly.

 

[PazzoGrande]

I don’t see this as inflammatory in the slightest, as another user whose post was deleted said, though I can see how Americans might be offended by it in how the patriotic culture is so prevalent that anyone speaking ill of the country would be treated like they’re terroristic.

I do not believe that there is anything especially divine about the United States. God had an impact in creating this country as as little or as much as He did with other countries, for all we know.

I see the US as the new Roman Empire. It was big, wealthy, powerful, etc. but we do not think that Rome before Christianity was tolerated had been a specially divine empire. Romans thought that of themselves, for sure, but it’s that patriotism that’s dangerous.

In the US, patriotism has become a form of idolatry. This is why. When people complain about the Catholic Church, they go on and on about how it’s unfair to women, how medieval it is, how corrupt it is, etc. Yet meanwhile, Americans do not condemn their country the way they do the Catholic Church. The US has done a lot of bad things: slavery, white men voting only, taking the Native Americans’ land, secret war in Cambodia. To this day, women make 75% of what a man makes. Americans tolerate their country and want to work to make it better, giving past faults understanding as ways of the previous times.

Yet the Catholic Church? It’s condemned for anything and everything. Most Catholics don’t give a rip about contributing to their community of Catholicism, while they’re willing to do a lot in the name of patriotism. There are more lapsed Catholics than there are churchgoers, at least when you get down to my generation.We live in an insane age where the simple act of going to Sunday Mass – the absolute bare minimum – suddenly makes you “religious.”

Give to God what is God’s. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But people replaced their God with Caesar. They’ll equate all religions as the same, yet they’ll never equate their country as the same as other countries. It’s nuts. The priorities are bizarre. If you believe the US is superior then that’s fine, but to do it without giving any of the same benefit to Christianity is just stupid.

I was very patriotic and political when I was young. But then I lived in another country for a while and I got a more objective view of the US. To me too, it’s just a country. It happens to be rich and powerful, which is nice. I don’t have to point it out on a map, everyone knows it. My passport can get me wherever I wanna go. Those are all nice perks. But if another country were in its spot and had those perks, it wouldn’t be any more or less divine. I mean, is there a single powerful country in the world which hasn’t gone secular that does not think their country is divine? The Russians think it. The British used to think it too before they drifted toward irreligiousness. I’d imagine the same goes for the French.

I’ll pay my taxes and obey the law, but the US will never, ever, ever come close to being the Church to me.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t be patriotic. Patriotism is fine. But keep it in check. This will not apply for most readers of this forum, who are generally active Catholics. But I think we cannot deny that the general Catholic population in this country does care more about the US than it does about God and the Church.

I do have more thoughts on it but I’ll refrain from posting it up here, lest it causes offence. But live in another country for a while and it’ll really open your eyes to see beyond what your own home culture presumes everyone should feel.

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think it depends on what one means by “exceptionalism”.

I think America was (and to some extent still is) “exceptional” in encouraging others to come in and share the benefits of the country; much more so than other nations. Yes, some grouse about it, but there’s really no significant move to toss them out.

I think America was “exceptional”, in not seizing an empire when it could have easily done so and still could. Yes, we did keep the Philippines for a time, but voluntarily left. Yes, we did bite off chunks of land that Mexico claimed but mostly never actually occupied. Much of that was just lines on old Spanish maps enclosing spaces where nobody dared to go but American settlers. There were rich silver mines in northern Mexico that we could have easily taken, but didn’t.

Yes, there was seizure of Indian lands. But that was in an era when it wasn’t considered out of the way by anyone to “put proper use” to land that was thinly occupied by primitive peoples; peoples who, themselves, never hesitated to “ethnically cleanse” areas they wanted and did so incessantly.

Yes, there were those after the Civil War who thought to annex Canada. We could have done it then, and for long afterward, but didn’t.

We could have seized Kuwait and the Emirates, driven the occupants into the desert and pumped the oil dry. Still could, but we didn’t.

We don’t covet an Alsace-Lorraine or an East Prussia or a Crimea. We did conquer all of western Europe once; an astonishingly prosperous land, and let it go. We’re not trying to forge a “caliphate” or a “new Persian Empire” or anything resembling that.

Within my memory, one of the states in Northern Mexico likely would have left Mexico and joined the U.S. if we would allow it. But we didn’t. There was a time within my memory when there was a serious secessionist movement in Saskatchewan, but we didn’t encourage it.

In today’s world, and for a very long time prior, that picture has been “exceptional”.

I have cousins who, because of their lineage, have certain proprietary rights in a huge estate in Germany. They’re not Germans in anything but geneology, but those rights, which are rights of nobility, still adhere. Europe is full of that sort of thing. But not here.
Privilege we have, and no question about it. But privilege in this country “churns”. That’s not true everywhere. And that I consider “exceptional” as well.

 

[TK421]

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

Through the eyes of Magisterial teaching, I think there was probably a time window where the United States, even being a protestant nation, was closer to God than any other region on the planet, but whenever that may have been, I don’t think it is present anymore. I think S. Korea, and an increasing handful of other places are more in line with fulfilling God’s instituted mission to mankind. Success has a way of corrupting the soul of a nation.

 

[PazzoGrande]

I think the Philippines, S. Korea, and probably a handful of other places are more virtuous.
.

As someone who lived in the Philippines got a couple years, I gotta say you’re right about that.

 

[PazzoGrande]

I think America was “exceptional”, in not seizing an empire when it could have easily done so and still could.

Good point, but I think it’s generally understood that the way to have an empire now isn’t by annexation but by economic and political influence. China likewise is a powerhouse because of its economy, and not by taking any other country over.

The US in that sense is an empire. It is the most powerful in the world, even though it may not be the largest and didn’t annex like Hitler left and right.

Whether it seized this sort of empire status, I think we can say yes, in some instances. It’s a craftier kind of empire for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

 

[Nelka]

I do believe that the Constitution and the establishment of this country was led by the hand of God.

No chance!

:nope:

 

[Robert_Sock]

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

This life is ever so short, and earthly dominance is nothing in God’s eyes. I have to wonder where all the people who starved to death at the hands of extreme poverty will be in the Hereafter. I’m rooting for them! The story of Lazarus comes to mind here, and all who are in America are like the rich man.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The story of Lazarus comes to mind here, and all who are in America are like the rich man.

Having seen some of your posts in other threads, i don’t doubt you believe this sincerely. But there were certainly people in the bible who were pretty well off yet Jesus did not condemn them for it.

And there are people in America who don’t have two nickels to rub together, though hardly as “poor” as a Haitian slum dweller.

Before getting just too condemnatory, too, one has to realize that “all who are in America” don’t control what the nation does. Much depends on who the leaders are and what they do on behalf of the country. One could, for example, argue that instead of invading Afghanistan, we should have invaded Haiti and ruled it for decades in order to bring about some semblance of justice. But we didn’t.

We now have a leader who thinks (or purports to think) the best cures for poverty are contraception and abortion. But he’ll be in office for another four + years no matter how much I disapprove of this way of thinking.

Beyond that, it’s a matter of what an individual does in the way of charitable works. But nothing requires us to reduce our families to poverty in doing so.

 

[twf]

I do not believe in American Exceptionalism. That said, I do believe that the Constitution and the establishment of this country was led by the hand of God. We’ve just messed it up - badly.

God guided the establishment of a nation where Blacks would be enslaved and Catholics second-class citizens? God endorsed the unlawful armed rebellion against a king? (St. Paul commanded the early Christians to obey the Emperor - and I find it hard to believe that King George was worse than the pagan Emperors of Rome). That being said - what is done is done, and I do think there have been many great aspects of America and American history.

 

[balto]

A couple of years ago I used to believe very strongly in American exceptionalism. Actually, I was turning into one of those conservative libertarian, U-S-A, U-S-A types. Fortunately, God had His way of getting to me through people in my life which led me back to the Catholic Church when I started to attempt to take Catholicism more seriously. Although I still consider myself a conservative, that flows from my being Catholic and not being an American. I concur with some of the earlier posters that said that America may have been a virtuous country at some point, but like all fallible institutions it is becoming corrupt.

In the US, patriotism has become a form of idolatry. This is why. When people complain about the Catholic Church, they go on and on about how it’s unfair to women, how medieval it is, how corrupt it is, etc. Yet meanwhile, Americans do not condemn their country the way they do the Catholic Church. The US has done a lot of bad things: slavery, white men voting only, taking the Native Americans’ land, secret war in Cambodia. To this day, women make 75% of what a man makes. Americans tolerate their country and want to work to make it better, giving past faults understanding as ways of the previous times.

Yet the Catholic Church? It’s condemned for anything and everything. Most Catholics don’t give a rip about contributing to their community of Catholicism, while they’re willing to do a lot in the name of patriotism. There are more lapsed Catholics than there are churchgoers, at least when you get down to my generation.We live in an insane age where the simple act of going to Sunday Mass – the absolute bare minimum – suddenly makes you “religious.”

Give to God what is God’s. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But people replaced their God with Caesar. They’ll equate all religions as the same, yet they’ll never equate their country as the same as other countries. It’s nuts. The priorities are bizarre. If you believe the US is superior then that’s fine, but to do it without giving any of the same benefit to Christianity is just stupid.

Yeah, a couple of years ago I would have never agreed with what you wrote here, but now I kind of do agree with you. Looking back I realized that I was treating America with the kind of respect that is owed to a truly infallible institution, namely the Catholic Church. A lot of the things you mentioned are examples of this. Yeah, I realized that it doesn’t make sense to apply all of this to a country but not a Church that was supposedly founded by God Himself.

 

[balto]

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

Well I have been a member of the KofC for 5 and a half years now and don’t think that we ever had to acknowledge that the Constitution was divinely inspired. There are definitely patriotic aspects to the KofC, but as far as I remember it just has to do with loyalty to your country, which doesn’t seem like something that you would take issue with based on your OP. Maybe the closest it comes to is acknowledging that some parts of America’s founding are Judeo-Christian in origin. The KofC is an international organization with councils in several countries outside of the U.S. so American-specific oaths would not really make sense in that context. And the Fourth Degree is also optional anyway. I never took it myself since I don’t want the added responsibilities at the moment.

 

[Sarcelle]

I do not.

I am patriotic to a certain degree and I love the US because it is my home and because of certain aspects of it’s history and ethos. At the same time I don’t believe there is anything qualitatively different about the US versus other nations. I don’t believe that God had any special hand in the creation of the US- except to the same degree as He has his hand in all human endeavors.

I suppose this question has come up for me as I am considering joining the Knights of Columbus and I understand that part of their oath- at least of the Fourth Degree has to do with a kind of acknowledgment of a divine aspect to our Constitution.

I have heard Justice Anton Scalia express this before as a belief that God was somehow working in a special and specific way in the creation of our Constitution.

I don’t agree with this. I see it as just another Constitution with it’s own strengths and weaknesses- the same as the US.

In short the US is a great nation but no more great or less great than any other nation. It happens to be my home.

What do others think?

Neither do I.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Having seen some of your posts in other threads, i don’t doubt you believe this sincerely. But there were certainly people in the bible who were pretty well off yet Jesus did not condemn them for it.

And there are people in America who don’t have two nickels to rub together, though hardly as “poor” as a Haitian slum dweller.

Before getting just too condemnatory, too, one has to realize that “all who are in America” don’t control what the nation does. Much depends on who the leaders are and what they do on behalf of the country. One could, for example, argue that instead of invading Afghanistan, we should have invaded Haiti and ruled it for decades in order to bring about some semblance of justice. But we didn’t.

We now have a leader who thinks (or purports to think) the best cures for poverty are contraception and abortion. But he’ll be in office for another four + years no matter how much I disapprove of this way of thinking.

Beyond that, it’s a matter of what an individual does in the way of charitable works. But nothing requires us to reduce our families to poverty in doing so.

I really did not mean what I said about America to apply to each and every of its citizens. Such would be very foolish, indeed. It’s the general contrast between the life of most Americans to those who starve to death due to extreme poverty, that I wanted to convey. Too often we fall into the gross error in thinking that God has blessed us so much that He must somehow love us more than those under the heavy burden of poverty.

LOVE!

 

[buffalo]

I believe in American exceptionalism:

LAND OF MARY IMMACULATE

George Washington’s Vision

 

[Ridgerunner]

God guided the establishment of a nation where Blacks would be enslaved and Catholics second-class citizens? God endorsed the unlawful armed rebellion against a king? (St. Paul commanded the early Christians to obey the Emperor - and I find it hard to believe that King George was worse than the pagan Emperors of Rome). That being said - what is done is done, and I do think there have been many great aspects of America and American history.

I expect King George was better than some Roman emperors and worse than some. But the American Revolution was a rather 'exceptional" thing in certain respects. First of all, it was, among the elites at least, a revolution based on very humane ideals about human rights (yes, I know, slavery didn’t fit). Not many revolutions were like that. But it was also “exceptional” in that the revolutionary people were greatly more wealthy individually than the ruling people. At the time of the American Revolution, Americans were the wealthiest people, per capita, on earth; much wealthier than the average Brit in Britain. That was largely because of the relatively easy acquisition of land in America versus the almost impossibility of acquisition elsewhere.

There were reasons why that was so. Aristocrats owned virtually all the land in Europe and everyone else was a hired tender of it or a servitor subject to corvee. In America there was so much land, and so much of it that could be won not by money or inheritance or influence at Court, but by one’s labor and derring-do.

But that also helped engender an attitude that served rather well, and still tends to do so. Specifically, that people who have the freedom to act in their own interests within reason will do so to their own benefit and to the general benefit. And, as the first pioneer who created a prosperous farm out of a howling wilderness saw his neighbor do the same thing, it was fine with him, enriching the whole countryside. The earlier pioneer welcomed rather than resented the latecomer. Americans were unusual in believing that economics is not a “zero sum game” in which for one person to gain another has to lose, requiring that power guarantee that some would lose and some would win. That’s how it was in England at the time of the Revolution, and for a long time afterward. But that’s not how it was in America. All could gain.

And that, as well as the open spaces, inspired Americans to welcome sharers; something America did back in the revolutionary days and still does. Nobody on earth does that to any great degree. History records that even some of the Hessians didn’t bother to return to Germany and hacked out their own places in the wilderness, and were welcome to do it.

One quick story and then I’ll quit. After the Civil War there were a lot of penniless young men who went west. A lot of them became cowboys, and nobody was poorer than a cowboy. And being a cowboy was a hard, dangerous life.

Now, in Britain at the time, if you were a poor man and were found with a cow you obviously could not have afforded to buy, you would hang for it, as it was assumed you had stolen it from a nearby person of greater wealth. In America, if you took a branded cow or a calf with an obvious, branded, mother, you could also hang. But there was a difference. Every cowboy carried his own private branding iron. If he saw an animal older than two years old with no brand, it meant the generosity of the land and the difficulty of establishing another’s ownership in that place had blessed him. If he could rope it and brand it, it was his, no matter what. And some men built sizeable herds and bought ranches and prospered with a start no better than that.

Finally, if one reads the Social Encyclicals, one finds all Popes from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Benedict advocating the widespread ability of individuals and families to acquire productive, inheritable assets. However few read those Encyclicals, and however much the current government loves dependency, America is almost unique in having espoused, from the outset, the very same idea expressed by Pope Leo XIII and his successors.

And that really is exceptional.