Exceptionalism Cont.
Damon Linker of the New Republic has an interesting, intelligent response to the National Review article I linked to recently in defense of American exceptionalism. I particularly liked this remark about President Bush:
Lots of conservatives turned on George W. Bush by the end of his presidency. But here we see that if Bush didn't exist, the right would have had to invent him. His proud parochialism, his simple-minded and insecure suspicion of intelligence, his swaggering self-righteousness€”all of it is the natural expression of contemporary conservatism's outlook on the world.
Couldn't agree more.
National Review has responded to Linker's criticism, as well as other reactions, in this piece. I take exception- pun intended- to this comment about left-wing support of mass transit:
Contrary to our least literate critics, nothing in that passage suggests that we consider subways an infringement on our liberty. Nor does it mean that we are skeptical of mass-transit subsidies because the policy strikes us as European. It means something closer to the opposite: that we suspect that much of the enthusiasm for these subsidies among liberals is based on mass transit's association with Europe.
Emphasis mine. This statement has it exactly wrong. Speaking as a liberal, my enthusiasm for subsidized mass transit comes from the fact that mass transit programs are environmentally sound, reduce dependency on foreign sources of energy, and are typically more efficient in and between urban areas than automobiles. These reasons derive from having empirically observed mass transit systems in action while living in foreign countries, and thus wishing subsidized programs to be implemented in the US.
The NR piece appears to accuse liberals of believing in European exceptionalism, when in fact the opposite is true. The conservative opposition to mass transit exists largely because it is less prevalent in the US than in Europe, and therefore in their twisted ideology must be better.
NR concludes with an absolute whopper of a statement. To wit:
Victor Davis Hanson notes that one reason for American exceptionalism may be that we did not inherit from England "a large underclass of only quasi-free people attached to barons as serfs." Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche.
The shocking part of this sentence? Hanson is actually a professor of history. This remark would embarrass a fifth-grader. But in their effort to keep any contrary evidence from interrupting their precious pet theory of American exceptionalism, NR somehow tries to argue that slavery 'never became part of the national psyche'.
The mind boggles. I realize contemporary conservatives disdain intellectualism, but in publishing this piece shouldn't an even cursory understanding of basic American history be required?
I realize I could probably devote hours of my time to reading mind-numbing right-wing screeds and rebutting them, but I think this question of exceptionalism cuts to the very core of how right-wing and left-wing Americans view our country. And as I've argued earlier, exceptionalism has a central position in contemporary Chinese politics as well.
