Happy Birthday, America!

An article about American Exceptionalism by Kim Holmes on The Daily Signal (Sept. 28, 2020):

Why American Exceptionalism Is Different From Other Countries’ ‘Nationalisms’

Mobs are toppling statues of American heroes. America and America’s past are on trial. People are protesting and rioting over the very ideas of what America stands for.

The future of the country depends on what Americans do next.

It depends on how Americans answer some direct, but not so simple, questions: Who are we as Americans? What does it mean to be American?

The Meaning of the American Founding

To answer these questions, we have to start with the American founding. It gave America its ethos, its characteristic spirit and culture.

The American ethos has a firm philosophical foundation. It comprises a set of philosophical ideas on which the American Founders relied to create the system of government that we enjoy to this day.

The Founders had a very distinct idea of the moral order. They believed that morality and government should be in accordance with what they called “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Natural law is universal and thus morally binding on all mankind.

Since natural law was universal, to go against it was to go against human nature itself. The purpose or “end state” of nature was what the Founders broadly understood as happiness, and in order to be truly happy, one had to be good. Happiness was understood as living a virtuous life.

Washington, Adams, and other Founders said repeatedly that freedom could not be enjoyed without virtue. Without it, one would get nothing but tyranny based on power and selfishness. Governments must be instituted to protect the natural rights and liberties of their people.

This is where the idea of limited government comes from. Governments must be limited, and their powers constitutionally enumerated, as they are in the Constitution, to protect liberties and rights.

That’s why the Founders used checks and balances in government—to stave off tyranny.

Also key is the American idea of equality before the law. They did not think about social equality as we often do today, where everyone is supposed to be equal in income and in social status. The Founders assumed that individuals had different talents and opportunities, and wanted to ensure that, to the extent possible, the law treated everyone equally.

What, Then, Is American Exceptionalism?

That brings me to the idea of American exceptionalism, which is, I believe, the answer to the question of what America’s national identity is and should remain.

It’s grounded in America’s founding principles: natural law, liberty, limited government, individual rights, the checks and balances of government, popular sovereignty, the civilizing role of religion in society, and the crucial role of civil society and civil institutions in grounding and mediating our democracy and our freedom.

We as Americans believe these principles are right and true for all peoples, not just for us.

But if the principles are universal, how are Americans different? How are we exceptional?

We believe that Americans are different because our creed is both universal and exceptional at the same time. We are exceptional in the unique way we apply these universal principles.

There is no other country in the world that embodied the blend of classical philosophy, Christianity, and even Enlightenment ideas in the unique way America did in the founding of the republic from 1776 to 1789. It was an exceptional (meaning uncommon) mix of liberty, limited government, natural rights, and religious liberty that made the American founding unique. [read more]