THE CITY ON THE MARCH:

The Priggish View of History (AndreI Cherny, March 31, 2008, NY Sun)

Accepting the Republican nomination for president in 1988, George H.W. Bush decried those who see "America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe." In doing so, he spoke to an intrinsic belief in the America's national culture that ours is a unique nation with a special role in the world, "a shining city on the hill," a chosen people among the world's states. Yet, during his son's presidency, an opposing view has taken hold among vocal commentators and academics — left, right, and center — who hold America to be just another domineering empire in the roll call of human history.

Walter MacDougall has a more insightful analysis of the competing strands of American exceptionalism that Bush and Bush represent. The elder was a sort of Promised Land type, a realist/isolationist concerned that America could be corrupted by too much contact with "lesser" nations (not that it stopped him from intervening in Kuwait, Panama, Somalia, etc., as reality always turns out differently than Reality). The younger is a Crusader State type, open to trade, immigration and democratization abroad, convinced that it is our duty to make the world more like us. The critics are right that we're a sort of domineering empire, but not "Just another" one, rather a successor to the Roman and British.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 31, 2008 7:45 AM