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The Nasty Myth of American Exceptionalism
Are we really the world’s most moral, honest, democratic nation?
American Exceptionalism is defined by Sensagent as “American exceptionalism is ”the theory that the United States is different from other countries in that it has a specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy.”
When I was a child, back in the 1960s, I learned that the United States was the world’s economic, moral and military leader. I heard from my parents, my teachers, the news, the newspapers, that the United States was the most generous nation on earth. “The greatest country to ever exist,” I was told, “The best place on earth.”
I was taught that the US paid to rebuild Europe after it was devastated by WWII. For that matter, I grew up believing that the US had joined both world wars out of a sense of duty to our allies, with no thought to our own interests.
I accepted all of it.
I was a white, middle-class American kid. This was what I was told, and this is what I believed.
Then I grew up.
When I was 17 years old, I was an exchange student in Tunisia. I lived with a wonderful, funny, highly educated, devoutly Muslim family. While I had come to their home with a deep belief in the sovereign right of…
