E-Notes: American Exceptionalism… Exposed - 0 views
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exceptionalism, a concept that is not sui generis, not very old, and not even American in conception, has come to serve as code for the American Civil Religion that dare not speak its name.
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far from believing their nation to be an exception to the rules of nature governing other men and nations, they both hoped their example would transform the whole world and feared that a lack of republican virtue would doom their experiment. In neither case would Americans stand apart from the rest of the human race.
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the principal reason to banish the term from historical discourse is that the icky, polysyllabic, Latinate moniker did not even exist until the mid-20th century! No Puritan colonist, no founding Patriot, no Civil War statesman, no 19th century poet, pastor, or propagandist employed the word.
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