A shining city

"Exceptionalism."

In a syndicated column today, Kathleen Parker notes that Obama's State of the Union address omitted "the word" -- the word that, as Parker sees it, will be a rallying call for the Republicans in 2012.

"The word conservatives long to hear."

Parker feels that Obama does believe that America is "exceptional" -- parts of his speech make it clear that he does -- but she wonders why he shies away from pronouncing the actual word. She says that Americans want their president to share their values, and 36 percent fear that Obama does not believe that America is "exceptional." If Obama doesn't like the word as it's now being used, she contends, he had better "take possession of the word," make clear to voters what the word does mean to him in a way that resonates with those voters -- and then make use of it often.

Her advice may be good politics. But I think I understand what President Obama meant when he once said, speaking overseas:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Great answer, I felt, and still feel. Horrible answer, politically, says Parker. Too "Harvard." Too (I gather) tone-deaf, too lacking in patriotic resonance.

Like most of us, I grew up being educated out of text books that were virtual Bibles of exceptionalism. All of world history was but prelude to the settlement of North America, the American Revolution, Manifest Destiny, our triumph in world wars, our bestowing the benefits of capitalism and democracy upon a benighted world, and, ultimately and incidentally, America's deserved and benign world domination. Just as generations of British kids were educated by reading Macaulay, absorbing his optimistic Whig exceptionalism -- the sense that history was the story of the British people's inevitable progress from medieval darkness to their attainment in the nineteenth century (when Britain was deemed close to perfection) of personal freedoms, scientific enlightenment, parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy.

Like Obama, I have no doubt that we have developed certain habits and abilities in this country that are advantageous to us, some of which may be worthy of emulation by others. These traits, together with our enormous historical advantages of isolation from the rest of the world during our formative years and abundance of natural resources and empty land, helped us reach our economic position today. Inheritance of British political and legal traditions and good fortune in the intelligence and wisdom of our nation's founding fathers gave us our political advantages.

These are economic and political advantages that our ancestors fortuitously received, and that we today have fortuitously inherited. They are not grounds for self-congratulations, and they are not signs of our own wisdom, merit or favor with God, as extravagant claims of "exceptionalism" so often suggest.

We have been blessed by God with good fortune (as have other nations), but it's more than presumptious to believe that God has chosen the United States of America as a unique vessel to reveal his plans to the world. We are not a New Israel. We are not a holy nation, a chosen people set apart. And if we are, or ever become, a "shining city on a hill," it will be because we have made some hard decisions and accepted some serious sacrifices in order to be a nation worthy of that descripton. It will not be because that was our Divine Destiny.

And even if attained, being a "shining city on a hill" will never be a permanent status. Nations come and nations go. Empires rise and empires fall. (Ask the British about it.) We are not exempt from the natural flows of history.

In preparation for my trip to Iran, I've been reading books that attempt to explain the mindset of the Iranian people. These books remind us that -- although people everywhere have much in common -- every people does have its own characteristics, its own values, its own hopes and desires. Not every people shares our own aspirations, at least to the same degree that we imagine it does or should do.

We don't always know what's best for ourselves, let alone for others. "Exceptionalism," as it's being bandied about today, assumes that we do. That assumption, in itself, is enough reason to distrust and avoid the word.

The United States has had many advantages, both in its material prosperity and in its history and ideals. We can be satisfied with that, as can many other countries with respect to their own advantages and history. We don't need to insist that we are unique and that our uniqueness somehow lifts us above others or gives us a basis to tell others how to live. As Kathleen Parker notes, in her penultimate paragraph:

We mustn't brag, after all. Great nations don't have to remind others of their greatness. They merely have to be great.

Wise words. I would add only that great nations also don't have to remind themselves repeatedly of their own greatness.