Table of Contents
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
PPT Slide
PPT Slide
“All civilizations rest on myths,
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
SOME FACTORS to CONSIDER:
A “NEW WORLD”
What’s “New”?
ABSENCE OF HISTORY
“Whereas Europe is a land with too much history and not enough geography, America has little history and plenty of geography.”
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER
“Every movement inward was a verge between the advanced European civilization and the stone-age culture of the American Indians, between people and wilderness.”
Frontier Characteristics (ala Frederick Jackson Turner)
CENTRALITY OF IDEAS
“European nations are the products of history and not of philosophy. The United States, unlike any other nation, has been built upon an idea--the idea of liberty.”
The American Creed According to Seymour Martin Lipset contemporary sociologist
AN “AUTOCTHONOUS” PEOPLE
“America’s people come of such diverse heritages of religion, tongue, habit, fatherhood, color and folk song that if America did not exist it would be impossible to imagine that such a gathering of alien strains could ever behave like a nation.”
RELIGOUSLY MANDATED
“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people--the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls.”
Popular Mandates
HISTORICALLY “EXEMPT”
War Dead
THE SOLE WORLD POWER
What is Our National Interest?
What is Our National Interest?
This is Our National Interest:
PPT Slide
The New “Bush Doctrine”
New “Bush Doctrine” continued...
New “Bush Doctrine” continued...
Critique of the “Bush Doctrine”
Super Power as Role Model…?
Abstention from the renewal of the Outer Space Treaty
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
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Author: Michael A. Toth
Email: tothm@pdx.edu
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