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There Really Is an Exceptional Nation

Britain impressed the hell out of me a couple years ago when Parliament refused to go along with the Nobel-peace-prize-winning president in sending troops to Syria, to add it to the post-9/11 casualty list of destroyed countries.

But this recent move of theirs to withdraw from the European Union! It certainly made me appreciate Britain as the Exceptional Nation. As luck would have it, I had been reading books by Madame de Staël [*], written during the Napoleonic era. She too praised Britain as the exceptional nation, not that she used that exact phrase. 

The pre-Brexit polls showing the opposite result look a little fishy, to say the least. Oh, but we don't want to give into conspiracy theories!

How many Americans are feeling the irony and significance of these two recent moves by the Exceptional Nation of Britain? We were all by brainwashed by the government's schools that Americans were 10 feet tall, and that:
  • we had courageously broken away from the evil empire of the British king, George III; a president is better than a king,
  • democracies never start wars,
  • we were always the Good Guys in wars, and that we always won our wars,
  • Congress is the essence of self-government,
  • we were heroic, risk-taking pioneers and entrepreneurs.

How threadbare this myth has turned out to be!

[*] See her free books on Gutenberg.org and elsewhere. What a remarkable story is her life.

Comments

Ed said…
I think the American Dream/Myth has become threadbare because of the Presidents that we have had, particularly in recent years. Great Britain went through some of those kinds of years for the same reasons.

Since 'we' are such an Exceptional nation (or were) we never learn from the mistakes of other nations. We need to make the same mistakes and learn the hard way. Much like the British there will come an awaking but it may take a generation - or two.

Well, that is unusually optimistic. (grin)