Our Founder believes that American Exceptionalism is the most important and most positive aspect that differentiates America from the rest of the world; that it is worth the effort and the sacrifice to defend it.
Following are excerpts from the Wikipedia definition of American Exceptionalism:
American exceptionalism, a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, has been historically referred to as the perception that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, and distinctive political and religious institutions.
American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom. It is close to the Manifest Destiny, a term used by Jackson Democrats in the 1840s to promote the annexation of much of what is now the Western United States (the Oregon Territory, the Texas Annexation, and the Mexican Cession). The term was then used in the 1890s by Republicans as a theoretical justification for U.S. expansion outside of North America.
Political science defines it as presence of unique traits in the United States, such as a tradition of anti-authoritarianism, individualism, a high regard for work and private enterprise, the failure of socialist parties, the geographical separation of the Americas from the rest of the world, and high levels of religious influence, particularly protestant Christianity, that do not correlate with national characteristics in either the similarly developed nations of Western Europe and Scandinavia, in Latin America or in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Some United States citizens loosely use the term to indicate a moral superiority of Americans, while others use it to refer to the American concept as itself an exceptional ideal, which may or may not always be upheld by the actual people and government of the nation. Researchers and academics, however, generally use the term to strictly mean sharp and measurable differences in public opinion and political behavior between Americans and their counterparts in other developed democracies. Americans are far more religious than Europeans, for example, and more likely to actively engage in politics. Repeated surveys also show that Americans are more likely to agree that "with hard work, one can get ahead." The concept is thus presented not as expression of ideals, but as a set of measurable political facts.
Causes in their historical context
Supporters of American exceptionalism often describe the term as referring to a popularized cultural mythos that delivers a benevolent explanation for why and how American society succeeded. In essence it claims that a "deliberate choice" of "freedom over tyranny" was properly made, and this was the central reason for why American society developed "successfully."
Puritan Roots
The earliest ideologies of English colonists in the country were the protestants of the Puritan settlers of New England. Many Puritans with Arminian leanings embraced a middle ground between strict predestination and a looser theology of Divine Providence. They believed God had made a covenant with their people and had chosen them to lead the other nations of the earth. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, expressed this idea with the metaphor of a "City on a Hill" - that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the world. His metaphor is often used by proponents of exceptionalism.
Although the Puritan worldview of New England itself changed dramatically, and although different Protestant traditions were strong in the Middle Colonies and the South, the Puritans' deep moralistic values remained part of the national identity for centuries and arguably remain so today. Although American exceptionalism is now primarily secular in nature, a portion of it stems from America's Puritan roots. The Religious Right, including evangelical and fundamentalist groups that have a heritage similar to Puritanism, currently are major proponents of exceptionalism.
The American Revolution and Republicanism
Another event often cited as a milestone in the history of American Exceptionalism is the American Revolution. The intellectuals of the Revolution (Thomas Paine's Common Sense is the best example) for the first time expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land, a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity that was being abused by the British mother country they had outgrown. These sentiments laid the intellectual foundations for the Revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism and was closely tied to republicanism, the belief that sovereignty belonged to the people, not to a hereditary ruling class.
Immigration and the availability of resources
Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States during a time of unprecedented growth. The United States was often seen as exceptional because of unlimited immigration policies and the vast resources of land and land incentivization programs during much of the 19th century. Even though those programs are for the most part in the distant past, popular attitudes within the United States often link patriotism and nationalism to them; many hold the view that the country is unique today because of what was done back then.
The Cold War
American exceptionalism during the Cold War was often cast by the mass media as the American Way of Life personifying liberty engaged in a battle with tyranny as represented by communism. These attributions made use of the residual sentiment that had originally formed to differentiate the United States from the 19th century European powers and had been applied multiple times in multiple contexts before it was used to differentiate capitalist democracies (with the United States as a leader) from communist nations.
Aspects of arguments for American exceptionalism
Those who believe in American exceptionalism argue that there are many ways that the United States clearly differs from the European world from which it emerged, as well as other countries in the globe.
Republican ethos and ideas about nationhood
Proponents of American exceptionalism argue that the United States is unique in that it was founded on a set of republican ideals, rather than on a common heritage, ethnicity, or ruling elite. In the formulation of President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, America is a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". In this view, being American is inextricably connected with loving and defending freedom and equal opportunity. As such, America has often acted to promote these ideals abroad, most notably in the First and Second World Wars and in the Cold War. Critics argue that American policy in these conflicts was more motivated by economic or military self-interest than an actual desire to spread these ideals. Indeed the United States is by no means the only country founded as a republic with such ideals -although it was perhaps the first such country: Brazil and the French republic are examples.
The United States's polities have been characterized since their inception by a system of federalism and checks and balances, which were designed to prevent any person, faction, region, or government organ from becoming too powerful. Some American exceptionalists argue that this system and the accompanying distrust of concentrated power prevent the United States from suffering a "tyranny of the majority", and also that it allows citizens to live in a locality whose laws reflect that citizen's values. A consequence of this political system is that laws can vary greatly across the country. Critics of American exceptionalism maintain that this system merely replaces the power of the national majority over states with power by the states over local entities. On balance, the American political system arguably allows more local dominance but prevents more national dominance than does a more unitary system.
Frontier spirit
Proponents of American exceptionalism often claim that the "American spirit" or the "American identity" was created at the frontier (following Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis), where rugged and untamed conditions gave birth to American national vitality. Other nations that had long frontiers--such as Russia, Canada and Australia, did not allow individualistic pioneers to settle there, and did not experience the same psychological and cultural impact.
The American Revolution
The American Revolutionary War is the claimed ideological territory of "exceptionalists". The intellectuals of the Revolution, such as Thomas Paine, arguably shaped America into a nation fundamentally different from its European ancestry, creating modern constitutional republicanism as we know it.
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