In the Wall Street Journal James Freeman pushes back against the notion that the United States is not exception:
In the scene from a show called “The Newsroom,” Mr. Daniels is wittingly or unwittingly portraying a self-important and semi-informed media personage. His character dismisses the idea that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world and argues that freedom doesn’t particularly distinguish the U.S. He quickly rattles off an extensive list of other countries where people also enjoy freedom.
What he does not mention is that in every single one of the countries on his list, free people enjoy the protection of the American defense umbrella. The smug character then goes on to make the preposterous suggestion that roughly 180 countries in the world are free, as if it’s the natural state of things and not a blessing paid for with the blood of Americans and other brave people over many generations.
Of course there have also been enormous financial bills to pay. In only one country did free people build an economy large enough to fund the worldwide defense of liberty for decades. This exceptional and indispensable quality of America underlines why the financial health of the U.S. is also indispensable. There is no backstop for us. It’s essential that U.S. government spending is reduced and put on a path toward budget balance not just for Americans but because a collapse of the United States would be uniquely catastrophic for the world. Search history and it’s hard to find happy endings for governments that took on so much debt that interest payments rose above defense spending, as has recently occurred in the U.S.
I think he is actually pushing back on the notion that the United States is not, in Madeleine Albright’s felicitous phrase, “the indispensable nation”. While I think that, technically, our European allies are now capable of defending themselves, I seriously doubt that they can do so without a sharp reduction in their standards of living. More on this subject later.
In living memory only four major powers, by which I mean countries that are capable of projecting power, have had strategic self-sufficiency: the United States, Russia, China, and India. Of those only one has combined strategic self-sufficiency with the absence of persistent, society-wide structural poverty. Unlike Russia, China, and India, the United States has never been structurally poor despite episodes of hardship during recessions.
In that sense, if in no other, the United States is, indeed, exceptional.
Look at the broad sweep of history. In the aftermath of two global conflagrations, the United States helped devise a global system where all peoples should have a say in their futures. That all people should have access to the fruit of modern industry and commerce.
More than that, though. That the United States wouldn’t be an empire, but first among equals. And first only by dent of effort and of commitment to allies with like-minded peoples around the world, leaders because people willingly follow.
It was inevitable that the world would grow up. Now, representative government and trade are spread widely. It was inevitable that the United States would decline relative to the rest of the world, even as it grew more prosperous. That’s what happens. The children grow strong and are no longer children, and they claim the right as adults to control their own destinies.
This inevitability means the United States could and should gracefully adjust to the new world, surrounded by friends and family. Or it could thrash and wail against the world and insist that they are number one—just ’cause they’re big.
Sure, threaten to invade Greenland, a land populated mostly by indigenous people, a country under the protection of America’s sworn ally, Denmark, who had recently fought and died for America after America was attacked. Sure, be seen having masked agents grab refugees off the street. Sure, threaten allies with punishing tariffs while cozying up to autocratic regimes.
Anyway, America chose the second course, thrashing and wailing. In this way, America is not exceptional, but very ordinary.
But America has always been a story of rebirth. Let America Be America Again.