Another Round on American Exceptionalism Posted by Michael Cohen

A couple of weeks ago I got into a blog dust-up with one David Rieff about the nature and implications of American exceptionalism. Damon Linker, over at TNR, has drafted the response that I wish I had written at the time:

Despite what one might conclude from the disastrous presidency of that liberal moralist George W. Bush, the imperative to support and encourage liberalism abroad does not necessitate stupidity. On the contrary, it demands intelligence and sobriety about how best to affect liberal change in divergent places at different historical moments. It demands that we temper our longing to fulfill our liberal duties with a clear-headed assessment of the possible unintended consequences of our actions. It demands that we remain forever mindful of the efficacy, as well as the limits, of our power (both hard and soft). It demands, in sum, that we combine grandly idealistic ends with cunningly realistic means, just as Niebuhr called on us to do, and as Lincoln showed us how to do. 

That we have often failed to achieve this synthesis is evidence of human (and American) imperfection as well as of the recalcitrance of a complicated, heartrending world. (Niebuhr thought it was also evidence of original sin, which is possible, though it's equally possible to make sense of tragedy in rigorously secular terms.) The proper response to these failures is redoubled resolution to do better, to be smarter, to choose more efficacious means, in the future. It is most certainly not to give up on the ends, as Rieff appears prepared to do.

This is a very smart way for progressives to talk about exceptionalism and one that highlights the flaw in Rieff's deterministic - and depressing - notion that American exceptionalism has led to terrible excesses in the past  . . . and thus will always lead to terrible excesses in the future. Now to be fair, Rieff does have history on his side; a point that he never ceases to make. But to follow his argument to its apparent conclusion is to believe that the best course of action for the US is simply to vacate the field because in the end we are likely do more harm than good. Certainly this is a legitimate point of view, but it's not terribly helpful or illuminating from a policy perspective (and indeed if there is a policy prescription hiding out in Rieff's recent blog posts perhaps others can help me locate it).

I like Linker's idea a bit more; "redoubled resolution to do better, to be smarter, to choose more efficacious means." Here are a few suggestions on how to achieve Linker's goal. Here are a few others. They are offered with the recognition that Rieff's pessimism is well-founded . . . but then pessimism isn't really a strategy.

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