Understanding American Exceptionalism

Half of Americans, compared to one-third of Europeans, say belief in God is essential to living a moral life.

We need a moral revolution in this country.

Yes, all these God-believers are scary:

But the article points out something very important. America is not all about ego and selfishness:

But for American popular culture, the system of self-restraint has broken down due to cultural and technological changes. And now, around the world, "what people see [in our movies and music] is a quite striking distortion" of what America actually is. It is an America of individualism and personal freedom, divorced from the bonds of neighborhood, community, and family. Bayles argued that "we can't reclaim or bring back the self-restraint." There is no political will for censorship, she concluded, but "I wouldn't mind soul-searching among the entertainment industry."

I think that this is a pretty shallow conclusion. The broader truth is that there is deep corruption of fundamental moral values in American culture that is breaking down the fabric of our democracy. There is broad room for people to have their individual "pursuit of happiness" but that's not to say that only good can come out of selfishness. As the article points out we're in a period where America's great blessings are not shared fairly by all who help to create them. We have more billionaires than any other nation on the planet - and more people in prison than any other nation, one fourth of the world's total prisoners, in fact. So is it really a free nation that's creating these benefits today? Or is it the vestiges of a free nation that's swung into totalitarianism for most people while a thin layer of society whoops it up on the top end?

At the end of the day it's not as important to be unique as it is to be doing the right things. I'd be happier if more nations were able to emulate our system effectively. The fact that they cannot do that spontaneously seems to indicate that there may be flaws in our exceptionalism as well. Perhaps we've been the benefactors of some great conditions that we thought were inherent to the goodness of our success which in fact were fairly short-lived circumstances.

I believe that there is indeed a curious and powerful genius to the American system, but I don't see it as an excuse to justify immorality. Excessive greed is immoral. Excessive power over other people's lives is immoral. Excessive exercise of governmental power without the consent of the governed is immoral. These are things which our system of government was in theory designed to countervail, but it does it haphazardly at best sometimes.

PH, do you agree that the problem is the fact that the US is (at least since Reagan) a greedy ME society and NOT a WE society?