American exceptionalizm?

[Dan Goncharoff]

Doesn't the phrase go back to Frederick Turner? GB only gives an unclear
snippet, but I vaguely recall it.
DanG


On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: American exceptionalizm?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If Commies feared it, it must be good, Also, since they were materialists,
> it must be real.
>
> QED.
>
> Nuances ad lib.
>
> I can recall grad-student lefties of the '80s denouncing the "myth of
> American exceptionalism" in the current sense of "American moral,
> intellectual, ideological, theological, cultural, and political superiority
> to all." (I think that's when it became popular - "Shining City on the
> Hill," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah....)
>
> Historians, as I understand it, use the phrase to encapsulate the idea that
> U.S. history (successful, long-shot revolution against the top world power,
> democratic constitution framed by political philosophers, big
> contradiction/hypocrisy/sin of chattel slavery, westward push, Civil War,
> robber barons, business growth, world wars and superpower prominence)
> really does make the U.S. different from, say, tiny Albania.
>
> However, the historians' concept often subsumes the public faith in the
> excellences listed above.
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> wrote=
> :
>
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> > Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: American exceptionalizm?
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
> >
> > On Feb 22, 2012, at 7:20 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
> >
> > > Essentially the phrase simply means "the uniqueness of America."
> >
> > well, yes, but ...
> >
> > some good discussion in the latest issue of Daedalus, "On the American
> > Narrative", especially:
> >
> > New York University history Professor David Levering Lewis, in
> > =93Exceptionalism=92s Exceptions: The Changing American Narrative,=94
> tra=
> ces the
> > history of American exceptionalism =93from high-flown political science
> > theory=85to ideological boilerplate=94
> >
> > and in =93The American Mythos,=94 by Jay Parini, Middlebury College
> >
> > arnold
> >
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