American exceptionalizm?

[Ben Zimmer]

More on the history of the phrase from Mark Liberman on Language Log today:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3798

I also touched on it in a Word Routes column last year:

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2889/

--bgz


On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Evan Morris wrote:
>
> "American exceptionalism" was a specific "ideological error" that was
> said to flourish in the post-Stalin CPUSA as the legacy of Earl Browder,
> who maintained that the democratic history and culture of the US made a
> Leninist party (and proletarian revolution) unnecessary. It was still
> being debated in those terms in left circles as of the 1970s.
>
> On 02/22/2012 09:32 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> > What's the phrase "American exceptionalism" all about?
> >
> > I do not think it means what we think it means.
> >
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/americanexceptionalism.htm

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