Tag: american exceptionalism

Whether America ever was or is exceptional is a matter for further discussion; but Tocqueville’s own estimate of America in the early nineteenth century was mixed at best and negative at worst. He obviously wished that democracy had produced a more learned and refined culture than it had in America; and he was quick to argue that democracy would likely produce better fruit in better (French?) circumstances.

Livy asserts that shamelessness led to decadence which, in turn, led to greed and eventually devolved into demagoguery and tyranny. His assertion that Roman liberty and equality were destroyed by the decadence of the civil wars and buried with the emergence of the Augustan regime had far reaching influence.

In the afterglow of last weekend's gathering of Porchers, which featured a panel on American exceptionalism, a piece by Walter McDougall over at the...

Do you love America? If so, how much? Do you wear an American flag on your lapel (and look askance on those who don’t)?...

Kearneysville, WV. As this election cycle grinds on, and as Washington prepares for CPAC's 2012 event, each Republican candidate continues to claim that he...

A response to Joe Carter from flyover country.

If you are planning to run for president, here’s a word of advice: you must assert regularly and with great conviction your belief in...

Conservatives are awfully fond of referring to America as a “city upon a hill;” it would be a wonderful thing if they actually made...

The gloom and doom is contagious. We live in a time when a certain respectability seems to attach to those who predict the demise of America, freedom, prosperity, or even the world.

Americans do not need a Messiah because this nation is not Heaven on Earth.