American Exceptionalism

Throughout History there have been countries and individual leaders who have considered themselves 'Exceptional'.  They have tried to change the world to better reflect their image of themselves. 

In our age it is America's turn in the barrel. For being in the barrel is where the self-accolade of 'Exceptional' most often leads.

Japan in recent history considered its 'race' superior to all others. A massive defeat after its attempt to impose that self-declared superiority, saw the Emperor forced to broadcast that he was not in fact the son of a god and the japanese were not any higher up the food chain than anyone else.

The Japanese had competion from Germany at the time. Supposed allies, the Arayan 'Volk' were convinced by a murderous meglomaniac that they should rule the world, because, well, they were blond and had blue eyes. and could run entire phrases together into one word.  A nation of shopkeepers stood alone against that idea until they could garner some help from others.

Both Japan and Germany had ideas about a New World Order. Hah !

( As an aside, and not many people know this, Japan and Germany had a plan for Oz. As this great brown land is closer to Japan and they had a Rising Sun on their flag, the Emporor was going to get the Sunshine State and all the rest attached on the Big Island, and Germany would take Tasmania for their bit of Southern Hemisphere Reich.)

We could not muster that sized crowd in Tas even today !!

One can continue going back and back, taking in even the more benign Empires like the British who ruled a third of the world at one point and considered that there were just two sorts of people: Englishmen and Furriners.

Some, older Englishmen still harbour a sense of exceptionalism. I put my hand up. People revolt ! 

Now the world is again facing a revolt. It is both from outside the claimant nation and within.

Wiki describes American Exceptionalism thus: 

American exceptionalism is one of three related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States is inherently different from other nations. In this view, American exceptionalism stems from its emergence from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation" and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy and laissez-faire for business. This ideology itself is often referred to as "American exceptionalism." 

Second is the idea that the US has a unique mission to transform the world. As Abraham Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg address(1863), Americans have a duty to see that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

Third is the sense that its history and its mission give the United States a superiority over other nations.

Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the U.S. is like the biblical "City upon a Hill" —a phrase evoked by British colonists to North America as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries. The theme of exceptionalism is a common target for attacks from liberals and groups that adhere to Democrat ideologies.

Hmmmm. I think Wiki is affected by editors from the liberal persuasion.  

The theory of the exceptionalism of the U.S. can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the country as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840.

American uniqueness as a nation has been proposed by many writers. Historian Dorothy Ross discusses three major currents in the emerging post-war thinking around American exceptionalism:

1. Protestant American Christians believed American progress would lead to the Christian Millennium.

2. American writers also linked their history to the development of liberty in Anglo-Saxon England, even back to the traditions of the Teutonic tribes that conquered the western Roman empire.

3. Other American writers looked to the "millennial newness" of America, seeing the mass of "virgin land" promised an escape from the decay that befell earlier republics.

Riding with the rest of the nation on the wave of post-depression prosperity, academics in the U.S. redefined American exceptionalism as befitting a nation that was to lead the world, with the newer United States ready to serve the older European societies as an example of a country liberated and free from Marxist and socialist destinies. More recently, socialists and other writers have tried to discover or describe this exceptionalism of the U.S. within and outside its borders.

Does anyone see what is going wrong here? 

Yes, there are some exceptionally fine people in America, but....

I caught a speech recently by a much admired fellow; one who could lead a good nation to better times. But even he has a major flaw which reflects his nation's most momentous flaw.

Listen for yourself. It is a fine speech and this is but extracts. The very first part clearly shows the problem.

Protest is in America's DNA. America was started by Protestants. They consciously decided and made 'real' their ideals that a nation could be built on Laws. 

Man's Laws. 

Under God, of course. They tried hard to have it both ways. But once on that slippery slope......

They actually did a pretty good job of outlining the main features in their Declaration of Independence and their Constitution.  First Class documents. Expressions of noble intent. 

How is that going, by the way? 

In recent years that 'Law' is breaking down. Even the Law-Makers don't obey the laws they make. Few in power even follow the Constitution. Another same old  'New World Order' is floated in high places and the same old enemy of man struts the world stage.

America has forgotten. 

America did not get off to a good start. Now it IS a Power and Principality; it HAS Spiritual Wickedness in its High Places.

The Bible that the good man Trey Gowdy quotes was not written by his Protestant Pastor, no matter how fine a chap he, too, might be. It was put together by Catholics; the very Church that the Protestants left to start their 'new world'.  Trey and his pastor would not have it at all were it not for the original Christian Church they protest against.

He decries the diminishing of Christian Religion and the rise of Gummunt, yet fails to see the inevitability when you start a nation by protesting against the one  (Church)and building up the other (Gummunt).  Hello!! 

And then there is the very success of the age. "The business of America is business", said some President, and it does do it well. Technology and 'innovation' have become players in the war on the Soul. As Joel Kotkin observed:

"Now from San Francisco to Washington and Brussels, the tech oligarchs are something less attractive: a fearsome threat whose ambitions to control our future politics, media, and commerce seem without limits. 

Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Uber may be improving our lives in many ways, but they also are disrupting old industries—and the lives of the many thousands of people employed by them. And as the tech boom has expanded, these individuals and companies have gathered economic resources to match their ambitions.

And as their fortunes have ballooned, so has their hubris. They see themselves as somehow better than the scum of Wall Street or the trolls in Houston or Detroit. It’s their intelligence, not just their money, that makes them the proper global rulers. [in their own view]. In their contempt for the less cognitively gifted, they are waging what The Atlantic recently called “a war on stupid people.”

Trey Gowdy is not alone in being an outstanding American, a good man, honest, intelligent and worried. There are many fine American people of any and all religions and none. They go about their lives with honesty and sound Christian values. They are confronted by others, not so nice, with 'American values', whatever they are. And no values at all except perhaps selfish, narcissitic, hubristic ones. Or marxist, feminist, criminalist and a host of other -ists' substitutes for values. The former good people, some of whom I know well, are becoming outnumbered by the latter not-good people. What is a really big worry is that many of those not-good people actually think they are Christians. 

Some, astonishingly, call themselves Catholics !!

"Americans" are no longer exceptional except in their own myth. 

Meanwhile there is an 'Exception' that the protestants do not even recognise.

Today I was up early to go to go down to the Crypt for a special Mass. It is the

 Feast Day of The Assumption of Mary.

Mary was the exception we need to acknowledge. One woman, chosen. 

You and I are not exceptional. Our nations are not exceptional. Thinking otherwise and saying so leads to HUBRIS. It is poisonous.

Mary had no hubris. She willingly gave herself as the 'Handmaiden to the Lord'.
Her humility is what America and all 'exceptional' nations lacks.

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. 
Blessed art thou among women and 
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

Trey's bible tells us that Mary is and was the only human being born perfect enough to be the Mother of Christ. She will be the one to crush the serpent's head and it is she that ushers in the only New World Order that will last forever. She will stand, with the moon under foot, stars around her head. (One may, if one wishes, see this as highly symbolic being as Islam has the moon as its symbol. She will crush that Satanic creed).

She is in Heaven having been taken up there, Body and Soul. No other being but Christ himself went bodily to Heaven. Christ 'Ascended' of His own Power: Mary was taken up by His power too. 

THAT is Exceptional.

Just as He will come again, He will bring His Mother with Him. Our Mother.

So today we Hail Mary.

Drink to her.

Pax.