American exceptionalism
German professor Sieglinde Lemke argues that the Statue of Liberty represents how the US sees itself as a unique nation and its mission to spread its values across the world.[1]
American exceptionalism is the belief that
Unique nation
The US started from the American Revolutionary War. Martin Lipset calls it the "first new nation".[3] It developed an American set of ideas (Americanism) based on republicanism, democracy, laissez-faire (no government interference in economy), liberty, equality, individualism (importance of individual).[4]
Unique mission
Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg address (1863), that Americans have a responsibility to make sure that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
American Exceptionalism Media
Newspaper reporting the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii in 1898. American exceptionalism has fueled American expansion through the ideology of manifest destiny.
Related pages
- American decline
- American imperialism
- Americanism (ideology)
- Americanization
- Americentrism
- Anti-Americanism
- Juche (nationalist North Korean state ideology)
- Sonderweg (German exceptionalism)
- Yamato-damashii (Japanese spirit)
- Nihonjinron (Japanese uniqueness)
References
- ↑ Winfried Fluck; Donald E. Pease; John Carlos Rowe (2011). Re-framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies. University Press of New England. p. 207. ISBN 9781611681901.
- ↑ American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. Seymour Martin Lipset. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. 1996. p. 18. .
- ↑ Seymour Martin Lipset, The first new nation (1963).
- ↑ Lipset, American Exceptionalism, pp. 1, 17–19, 165–74, 197