The paradox of American exceptionalism

Anyone who has visited Philadelphia is familiar with its famous “Old City” neighborhood, which, as many foreign tourists (especially European visitors) are eager to point out, is in fact relatively young by international standards. Nevertheless, the Old City can justify its title because it is the site of Independence Hall, the birthplace of the Constitution of the United States, the second-oldest written constitution still in use. The constitution of the Republic of San Marino (yes, it’s a real country), the Statutes of 1600, holds the honor of being the oldest, though the proud Sammarinese did not receive any actual rights until the signing of the Declaration of Citizens Rights of 1974, which was modeled after the United States’ Bill of Rights. Indeed, it is not only our Constitution’s age, but also its use as a blueprint for dozens of other countries’ constitutions that is so remarkable.

It is natural at this point to ask whether there is some deep relationship between the long-term success of the United States Constitution as a functioning political document and the widespread emulation of its content. To what extent might we expect the substance of our Constitution, translated across geographical, cultural and politico-historical circumstances, to enjoy a similar degree of success? In the most general terms, this recapitulates Rousseau’s chicken and egg question—do good men make good laws, or do good laws make good men? The answer is not merely of theoretical importance. Costly wars have been fought on the premise that the good laws of the United States can create good liberal democrats out of a people (such as the Afghans) for whom despotism is the only political way of life, at least in recent memory.

The expectation that other nations would be able rapidly and successfully to adopt an American-style legal system is related to the concept of “American exceptionalism,” which holds that the United States is uniquely founded on universal moral principles, which it is uniquely positioned to promote. It tends to emphasize the Declaration of Independence, particularly its assertion of equality and inalienable rights, and agrees with Lincoln that such claims had no practical connection with the United States’ separation from Great Britain.

Naturally, anyone who bothers to read more than the first two paragraphs of the Declaration discovers that the assertion of equality did have a great deal to do with our separation from Great Britain, and Jefferson explicitly stated elsewhere that the chief revolutionary grievance was the treatment of the colonists as unworthy of the liberties due to British subjects. These liberties represent a long legal tradition that began in the 13th century with the Magna Carta and includes an enormous accumulated body of English common law. But if the American legal system were essentially British, there would be nothing “exceptional” about it.

The exceptionalist thesis therefore abstracts from culture and history, in favor of general principles of universal applicability. To the extent that it seriously considers America’s British pedigree at all, it posits the relationship in terms of universalization—just as Christianity universalized (and thus supplanted) the rights of Jews, so did America recapitulate this providential development in the political sphere by extending the rights of Englishmen to all men. The nature of this universality results in the apparent paradox that it is the “exceptionalists” who maintain that any country could become just like America!

There is cause to believe that this is indeed a paradox built into the very idea of America rather than a mere contradiction rooted in exceptionalism’s historical misjudgment. The exceptionalists are correct to emphasize the difference (however exaggerated) between the American and British situations. Even if the Americans were working with the particular rights of the English, they had to apply them to totally new circumstances. America had to reconcile English liberties, for example, with a federalist government and the circumstances of a large commercial republic. In the “Federalist Papers,” James Madison and Alexander Hamilton provided for the first time a theoretical basis for a democratic republic in a large territory, something hitherto thought impossible. Their famous solution was that the very largeness of the commercial republic would allow it to sustain a multiplicity of competing commercial interests, which would cancel each other out in the dynamic environment of a competitive market. Commerce on a large scale requires diversity on a large scale, and diversity prevents the dominance of a majority faction.

This famous solution stood in stark contrast to John Jay’s less well-known claim in “The Federalist No. 2” that American success depended on a “people descended from the same ancestors … professing the same religion … [and being] very similar in their manners.” Indeed, Hamilton and Madison’s design suggests that, in order for English liberties to be preserved in an American context, they must be universalized.

This principle of universality has contributed to the fact that America remains one of the most diverse and tolerant societies in the world. That this universality welcomes men and women from all cultures embodies a silent rebuke to these very cultures of origin, which are not always as welcoming. The more diverse we become, therefore, the more we are struck by this particularity. This is indeed the exceptional character of our exceptionalism.