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Originally Posted by saxondale351
I am conservative on many issues and liberal on others, but I am tired of hearing this crap. It means absolutely nothing. It means about as much as a sign that says worlds best Pizza. Its just crap and it gets repeated so much it means even less than that.
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You know, I think we can wrap up pretty much everything we conservatives believe by saying, in the end, that what we really believe in is America. We don’t just love America, we’re in love with America; with the whole idea of what America is.
But is this mere patriotism, pride in, and love of one’s own country, or is it something more? Is America truly unique? That is, genuinely exceptional, as measured from an unbiased baseline?
Well, America is exceptional. She’s exceptional in all four of the ways that a nation may be said to be exceptional: militarily, economically, scientifically, and culturally. And I can prove it.
Okay, Militarily…
You know, throughout history, certain exceptional nations have dominated the world militarily. Egypt, Rome, The Mongols, Spain, France, Britain, and America’s military dominance since World War II certainly puts us in that category. But the American military exceptionalism is completely different both in terms of relative power, and more importantly, in terms of the use of that power.
Now, at the end of 1945, only two military powers of any consequence remained after the ruin of the World War: the United States, and the Soviet Union. And while the Soviets did have large numbers of troops and tanks, they had no navy and no strategic air force to speak of. Now, on the other hand, the United States possessed, intact, the most awe-inspiring, battle-hardened navy the world had ever seen. It possessed sky-darkening clouds of B-29 strategic bombers. And it possessed, alone, the atomic bomb and the will to use it.
Had we been like any other power in the history of the world, the United States of America would have used that monopoly on absolute military supremacy to have planted its flag anywhere it wanted and no one would have been able to do a thing about it.
But what did America do with this once-in-all-of-history military advantage? Well, we scrapped the ships, we drove steel bars through the wings of those priceless bombers, and began the largest de-militarization in the history of the world. Oh, and we sent billions of 1940 dollars – that’s an almost unimaginable sum today – to our defeated mortal adversaries to get them back up on their feet.
And this isn’t an isolated incident; it’s a pattern. In 1991, the US Army set, unopposed, atop the precious, precious oil fields, (that we’re always told that our wars are fought to gain,) and what did America do? We put out the fires and then we came home. Again. In the sixty years since the end of World War II, the United States has deployed only in response to aggression – not to cause it. Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Korea, Vietnam – were all instances of Communist – that is to say, Leftist – aggression.
The Gulf War and the Iraq War were a direct result of Saddam attacking his neighbors, our allies, and then continuing to attack after he had surrendered.
And our war in Afghanistan was about as measured a response as any country in history has made, given the scale of the provocation.
Now economically, the United States (with less than 5% of the world’s population,) produces about 25% of its total economic output. America, with 307 million people, produces about 14 trillion dollars in GDP. China, with 1.3 billion, produces almost 5 trillion dollars in GDP. In other words, America produces almost three times the GDP of second-place China and we do it with 23% of their population.
People who point to America’s economic decline point to the loss of jobs, especially manufacturing jobs going overseas. But, as my good friend Steve Greene pointed out, America has historically been right on top of where the money is at the time. That’s a remarkable observation.
There have been three basic waves of human innovation since before recorded history: the agricultural age, the industrial age, and now the information age.
When agriculture was where the real money was, America became the world’s largest grain exporter. When the industrial age was at its peak, the US was the predominant industrial power, and now that we are in the information age, we are again the center of the economic universe. Yes, things like laptops may be manufactured in China, but that’s not who gets to keep most of the money.
The idea, (and ideas are the essence of the new economy,) came from America. Nothing new comes from China. And that doesn’t seem to be in any danger of changing. That’s because it’s so easy to start new businesses here in America. We are not only economically massive, we are economically nimble. Capital and imagination combine more quickly in America than anywhere else in the world, and by a wide margin, which is why we always serve the future so well; because America is from the future.
Okay, moving on. One of the common charges leveled by America-haters, is that America is a stupid country. In fact, if you listen to these guys, American’s are not just stupid – we are, literally, according to them, the stupidest people in the world.
Is that true? How does America fare scientifically?
Well, each year, scientists all around the world write research papers. These papers produce scientific citations. It’s fair to call these citations “units” of science- that is, a measure of how much ground-breaking science is being performed.
Now according to the latest data, Italy came in seventh. Proceeded by Canada, France, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Great Britain, at number two, had eighteen million citations between 1996 and 2008. During that time, the United States produced 75,766,251- more than four times as many as the runner up. Can’t you see that this is not just patriotism? The United States produces more scientific citations than the next six countries combined, and with less than 5% of the world population.
The American University system is the envy of the world. Nowhere is there better science being done, and nowhere is there anything like the numbers of people receiving advanced scientific and engineering degrees.
One man, an American- the late Norman Borlaug, whose name should be sung to the rafters every day – launched what’s known as the green revolution. This American agronomist first developed the high-yield, disease-resistant crops that defied the Malthusian projections of worldwide famine and single-handedly fed the entire world. Billions of people are alive today because of this American scientist.
But I can go on. Almost all of the life-saving drugs administered around the world are the product of American pharmaceutical research. Almost all of them.
To compare American inventive genius relative to the rest of the world, let’s go right to the heart of the modern socialist European state. Let’s go to Sweden. If you Google “Swedish inventions” what comes up? Well, Wikipedia has nothing – not one thing – in the 21st century. Swedes did invent the spherical bearing in 1907 – and that’s not a trivial thing – and neither is the first practical dialysis machine, invented by Nils Alwall.
On my monitor, I had to hit “page down” 3 times to run through the list of Swedish inventions. The list of American breakthroughs took me 69 taps of that button, and revealed – just taking one out of twenty, let’s say – Refrigeration, the electric telegraph, anesthesia, assembly line production, the airplane, the bulldozer, extragalactic astronomy, the liquid-fueled rocket, EEG brain topography, the digital computer, nylon, ,the creation of the first Transuranium element, nuclear weapons, the transistor, supersonic flight, the video game, cable television, radiocarbon dating, the atomic clock, the credit card, the nuclear submarine, the laser, carbon fiber, the integrated circuit, the weather satellite, the birth control pill, the communications satellite, Kevlar, the compact disc, the jumbo jet, the personal computer, email, the Heimlich maneuver, the space shuttle, the graphic user interface, the global positioning system, and in case you missed any of that: TiVo. Oh, and parenthetically, this nation of idiots landed on the moon two generations ago, and we also mapped the human genome about a decade ahead of schedule.
Would you not consider that exceptional scientific output for less than five percent of the world’s population? I think that’s exceptionally exceptional.
Now Culturally, I’ll just say this: look at the list of the 50 top-grossing movies of all time. There is a lot of international talent there, certainly, but every single one of them is the product of an American studio. You might object to the Lord of the Rings movies being on that list, but the three Lord of the Rings movies cost about 450 million dollars and New Zealand doesn’t have that kind of money to spend on movies– nothing like it. The top 50 movies are American movies, and they’re spoken in English.
In terms of albums sold, American Michael Jackson is the only one to sell over 100 million worldwide. The following six best-selling albums are all American, with Andrew Lloyd Weber, of all people, coming in at number eight.
Look, this is not a question of whether the Brits or anyone else have great talent. Of course they do. It’s a question of which country produces the international culture. And by every measure it’s us. Five percent.
Let’s not belabor this any further (although I could, because it’s fun.) As a reasonable person, based on the evidence I have presented, would you not say that the United States of America is not only exceptional in one or two of these areas, but has historically dominated all of these fields – military, economic, scientific and cultural – in a way never before matched in history? It’s simply never happened before.
Why? Well, now we know why: because we believe in small government, which means less bureaucratic and regulatory kudzu gumming up the works. We’re weary of the elitist thinking that imprisons Europe and to a much greater degree the command economies out in the rest of the world. We believe that wealth can be created out of thin air through creativity adding complexity and free trade. We believe that a country founded on natural law by intentional and reflective design, is based upon what makes people happy, and free enough to pursue those dreams and visions. We believe in the energy and courage and ambition of a nation of immigrants as long as those possessing those excellent qualities respect the law, rather than mock and scorn it. And we believe that the freedom to believe all of this is ultimately, the very perishable gift of free people who must be willing to defend themselves and those ideals from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and at the point of a gun if necessary.
All of these magnificent ideas are under attack in America today and this is not an accident. America is, has been, and must continue to be the bullwork upon which dreams of tyranny and oppression can dash themselves to pieces. And protecting those ideals is not the job of the schools, the media, the government, or even the military. That job is our job. Ours alone. It is a commitment that we make as individuals every single day. And we hope that some of these ideals that we’ve outlined here will make honoring that commitment just a little bit easier.
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