"The End of American Exceptionalism" by Peter Beinart

[Dawson Leery]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism/283540/

"From the moment Barack Obama appeared on the national stage, conservatives have been searching for the best way to describe the danger he poses to America's traditional way of life. Secularism? Check. Socialism? Sure. A tendency to apologize for America's greatness overseas? That, too. But how to tie them all together?

Gradually, a unifying theme took hold. "At the heart of the debate over Obama's program," declared Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru in an influential 2010 National Review cover story, is "the survival of American exceptionalism." Finally, a term broad and historically resonant enough to capture the magnitude of the threat. A year later, Newt Gingrich published A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters, in which he warned that "our government has strayed alarmingly" from the principles that made America special. Mitt Romney deployed the phrase frequently in his 2012 campaign, asserting that President Obama "doesn't have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do." The term, which according to Factiva appeared in global English-language publications fewer than 3,000 times during the Bush Administration, has already appeared more than 10,000 times since Obama became president."

[Dawson Leery]

1. kick

[Bigmack]

2. This is a must-read... nt

[RainDog]

3. k&r n/t

[Armstead]

4. Frankly, I'd be fine with becoming a more relaxed and humane second tier country

Exceptionalism is overrated

[RainDog]

5. Anticlericalism

In Europe, noted the late political scientist James Q. Wilson in a 2006 essay on American exceptionalism, the existence of official state religions led secularists to see "Christians as political enemies." America, Wilson argued, lacked this political hostility to organized religion because it separated church and state. But today, even without an established church, the Religious Right plays such a prominent and partisan role in American politics that it has spurred the kind of antireligious backlash long associated with the old world. Barack Obama is the beneficiary of that backlash, because voters who say they "never" attend religious services favored him by 37 percentage points in 2008 and 28 points in 2012. But he's not the cause. The people most responsible for America's declining religious exceptionalism are the conservatives who have made organized Christianity and right-wing politics inseparable in the minds of so many of America's young.

The author fails to mention that higher levels of education correlate with less belief in religion as expressed in politics.

(An important) difference between those with a high level of education and those with minimal education. The higher the level of education, the less likely someone trusts organized religion but the more likely they trust clergy members. The high school or less educated members of American society are more likely to trust organized religion and less likely to trust the clergy. Only 34% of postgraduate degree holders say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in organized religion, while 52% of those with a high school education or less say so. In addition, 63% of the postgraduate group give "high" or "very high" marks to the ethical standards of clergy, while only 43% of those with a high school education or less do so. Earlier Gallup data show that this pattern of results also existed prior to the Catholic priest sex abuse scandals that affected Americans' ratings of clergy members and organized religion.

-from this Gallup poll: http://www.gallup.com/poll/7729/does-more-educated-really-less-religious.aspx

So, the EXPRESSION of organized religion in public life as it exists in the U.S. is geared toward a lesser educated population, because mainline Christian clergy, or those who adopt agnosti-buddhism, or attend UU services, etc. don't tend to appear on political talk shows to try to insert their religious beliefs into political life. This corresponds with a trust in individual clergy but not organized religion.

Those who are opposed to gay human rights, or abortion or who support the oppression of women, or who adopt literalists religious beliefs in opposition to science are found most often in conservative politics, where they are given a platform in order to form a coalition with economic conservatives to each defend ways of life that are harmful to other members of the population.

Rather than an end to exceptionalism, it's more like the rejection of the last 40 years of Republican ideas. in toto.

[RainDog]

6. "Classless Society"

The article leaves out the reality that class issues played important roles in politics in the early 20th century and the financial collapse created by the investor class in the 1920s was undone by socialist policies of the 1930s and 40s.

The tax levels created by those socialist reforms were in place throughout the greatest time of class mobility in this nation's history, along with educational access.

Since the Reagan era, the conservatives have chipped away at those tax policies so that we are back to the point at which the war the rich have waged against the middle class since FDR's presidency has reached a crisis point.

The wealthy are destroying the middle class, and democracy along with it.

This goes back to the previous issue of anti-clericalism, since religious groups tied to conservatism that seeks to harm the poor and disable the middle class are part of this destructive force in this nation.

In anti-clerical terms the French Revolutionaries would recognize - we need to revitalize our nation by removing from power these impediments to democracy in this nation.