Examples Of American Exceptionalism

American Exceptionalism: Justified or Biased In Issue 1.1 of Taking Sides, it poses a question that has been talked about a lot over years and years involving a concept that’s been around since the 1900s called American exceptionalism, that question being; Is America Exceptional? Now the idea of American exceptionalism is that America is essentially different from other countries, that we are exceptional compared to the rest of the world. In this issue historian Seymour Martin Lipset and Thomas Bender discuss their viewpoints about the topic. Lipset believes America is indeed exceptional and goes further into the ways that make us an “outlier” nation. Bender on the other hand, claims that American exceptionalism encourages the prevention …show more content…
I say no, America as a whole is indeed not exceptional. Seymour Martin Lipset is a believer in American exceptionalism and that America is indeed exceptional when in contrast to other developed countries. He goes on to talk about the ways America differs from European nations, how Europe’s political parties remade class and economic structures that reflected those of American ways, and that Europe changed its occupational skills and distribution of income to that similar to American styles. He also makes a couple points in his argument explaining the ways that the concept of “American exceptionalism” still applies, if not more, in today’s society. Some of those points including examples such as quoting Alexis de …show more content…
In some areas and global statistics America is ranked number 1. But that’s not what makes a country exceptional, maybe efficient, but not exceptional. America used to have promise though, it had the potential to be something. The potential to change and people aspired for greatness from this country. Obviously, along the way we have made huge strides from free African Americans, Women’s rights, so on and so forth. But because of american exceptionalism we have isolated ourselves from all the other countries out there doing great things. America is mostly defined as freedom and diversity, but we act like we are the only ones with such ideologies taking place in the country. When it comes to diversity, we aren’t even on the top ten list. On the diversity scale “[t]he U.S. is classified as ‘moderate’ in terms of religious diversity”. (Cooperman) Singapore reigns champ when it comes to the most religiously diverse country. So there goes diversity, what about freedom? Well according to CNS News, we barely made the cut for top 20 countries with overall

Show More