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Dan DeWalt

Dan DeWalt is the founder of Patriotic Response to Renegade Government, an organization based on the free association of like minded souls, without the organization part.

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December 3rd, 2011 9:18 AM

By Dan DeWalt

Last week at the Republican Party “Commander in Chief” debate, the bellicose rhetoric was in full flower. One favored theme was “American exceptionalism” and Obama's inadequacy as an exceptionalism cheerleader.“We're not just another nation, we are an exceptional nation” Mitt Romney lectured, “My foreign policy's pretty straightforward. I would be guided by an overwhelming conviction that this century must be an American century where America has the strongest values, the strongest economy, and the strongest military. An American century means the century where America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.”

Some of them even credit God with anointing us as first among the christian nations, (makes us sort of like Joseph with his many-colored coat). But as tempting as it is to dismiss these remarks as jingoistic hot air, maybe we should take stock of where America is truly exceptional.

America is the only country to have used a nuclear bomb (twice). That's pretty exceptional. America still has the highest infant mortality rate among western industrialized countries, just behind Cuba. That's more than those Scandinavians can say! We're the only industrialized nation that allows its citizens' health care to be manipulated and decimated by for-profit companies. America has more military bases across the world than any other country. We're getting excited about soon being the first country that can deliver a warhead on a rocket to anywhere in the world in under two hours. That's downright special.

When you think about it, these shining examples of American exceptionalism are just some of the results of the conservative and neo-liberal policies that we have been suffering under for the last thirty years. What are some of the costs of these policies? Increasingly, while the American dream of becoming fabulously wealthy is being enjoyed by a storied few, an ever growing number of our children fall into poverty and endure hunger every day. As successive governments have fed the world's biggest military budget, they have cut and eliminated programs that work for the benefit of the citizenry. Our unique valuation of profit and its pursuit has created a health care system that costs more while serving fewer.

Thinking about these costs of “exceptionalism”, the rest of us are not so enamored with this supremacy obsession. A recent Pew Research poll showed that less than half of all Americans believe that the U.S. Is the greatest country in the world. Most of us still think that it is one the greatest, but we are slowly weaning ourselves away from the notion that we are superior to all others. The Republicans think that this is terrible and they blame Obama's lack of exceptionalism verve. They are desperate to rekindle Americans' love affair with militarism that has started to sour. They are determined to keep in place the system that has enriched the few and disenfranchised the many.

We are now beginning to see it differently. The Occupy movement has opened our eyes to glaring truths that have been ignored for too long. We must have systemic change in this country if we are to just survive, let alone prosper. Not only must we end the manipulated monopoly of wealth that currently strangles our economy and common good, but we must also forever shake off the notion that we are a nation superior to all others. We became the sole super-power when the Soviet Union forfeited the game through economic and moral bankruptcy. We are now following the same end of empire game plan and the sooner we get off the field the better.

What would really be exceptional is if we decided to start caring about the welfare of our nation's citizens, and stopped bankrupting ourselves with warfare diplomacy for the sake of capitalist profits and blowhard bragging rights about who has the biggest guns. Instead of making us more secure,our superpower status has only impoverished us. Its time to build upon the power of community to make our nation strong in ways that actually matter.