Roger Cohen of the NYT criticises the McCain/Palin belief in American exceptionalism.  While spewing the usual smears against Gov. Palin (”her own batty way,” “Behind Palinism lies anger,” et cetera), Cohen gives us this gem:

The damn-the-world, God-chose-us rage of that America has sharpened as U.S. exceptionalism has become harder to square with the 21st-century world’s interconnectedness. How exceptional can you be when every major problem you face, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to gas prices, requires joint action?

American exceptionalism is not an anachronism, more fitting for a world of the Pony Express than email; it is what allows us to, every day, defy the odds.  Human societies are not naturally free, just, fair, and prosperous; throughout history, the norm has been lawless, repressive, and murderous societies.  American exceptionalism is only an anacrhonism to those who are unaware of the lessons of history, which did not start two hundred years ago.

The Greeks and the Romans, briefly, were shining beacons in the world.  For fifty years, Greece had a democracy -  an aberration even in the West.  Likewise, the Romans, although ruled by emperors, had an elected class of government officials, to which any free man could be elected.  Scientific advancement - particularly in medicine and engineering - flourished in Greece, Rome, and Egypt.

From second-century Rome, would anyone have thought it possible that a time of unprecedented freedom, advancement, and prosperity would presage a millennium of the Dark Ages?  That it would take over a thousand years for a renaissance in which society advanced to the way it had been centuries before? that a renaissance would even be necessary, and the world would not always exist as it did then?

America - like any free society - can fall into another Dark Ages.  It is not decreed in the heavens that the West shall always have the freedoms that Roger Cohen takes for granted.  American exceptionalism is not about standing alone in a global society without allies, but rather about standing, unwavering, for those values - values which, if abandoned, would relegate America to the status of another failed experiment.

Trade, negotiation, and “joint action” are irrelevant to the question of whether or not America was founded upon and continues to stand for exceptional values.  “Connectedness” does not mean that we must bow our will to countries that do not recognise the basic tenets of freedom and individual dignity -those that deny women the right to be seen in public, excise the sexual organs of five-year-old girls, set up rape rooms and child prisons, starve their own citizens for their power, and are corrupt, cruel, and tyrannical.  We can work with other countries without replacing American values with those that have made other areas of the world into stinking hellholes.

To quote James Madison, one of those dusty white old men whose ideas apparently became irrelevant with the advent of transcontinental communication:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

American exceptionalism is not about anger, frustration, or the dwindling dollar, but about the ideals of the patriots who, in choosing between tyranny and life on one side, and freedom and the threat of death at war or execution for treason on the other, chose freedom and what ever price could be extracted from them for it.  Such ideals are not contingent upon the stability of the price of oil.