It has been the project of the political left for quite some time to convince Americans that there is nothing exceptional about their country. To "fundamentally transform" a culture, you must first poison the roots of what has already been growing. So for a century, Marxists have disparaged American history as steeped in genocide, imperialism, and avarice. They have exploited the imagery of virtue and vice to convince moral people that their nation rose from immorality. This has reached its logical apex with the historically illiterate 1619 Project, supported by elite news publications and academic institutions, reimagining America's birth as bathed not in liberty, but rather enslavement.
Killing American history is not just a matter of destroying our collective identity as Americans, but also the vehicle for undermining notions of personal freedom. Barack Obama famously revealed how little he understood about the United States when he mocked the idea of "exceptionalism" altogether: "I believe in American exceptionalism," he said after becoming president, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." After taking heat for so nonchalantly dismissing a point of American pride, Obama made sure to pay lip service to the idea of "American exceptionalism" for the remainder of his presidency. When he did so, however, the "exceptionalism" of which he spoke was clothed in the trappings of postmodernism, personal identity, and power. At various times, he pointed to America's commitment to "international norms," the ability of American NGOs to reshape societies abroad, government-funded science and health care, American economic dominance and military might, and even his own rise to power as proof of "American exceptionalism." In other words, Obama redefined "American exceptionalism" in ways that a Marxist professor might find appealing to justify collective power and global government and buried what actually makes "American exceptionalism" so historic.
When we talk about America's "exceptionalism," it is not a racial or nationalist idea that denigrates other countries or implies that Americans possess in their DNA something that is unobtainable by other peoples. It is, in fact, a proposition that the Founding Fathers hoped would inspire the world's nations in time to emulate America's example. At its crux, three intertwined principles are sewn together to create something revolutionary: (1) all people are created equal; (2) every individual possesses rights that cannot legitimately be diminished or denied by those in positions of power, and among those rights are life and liberty; and (3) legitimate governments exist only through and by the consent of the governed.
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