American Exceptionalism in a New Era: Rebuilding the Foundation of Freedom and Prosperity

Gilligan

PART ONE

Foundations of American Exceptionalism

1

Is America Still the Hope of Earth?

Origins and Underpinnings of American Exceptionalism

PAUL E. PETERSON

Advocates of American exceptionalism say the United States is special, a nation for the world to admire, a country worthy of emulation, a place chosen for destiny. Their claim resembles the assumption made by the young child at a Jewish seder who asks, Why is this night different from all other nights? But is it really correct to say that America is exceptional?

Without doubt, the United States differs from other countries in the same way the air, stars, and smells vary from one night to another. Barack Obama put it this way: I believe in American exceptionalism . . . just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism . . . and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.¹ All countries can find something to brag about. Vladimir Putin thinks it is pernicious to say anything beyond that. He warns, It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to think of themselves as exceptional. He is quick to agree that there are big countries, and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions, and those still finding their way to democracy. But, he says, we must not forget that God created us equal.²

Abraham Lincoln thought otherwise. Like the innocent child at a seder, he had no reservations about American exceptionalism. The Declaration of Independence, he said, gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.³ If the American democracy collapsed, the negative impacts for democracy would be global. If the Union split into two nations, European monarchs would rejoice at the division. When searching for meaning in the midst of the tragedy of the Civil War, he invariably returned to his belief that the United States shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.⁴ The president was not certain whether the great American experiment would survive. For him it remained a question whether a new nation conceived in liberty . . . can long endure.⁵

Tocqueville’s Theory

Lincoln’s thinking about American exceptionalism was likely shaped by Alexis de Tocqueville.⁶ The French aristocrat, writing in the postNapoleonic period, expected democracies to transform themselves into dictatorships. People continuously ask their governments to make improvements, he said. To meet expectations, leaders centralize power so they can implement reform on a national scale. Local institutions crumble, and the people’s capacity for self-government erodes. Centralization breeds tyranny.⁷

Tocqueville sailed to the United States during the 1830s to see whether his new nation refuted this theory. He traveled broadly and inquired widely into every facet of American life, then blended his observations together into a powerful explanation of the country’s exceptional capacity for sustaining democracy. Here is what he concluded:

The situation of the Americans is entirely exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be put in the same situation. Their entirely Puritan origin, their uniquely commercial habits, even the country that they inhabit . . . had to concentrate the American mind in a singular way in the concern for purely material things. The passions, needs, education, circumstances, everything seems in fact to combine to bend the inhabitant of the United States toward the earth. Religion alone makes him, from time to time, turn a fleeting and distracted gaze toward heaven. So let us stop seeing all democratic nations with the face of the American people, and let us try finally to consider them with their own features.⁸

The strong state and local governments of the country they inhabit encouraged a practical focus on solving problems at the community level. Their exclusively commercial habits closed their minds to grand political schemes to reform and transform society. Their strictly Puritanical origin focused their attention on self-reliance, hard work, and enough learning to allow them to read the Bible. Passions and wants drew the citizen of the United States earthward, toward simple, homegrown solutions rather than pie-in-the-sky schemes for societal salvation being peddled in Europe.

What is exceptional about the United States, then, is its capacity to preserve liberty within a democracy. When the colonies separated from Great Britain, Congress issued a Declaration of Independence that asserted the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Legitimate governments secure these rights and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The citizen, not the collectivity, was placed at the center of the political system. Liberty was given priority over social guarantees. Opportunity was available to all if only they would do the hard work and develop the entrepreneurial skill to acquire it. Howard University scholar Ralph Bunche put it well:

Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow, knows that this is the land of the free, the land of opportunity, the cradle of liberty, the home of democracy, that the American flag symbolizes the equality of all men and guarantees to us all the protection of life, liberty and property, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and racial tolerance.⁹

But what sustains this creed? How did the United States escape liberty-depriving centralization? Why did the country defy Tocqueville’s law? Will it continue to do so throughout the twenty-first century?

Explaining the Exception

Picking up Tocqueville’s baton, scholars have identified seven factors that have contributed to the exceptional success of American democracy: (1) absence of feudal institutions; (2) early, widespread political participation; (3) federalism and divided government; (4) rapid economic growth; (5) the frontier; (6) widespread education; and (7) continuous immigration.

Absence of feudal institutions

First and foremost, the United States was a new nation that had no feudal heritage.¹⁰ When American patriots dethroned George III, the colonial aristocracy was run out of town on a rail. Nor did the United States have a national church. No Westminster Abbey has ever stood next to the nation’s capital. The religious groups dominant in a number of colonies—Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania—lost their special status within a decade or two after the Revolution. None of them had a chance of becoming the religion of the new nation. American clergy could not pander for subsidies from the government. They had to persuade their parishioners to give generously.

Early, widespread political participation

Without noblemen and clergy fighting to protect their privileges, colonial barriers to widespread citizen participation disappeared quickly, a second factor that contributed to this exceptional experiment in democracy. By 1820 white male suffrage was universal in nearly all states. Shortly thereafter, Andrew Jackson rallied frontiersmen, swept the Virginia dynasty from power, and instituted a spoils system that allocated government jobs to party loyalists. In ensuing years political machines mobilized the electorate so effectively that the turnout rate in presidential elections among eligible voters ran higher in 1844 and 1848 than it has in the twenty-first century (figure 1).

Machine politicians, though ready to take advantage of the opportunities available to them, never challenged the political order. Because they were well entrenched, socialist political parties and radical trade unions, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), could make few inroads. The politically engaged focused on the spoils of office rather than on Marxist schemes to nationalize the means of production. Socialist Eugene Debs managed to capture 6 percent of the presidential vote in 1912, but that turned out to be the party’s high-water mark in the United States.¹¹ As Tocqueville expected, the American working class remained pragmatic, their eyes focused earthward.

Figure 1. A Higher Percentage of White Males Voted in 1844 Than in 2008.

Federalism and divided government

Politics remained local because the Constitution divided power between the state and national governments. In Tocqueville’s day, the federal role was limited to setting tariffs, selling land, and running a post office. All other services—police, fire, sanitation, schools, and so forth—were provided by state and local governments. Even today, over a third of all domestic governmental expenditure is paid for out of taxes raised by state and local governments. The federal government pays for national defense, Social Security, Medicare, and other welfare services, but most of the rest remains a state and local responsibility. As much as we have centralized power in the United States, the lower tiers remain vital components of our governmental system.

The sharing of power between Congress and the executive, and the further division of power between House and Senate, slows down the rate of policy change and moderates the policies that are designed. At a time when many European countries were creating their welfare states by providing old-age pensions, long-term unemployment benefits, health care for all, and a tuition-free college education, divided power within the United States stalled the process of change and forced the adoption of more limited interventions. Not until the Great Depression of the 1930s did the New Deal begin to create the alphabet soup of agencies that formed the welfare state, and the programs then established did not come to full fruition until Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law by the Lyndon Johnson administration and the Affordable Care Act was enacted during the Barack Obama administration. In higher education, the Europeans offered students free tuition, while the United States set up loan programs. Europeans like to report that they have free medicine, free education, and ample benefits for the unemployed. But the taxpayer pays heavily for these free gifts. As compared to the 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) paid in taxes in the United States, well over 30 percent of GDP in Germany and the United Kingdom and over 40 percent of GDP in France, Italy, Denmark, and Sweden is being collected by the government.

These international differences are quite consistent with the state of public opinion on the two sides of the Atlantic. Americans expect individuals to work hard and solve economic problems on their own or with the help of their families. Europeans are more ready to turn to the government for a solution. A World Values survey found that less than 30% of Americans believe that the poor are trapped in poverty while 60% of Europeans have this belief.¹² Nearly 70 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they think they have the free choice and control over their lives to get ahead. Only about 50 percent of German and British citizens feel the same way, and the percentages are around 35 percent in France and Italy.¹³ Should we rely on the government to reduce income inequality? A majority of Americans don’t think so. Only 30 percent of Americans say yes, as compared to about 80 percent of the Spanish and approximately 60 percent of the Germans and the British.¹⁴

In 2016 respondents in several countries were asked if lack of effort on his or her own part is the most important reason for a person being poor. Forty-six percent of Americans said that was the case, but only 37 percent of UK respondents offered the same response. In France, that percentage fell to 23 percent, and in Italy it was just 14 percent. Americans said the tax rate on the top 1 percent of taxpayers should be 25 percent, while the British would put it at 37 percent, the French at 44 percent, and the Italians at 38 percent.¹⁵ Especially interesting is the finding that in Europe, the happiness of the poor is strongly negatively affected by inequality, while the happiness of the poor in the United States seems to be totally unaffected by inequality.¹⁶

Rapid economic growth

The earthward focus of the American public has been reinforced by a large, integrated, fast-growing, high-wage economy, the fourth factor that contributes to American exceptionalism. Even during the colonial period, labor was scarce and wages ran higher than in England.¹⁷ As soon as independence was secured, the new nation put into place the fundamentals that would ensure sustained economic progress. The country kept common-law property protections inherited from Britain. The US land survey ordered by Congress at Thomas Jefferson’s instigation divided the country into rectangles with the exactitude needed to define precisely the property to be secured. The Constitution eliminated tariff barriers among the states. With property rights safe and the ability to sell products on a continental scale, entrepreneurs had strong incentives to innovate and expand. The US economy grew so rapidly that it surpassed Britain’s by 1890 and dominated the world economy throughout the twentieth century.

The frontier

This economic growth generated westward expansion, which had its own impact on American political culture. The frontier hypothesis presented by Henry Turner Jackson before his fellow historians at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago explains the connection with American exceptionalism in these terms:

This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character . . . .

The frontier is productive of individualism. . . . It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control. The tax-gatherer is viewed as a representative of oppression.¹⁸

Lincoln understood the importance of the frontier to the American experiment. He knew railroads opened the door to economic prosperity, so he, as a lawyer, ably defended them against provincial interests that tried to stop them from laying down their tracks and building their bridges. As president, he facilitated the expansion of the transcontinental railroad so that it was only four years after his assassination when the Golden Spike driven into the plains of Utah united East with West. Lincoln also signed the Homestead Act, which gave 160 acres of land to anyone who would plow the fields. Notably, the law gave away federal property only to those willing to sweat and toil to make it productive.

Widespread education

The frontier explanation for American exceptionalism is well known. The sixth factor, local control of the nation’s schools, is less well understood, though Tocqueville mentions schools briefly: I do not think that in the most enlightened rural district of France, there is an intellectual movement, either so rapid, or on such scale, as in this wilderness.¹⁹ He attributed this not to strong governmental action but to the associations Americans make . . . [to] found hospitals, prisons, and schools.²⁰

The beginnings of schools in America owe much to the influence of Puritans, who believed that children must be able to read if they