Why do so many of our politicians express their belief in American exceptionalism? How many of us Americans agree with them? How do these believers define this exceptionalism? And what definition of American exceptionalism can or should withstand our scrutiny?

Many Americans would define American exceptionalism in terms of ideals expressed in our founding documents. Jefferson’s Declaration both proclaimed the principles and then listed the grievances that motivated the revolt against the British Monarchy. Subsequently, the Preamble to our Constitution defined the goals/pursuits that would make us one country. Further, the Constitution defined the structure, role, and constraints of our government. As many have said, America is based upon an idea, born of the Enlightenment, and expressed in these documents. Other countries followed similar paths. For instance, whereas our Declaration touted life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the French, by comparison, instituted their democracy on the clarion call of liberte, egalite, fraternite. Though both Americans and the French would agree that citizenship includes living free and equal under a Constitutional system of laws and democratic institutions, they differ on the nature of the society so established. Specifically, fraternite implies a community akin to a brotherhood, whereas the “pursuit of happiness” has an individualist connotation. In blunt terms, the French fraternite admits a strong social bond where the American pursuit of happiness guarantees the opportunity for personal or individual attainment but, sadly, only for a specific class of Americans. It was assumed that opportunity applied only to the white European settlers of this New World. Unlike the French, America was already a pluralist society, however unwilling its founding fathers were to admit that fact. Obviously, Jefferson never had the Negro slaves in mind when he insisted on adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution’s first ten Amendments. Remember, he was a slave holder.

There is an irony in Jefferson’s declaration that “all men are created equal” and in his insistence that individual rights be added to the Constitution as its initial amendments. By basing “unalienable rights” on the fact of human birth, he laid the legal foundation for law on nature instead of any dictate of the state. But he was also engaged in the most natural human relation with Sally Fleming, who was legally one of his slaves, even though her birthright should have guaranteed her “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Despite this personal contradiction, his words created the basis for classical liberalism, the inspiration for the very Conservativism that became the philosophical grounding for our Republican Party, that is, before Trumpian authoritarianism replaced it. But neither he nor the participants in the 1787 Constitutional Convention foresaw a future in which men and women born into slavery would become free American citizens.

What our founding fathers did envision, instead, was a country inhabited by white landowners and homesteaders tasked with building an economy and conquering a continent. The “pursuit of happiness” materialized in a very industrious economy that initially included cotton plantations, foreign trade, railroads, and the individual consignments that eventually metamorphized into commercial and investment banking. From its inception, then, America was characterized by the personal attainments of its white European settlers. It presumed to reward their individual pursuits, abet their personal wealth, and support an evolving economic structure.

In this light, our founding ideals seem more aspirational than descriptive of our nascent nation. “In order to form a more perfect Union” implies that the ideals expressed in the Constitution’s Preamble were merely goals “we the people” must/should realize. The reality our forefathers faced was a welcoming land of opportunity for individual American pioneers. That uniquely American characteristic of conquest and discovery was indeed exceptional and revealed itself in actual accomplishments. But the “more perfect union” defined in our Constitution was a democratic state never realized, but only promised. The promise, not the reality, was and is exceptional. The former inspires, but the latter reveals Americans’ shortcomings. Let’s review the nature of this quintessential American experience.

Americans did build a nation that has proven exceptional in many areas. From its outset, this newly crafted nation was a beehive of activity. Brook Farm, for example, bred a new American intelligentsia. While Horace Greeley and other editors founded American journalism, New England became the birthplace of art, literature, journalism, and the flowering of American culture. It also taught and trained the teachers that crisscrossed the continent, opening small town schoolhouses and educating young Americans. The first half of the 19th century was, literally, an American renaissance. Meanwhile, Greeley’s editorial advice for his readers was “Go West.” And American settlers did so and in mass. Together with the American Cavalry, they conquered the Indian Nations and built new communities, subsequently adding new territories and States to the Union. They also brought with them the spirit of a newly formed democracy, which so impressed the foreign historian, Alexis de Tocqueville. He recognized a “new Anglo-American civilization . . . (as) the product of two perfectly distinct elements which elsewhere have often been at war with one another . . . forming a marvelous combination . . . the spirit of religion (sic) and the spirit of freedom (sic).” ¹

Alongside these hard-won attainments, America was building a new economy. In the Southern States, Americans built a lucrative cotton trade on the backs of slave labor. In the Northeastern States, one erstwhile banker, Alexander Brown, started a railway to connect his cotton suppliers with his Atlantic export operation. He well represented Tocqueville’s combination of Christian values with business foresight, integrity, and inventiveness. Eventually, his somewhat modest undertaking spawned a railroad industry that crisscrossed the country, connecting the western territories to the New England economy. Meanwhile, New England bankers made their fortunes on proffering consignments for exporting cotton overseas. Tocqueville’s “Anglo-American civilization” was prospering with all the religious fervor and unbounded freedom that so eluded the history of the Old World. From another perspective, it could be concluded that slavery worked better than feudalism (which conclusion I cannot and do not attribute to Tocqueville).

But an economy built on exports and depended upon consignment promises and risky Atlantic crossings gave birth to speculative investments. America’s financial pursuits resulted in an economy that grew in spurts, with speculative driven expansions followed by periodic downturns. The American economy crashed nearly every twenty years throughout the nineteenth century—perhaps the worst crash was spurred by President Andrew Jackson in 1837. On the last day of his second term, he executed his final assault on the central bank by signing his Specie Circular Act that required all government lands be paid-for only in gold and silver coins.

Later, during the Civil War, President Lincoln realized there was not enough specie to pay for the war. So, he passed the Legal Tender Act in 1862 which created “greenbacks” backed by the government instead of gold or other species. He literally saved the American economy amid a war over the issue of Negro equality under the American Constitution. He was the first President to address both the issue of equality and the economic stability of the American enterprise. Both issues address the nature of our national character and the pursuit of happiness.

After the Civil War, unfettered by war and accelerated by unregulated investment and the efficiencies of assembly-line production, the American economy beget its industrial revolution. The so-called “robber barons” rose to prominence both in wealth and power. But their control over American industry was rebuffed by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act under President Grover Cleveland and the relentless assault of President Theodore Roosevelt. They inadvertently created the issue of unequal distribution of wealth as a threat to the integrity of an American first principle. Specifically, they famously and brazenly were more able to pursue their happiness than other Americans. Their inordinate wealth and control over American industry spawned the actions of a succession of Presidents—from Cleveland to many of his successors—to protect America’s economic expansion via intermittent legal interventions.

Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the century after America’s founding experienced an incredible expansion of territory, culture, and the nation’s economy. The American pursuit of happiness evolved a country that could not have been foreseen by its founders. The New World breached a continent, defined a unique culture, and unleashed an economy that burned through multiple recessions towards sporadic expansions, but with an ever-growing wealth disparity and an inability—or unwillingness—to resolve inequality in a pluralist population.

Of course, alongside economic development, a new social order and culture evolved after the Revolution and somehow withstood the gruesome experience of the Civil War. While most Americans are probably not aware of Brook Farm and the American renaissance, they do know about European settlers, western expansion, the sub-culture of slavery that extended for nearly a quarter of a millennium before the 13th Amendment was ratified, and the inventiveness and industriousness of our ancestors who built a juggernaut of an economy. These were our forefathers’ major pursuits from the 17th through the 19th centuries. America’s founding ideals of liberty and equality were never extended to the conquered Indian nations, however, nor fully realized by the freed slaves. But the resources of a continent and the inventive industriousness of American settlers, bankers, plantations, and businesses unleashed an economic juggernaut that overcame myriad recessions. Although America did not fully realize its democratic ideals of a pluralist society of equals, it built an industrial revolution that promised unfettered wealth for many. The promise of wealth at hand overshadowed any concern over an unrealized ideal that promised universal equality under the law. “We the people” was segregated by race, income, and opportunity in a harshly stratified social structure. The divide between the rich and poor mirrored the stratification of classes between white and non-white. It was a capitalist picture in which the individual pursuit of happiness was framed.

The 20th century opened with a dynamic Theodore Roosevelt at the helm and with many captains of industry at the forefront of a new American era of wealth and power. So befuddled was the historian Henry Adams by the growth and complexity of the American economy that he claimed, “the new American—the child of incalculable coal-power, chemical power, electrical power, and radiating energy, as well as of new forces yet undetermined—must be a sort of God compared with any former creation of nature.” ² With this hyperbole, he may have been the first to attribute exceptionalism to a new generation of Americans. But take note, his accreditation of an almost divine exceptionalism is delineated by an economic progress spurred by American inventiveness, scientific prowess, and the harnessing of the forces of nature. At the heart of American exceptionalism, then, is capitalism as the engine that spurs human ingenuity, science, and a mastery of nature and that ignites an ever-expanding economy.

The new century began by interweaving American finance and politics with its entry onto the world stage. To quote Zachary Karabell, “as dollar diplomacy evolved and expanded from Taft to Wilson, as it became simply ‘American diplomacy’ . . . a handful of firms became the de facto deputies of the U.S. government, and the government became the de facto agents of these financial interests.” ³ But as America’s wealth grew, so did the depth of its economic pitfalls and the creativity of its recoveries. The Panic of 1907 aroused American bankers to mobilize and call for a central authority to become the banker of last resort and the backstop in a financial panic. President Wilson, who initially favored a government-controlled central bank, compromised with the banking community to create a hybrid. In 1913, the Federal Reserve Act established that hybrid, more controlled by private banks but governed by Presidential appointees. After World War I, America emerged as Europe’s main creditor, replacing the Bank of England in that role. Not only was America’s GDP the largest in the world, but it had also become Europe’s banker, providing liquidity to its war-torn nations. But American hegemony still had major hurdles. The Excess Profits Tax Act of 1917 curtailed excessive wartime profiteering, eliminating shared profit ventures established by American bankers. Cross-Atlantic partnerships dissolved. And the British pound remained preeminent in international commerce. Not only was America not ready to assume the world leadership role pursued by President Wilson’s League of Nations’ initiative, but it also pulled back from the temptation to capitalize on its economic power.

Then came the Great Depression and the withering of bank liquidity. As the banking system collapsed, so did individual savings. While the economy self-destructed, unemployment and soup lines grew. Shortly after taking office, Franklin Roosevelt turned to Congress for legislation that would address the banking crisis. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 changed the nature of banking and investing by divorcing investment banking from commercial banking. Speculation would still have its risks for the investor, but it could no longer bring down a nation’s economy—or so it was believed at the time. And that belief may have affected President Clinton’s relaxation of some parts of Glass-Steagall. Partly as a result, his successor witnessed the near collapse of the financial sector in the 2008 Great Recession over the debacle of sub-prime mortgage derivatives. Once again, a new Administration had to rescue the nation from its speculative tendencies. While President Obama, like Roosevelt before him, attempted to bail out Americans from financial disaster with a Federal stimulus, Congress moved to pass the Dodd-Frank Act. It prohibited banks from making speculative investments by regulating high-risk financial products, required bank stress test to assure adequate liquidity, and provided tougher oversight of the financial, insurance, and credit industries. (Former President Trump weakened some of this oversight by suppressing the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that held banks accountable for unfair loan practices.)

Why itemize this brief revue of America’s financial journey? After World War II and the Bretton Woods establishment of a new world order, America became a financial behemoth and the leader amongst nations. Nevertheless, it continued to have its economic pitfalls: recessions, oil crises, runaway inflation, and a reincarnation of “robber barons” in the form of millionaires and billionaires who have accumulated 69% of the nation’s wealth. ⁴ Now, at the outset of the 21st century, Jefferson’s idealistic “pursuit of happiness’ finds Americans bitterly divided along economic, political, racial, and social lines. The political divide alone threatens the very foundation of our democracy. Is this what are forefathers envisioned? In a previous blog (ref. “Of . . . By . . . and For”), I described America’s drift away from democracy. In this blog, I will attempt to explain why we are failing its promise.

While there is little doubt that material well-being is a baseline for the pursuit of happiness, it cannot be its wherewithal. Wealth creation is important for individual and family security. But, by itself, it does not guarantee happiness. Home ownership, for example, is a primary source of wealth for most Americans and reflects our heritage from the Homesteader’s Act to Jefferson’s vision of a nation of landowners. And yet we have a housing shortage, which is aggravated by a lack of affordable housing in well-populated job markets. America is the richest nation in the world with an accumulated wealth of about 129.46 trillion dollars. Whereas the top 10% of our population has garnered 90.32 trillion, the bottom 50% owns only 2.82 trillion. ⁴ These bottom dwellers represent approximately 165 million Americans living in poverty or near poverty conditions. This “near poverty” class mostly represents those living paycheck to paycheck. If wealth creation is part of our pursuit of happiness, then it can also be a detriment to that pursuit. How then can wealth define American exceptionalism? It more aptly describes America’s failure to provide for those “unalienable rights.”

It is said that the business of America is business. Capitalism reigns here. But does it insure personal happiness? Even a cursory history of the American economy reveals the dangers of unbridled capitalism. While it can create wealth, it can divide a nation between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Time and again, our Presidents and Congress have had to sponsor and pass regulations to reign in speculation and anti-competitive practices. We are a “can-do” people who invent and reach for high goals, but do we weigh the costs of personal success against the well-being of our fellow Americans? Some among us have followed the dictum of “OPM,” that is, conning and grifting their way to a fortune on the backs of other peoples’ money. In the vernacular of former President Trump, those “other people” are losers. So how then is winning at all costs a virtue? Why does a writer like Anne Rand measure a nation’s success by the wealth and associated power gained by the so-called “captains of industry?”

It would be tempting to say that America is pioneering Adam Smith’s vision of a self-regulating market. If so, then America is failing. Smith gave us a baseline for understanding how free markets should work. But free markets can easily be distorted by monopolistic tendencies, by lack of liquidity, by irresponsible speculation, or by grifting with other peoples’ money. There is a chapter in Zachary Karabell’s outstanding book entitled “when is enough enough?” Therein he concludes, “in what healthy system does never becoming too big to fail get judged negatively?” ⁵ He was arguing against the relentless pursuit of profit and the imperative to grow a business without consideration of other imperatives.

The problem with capitalism is not capitalism per se, but greed and the disregard for social needs and justice. Why do Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than citizens of every other advanced economy? Why does Congress refuse to allocate funds to the IRS so that it could evaluate the lengthy tax returns of large companies and billionaires? How can a wealthy President who earns 450,000 dollars per annum pay only 750 dollars for each year he served in office? A disabled person on SSDI who takes on a part time job to pay her rent, pays more taxes than the President of the United States. There are solutions already offered for these injustices. But the current Republican Party has blocked proposed remedies. Why? The “Grand Ole Party” needs the financial backing of rich donors to finance campaigns. Is this the fault of capitalism? Or is it the result of America never realizing the promise inherent in our revolution against authoritarian rule, specifically, that we are all “created equal” and entitled to the same rights and opportunities.

Perhaps we Americans need to redefine the “pursuit of happiness” in terms outlined in the Preamble of our Constitution where our union as a people must be governed by law and committed to defend each other against all enemies within or without and as a nation must be defined in terms of justice, domestic tranquility, the general welfare, and the assurance of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. That union implies a community aligned with common values and steadfast in defending those values and each other. Not even Tocqueville could foresee the community America could become since his “Anglo-American civilization” never associated religious and political values with a pluralist society of mixed races, genders, and ethnic groups from every continent in the world. And yet pluralism is the only realistic denominator of present-day America, a possibility our founding fathers chose to overlook, but a reality we must now face.

Often the idea of America as a melting pot for diverse people serves as a simile for a new world order of diverse states. The United Nations is an iconic symbol for that new order, along with the post-war creations at Bretton Woods that included the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Unfortunately, the American ideal of globally interconnected democratic states cannot be achieved via financial hegemony. It remains true that the long-sought post World War II strategic balance amongst competing nations has been tilted in favor of the American dollar. International banking and corporations do rise and fall on a tide of greenbacks. As the 2008 Great Recession demonstrated, the world economy also rises and falls with the integrity of America’s financial institutions. Is free enterprise itself then a threat to democracy, or just its American embodiment? Free markets and fair international banking rules should guarantee a financial order that is both free and equitable. But the ideal here assumes wealth creation benefits all, from the banker and corporate magnates to every employee, customer, and auxiliary participant in the global marketplace. Clearly, that benefit has never been realized, most clearly not even in America. Trillions of dollars of oil, metals, and rare substances have been extracted from impoverished countries. The sole beneficiaries are rich capitalists and the few rich nations that support their enterprises. Perhaps it is time for a new world order, one that has learned from Bretton Woods’ shortfalls.

But America could truly be a world leader if it constrained capitalism to serve its whole population fairly, without disproportionately aggrandizing the rich. Fairness means fair wages, equal treatment before the law, taxes scaled proportionally to earnings, and support for communal benefits such as public education, medical health services, and regulations that generally serve the health and safety of all members of the community. Capitalism can serve the wealth creation of a community, but not when it monopolizes its profits exclusively for the exorbitantly rich. The value of wealth can only be measured by whatever benefit it brings inclusively to every individual, all communities, and the whole of society. Assessing that benefit in terms of its human value excludes excessive hording, cheating, grifting, and swindling.

Without doubt, America has many exceptional achievements as the oldest democracy in history, as a very rich nation with a world leading GDP, and as a leader amongst the community of nations. And we, the American people, are responsible for these achievements, just as Europeans are, for their incredible recovery after a world war. But many of us just accept the words “American exceptionalism” without question, thereby avoiding any responsibility to either define them or apply them to our lives. And our politicians peddle “American exceptionalism” because they want to be re-elected. They believe an unspecified American ideal can serve as a campaign bromide. Unfortunately, an idealism unlived and a vast wealth inequitably realized do not make America exceptional. Therein is a truth Americans must confront.

Although that truth is harder to accept, it is empowering when acted upon. First, we Americans must admit the fact that our democracy was flawed at its outset by a failure to address or even admit the pluralist nature of the population that inhabited this continent. Our forefathers not only committed the genocide of the indigenous peoples, but their subsequent generations deliberately failed to recognize the treaties negotiated with the Indian Nations. Further, our founding fathers drafted the Constitution without any recognition of the Negro slaves that had served the settlers for 167 years as beasts of burden. “All men are created equal” and “we the people” become just meaningless mirages—unless we convert those aspirations into reality. Until we see through this fog of self-deception, we will never overcome the stain of slavery, understand the intent of those ideals/aspirations that founded our nation, or align with those who march under the banner of “Black lives matter.” Secondly, we Americans must admit that the nation’s GDP and stock indices do not account for the nearly 50% of our population living near or below the poverty line. And that admission blows away the myth of economic exceptionalism. In its place, we find political charlatans who run up an 8 trillion-dollar debt to reward the wealthiest among us at the expense of every taxpayer in America (reference: the Trump tax cut for the wealthy and corporations). The same politicians now refuse to roll back their largesse for the wealthy to fund paid family leave or childcare or preschool for working class families. But they will gladly pay a trillion or more to bail out a recession-driven economy that speculators or financial wizards will inevitably create in their wake as they bet with other peoples’ money to enhance their own wealth.

Have you noticed that most analyses of the American economy and the composition of our population are broken down into numbers, most often percentages? If I can steal a quote from Martin Buber, these analyses fall victim to a “ghostly solicitude for faceless digits.” Certainly, I’m part of the digital age and have realized its benefits. But a democracy depends on its representatives and on communities of people. And people do not exist as numbers or percentages, but they do form communities and live in relationships with each other. Those relationships form us from childhood through the rest of our lives. Why would we choose to isolate ourselves from relating to humans with different color skins, ethnic backgrounds, or gender identities? The more encounters we have with people “not like us,” the more opportunities to relate to the basic mystery of our own humanity. Also, those encounters naturally dissolve the fear of others “not like us.” Such encounters develop a shared reality and the flowering of human compassion. In this manner, human communities can form, and a democracy can arise where people care for the needs of each other. Only a narcissist exists alone in his/her own make-believe world, devoid of compassion for others. Such a person exists only for his/herself and represents the extreme of selfishness.

We Americans must begin to remove the barriers that divide us—whether they are information sources, physical separation, the digital divide, or angry demagogues. We Americans can be better citizens in the kind of democracy that assures equality and opportunity for all. We just need to care for each other, which means to work and vote for the America our founders imagined. Only we can make that American dream a reality.

Let me conclude with two questions:
(1) Can democracy survive where capitalism is primarily and unrestrainedly benefiting the wealthy?
(2) Can democracy survive in a pluralist society where racial/ethnic groups are marginalized?

I pray for the day that all my readers will have unhindered opportunity to pursue their interest/occupation and be treated equal before the law, at the ballot box, and in the exercise of all the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Constitution to which we all pledge allegiance.

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¹ Alexis Torcqueville, “Democracy in America,” Volume 1, Easton Press, PP. 39-40.
² Henry Adams, “The Education of Henry Adams,” Easton Press, p. 462. (Henry Adams was the friend of Presidents and the great grandson and grandson of two Presidents, respectively.)
³ Zachary Karabell, “Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power,” Penguin Press, p.308
⁴ The actual figures provided by the Federal Reserve after the first quarter of 2021 indicate that the top 1% own 31% of the nation’s wealth. The overall wealth breakdown for the United States is 69% of the nation’s wealth is owned by the top 10%, leaving the remaining 31% for the vast majority working-age Americans.
⁵ Karabell, in loc cit., p. 409.