Submitted to a Candid World

On tour in Germany, candidate Obama praised the American spirit, calling us a “people of improbable hope,” and delivered an optimistic message to a crowd of 200,000+ Germans – many waving American flags. Striking the right tone in a time when our allies question America’s commitment to its role as sole hegemon, Obama declared himself “a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.”

But Rush Limbaugh would have none of this, quote-mining Obama’s self-description to ignore the fact that he called himself first a “proud citizen of the United States,” and then blasting Obama for misunderstanding American exceptionalism, “deemphasizing” his American-ness, and placing our commitment to the world above our commitment to ourselves.

The intellectual mendacity involved in this decontextualizing attack is insulting enough to the American intelligence, but what’s really criminal, here, is the misperception of what American exceptionalism is.  Limbaugh imagines American exceptionalism as a right inherent in our name – we’re America, ergo we’re different, and better than the rest – and an entitlement to walk alone on the world stage.  Mr. EIB couldn’t be farther from the truth.

America wasn’t founded to get away from the rest of the world: it was founded to be a beacon of hope to the world, the city on the hill to which the rest of the world could aspire.  Even if we’re better than the rest, we aren’t above the rest: we are, to borrow a distinction from the early Roman Empire, the “first among equals,” the princeps of the world.  Like Augustus, while we exceed others in auctoritas (moral authority), we exceed none in potestas (brute force and named political positions).  While exceptionalism entitles us to be different, and proud of our differences, it requires us to earn respect for our differences from the rest of the world, day in and day out, by living up to the high moral standard the rest of the world expects from us.

We aren’t better than the rest of the world because of the fact of America; we’re better because of the idea of America.  We’re exceptional and owed our moral authority only to the extent that the fact lives up to the idea.  If Barack Obama can make Germans believe in the idea of America, to the point that they’re willing to stand in a crowd of a quarter million and wave a foreign flag, I’d say he’s getting American exceptionalism just right.

Maybe that’s what Limbaugh’s really afraid of.