"with Republicans and tea party activists accusing President Obama and the Democrats of turning the country toward socialism, the idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world's other nations has become the battle cry from a new front in the ongoing culture wars. Lately, it seems to be on the lips of just about every Republican who is giving any thought to running for president in 2012.
"This reorientation away from a celebration of American exceptionalism is misguided and bankrupt," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney writes in his campaign setup book, "No Apology: The Case For American Greatness." Tumulty
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This kind of thinking is on the rise. A lot of people now seem to have the deep seated belief that we Americans really are better than everyone else. This is reflected in Stephen Colbert's moronic chants of "USA!, USA!" I didn't quite understand what he was getting at in the beginning but it is crystal clear now.
Jingoism. There is no other word for it. I have seen it in a lot of other peoples. I have never liked it in any of them, but it is new to me in the US. The strength of this feeling is now merging in the US with an ignorant hostility to other cultures and peoples and an assumption that "foreigners" must be backward and subject to tuition rather than just different from us.
This tendency brings to mind the college professor of political science who said to me a few years ago that if it were true, as I had said, that the people of the Islamic World generally did not want to be transformed into new Europeans, then he would have to re-evaluate our culture and civilization.
My, My. pl
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/AR2010112804139.html?hpid=talkbox1
