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Writing in the Globalist, author Brian K. Muzas posits that American Exceptionalism is dead and was never really a thing in the first place. As a red-blooded American girl, I am sick to death of these nattering nabobs of negativism (Thank you, William Safire) and their willful misunderstanding of the American Experiment. Muzas argues that America in unique in her optimism, individualism and work ethic, but not exceptional.
I had to read the description of “the Globalist” because I had never heard of it. According to the Globalist “About” tab: “Anyone with a curiosity to learn about the world around himself or herself is a globalist.” Well Hale, we are all globalists according to that description. A quick glance at the articles listed shows these people are purveyors of gloom and doom. It is depressing reading the titles.
Brian K. Muzas is an ordained Catholic priest and Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University. He also has a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). After writing that America was unique in her optimism, individualism and work ethic, Muzas says that Donald Trump has ruined that:
The outgoing U.S. President, rhetoric notwithstanding, has done much to pollute this core, even constitutive, national belief.
Muzas offers as proof, the Capitol breach on January 6:
Most Americans, however, would have envisioned such a staggering act as happening overseas in an unindustrialized, undemocratic backwater or similar setting — definitely not in the citadel of U.S. democracy — the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
After all, the United States, as the leader of the free world, is supposed to be somehow different, exceptional — hence the term, “American exceptionalism.”
First of all, the U.S. Capitol is not the citadel of democracy. It is the citadel of hypocrisy. Second, that Capitol breach was a small intersectionality of Qanon, BLM and antifa supporters, not an insurrection. It was not a new Pearl Harbor or September 11, 2001. And, will we ever find out who shot Ashli Babbitt?
We don’t have a citadel of democracy. The Citadel of Our Republic is the Constitution of the United States of America.
More from Mr. Muzas’s article:
If we are honest with ourselves, the idea of American exceptionalism was overblown and ham-fisted ever since it was first articulated.
Now we see plainly that the concept ultimately can become self-destructive — rendering a nation tone-deaf, and a populace unable to comprehend the difference between “listening” and “waiting to speak.”
In the worst case, people turn brutish and speech turns violent.
If Mr. Muzas was honest with himself, he would admit that he doesn’t understand American exceptionalism. He claims it is ham-fisted, but offers no examples. Does he not know that we have been “listening” and “waiting to speak” and now we are done with waiting? The people who have been brutish are the people who have spent the last five months burning our cities.
What is American exceptionalism? The late Justice Antonin Scalia describes it:
Golly, we miss Antonin Scalia. He explains the genius of the Founding Fathers with the bicameral government, separately elected executive and the independent judiciary so beautifully. Senator Mike Lee and Justices Breyer and Scalia vollying will increase your IQ points. The Bill of Rights is a parchment guarantee without The Constitution. Surely, Father Muzas has traveled the world enough to know that religious freedom is tenuous and, often, non-existent.
But, it’s so much more than The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. In most places in the world today, where and how you were born is who you are. Here in the United States, you can become whoever you want to be. If your parents were low born, illiterates, that does not mean that you have be poor and illiterate. Read a brief biography of Dr. Ben Carson. Think about Barbadian singer Rihanna. Writer J.D. Vance rose above his roots to write Hillbilly Elegy.
These stories of successful lives are the rule here in the United States of America, not the exception. Our Constitution, our open society and our optimistic people guarantee that American exceptionalism will not die. We dare to dream and we make our dreams come true. American exceptionalism is our birthright and we are keeping it. You can mock us, you can denigrate us, you can threaten to reprogram us. As long as one of us still believes in the promise of America, the dream won’t die.
Featured Image: Robert Huffstutter/Flickr.com/Built upon/Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Mr. Muzas, give thanks to your false God that we don’t burn heretics at the stake in this country.
Liberals like him are utterly clueless. We don’t treat government as sacred because it isn’t. They are supposed to be just ordinary people and that is all. He sounds like the kind of guy who thinks the rioting victims got what they deserved.
America was born from an idea. All other nations were born from a tribe.
Bingo. That is the exception in American exceptionalism.
Any priest who writes at the Globalist has his principles of Catholic Moral Theology in an odd order. Opposition to abortion is a pre-eminent Catholic moral foundation. Any other social theology is secondary. The one thing that has been on the globalist agenda for over fifty years now is population control greatly supported by its advocacy of widespread abortion. Say what you will about Trump, but there is no denying he was the greatest pro-life president since Reagan. For this reason alone, a priest should have been able to swallow any other bitter pills from Trump and supported him to the hilt.
Tick.
[…] The government is not the country. The country abides. […]
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