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BARACK OBAMA AND AMERICAN
EXCEPTIONALISMS
Phil ip S. Gorski & Wil l iam McMil l an
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BARACK OBAMA AND
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISMS
By Philip S. Gorski and William McMillan
D
oes Barack Obama believe in “American exceptionalism”? Many on the right charge that he does not.1Some on the left worry that he does.2Who is right? And how might it matter, both for the 2012 presidential campaign and, beyond that, for American foreign policy?Before we can begin to answer these questions, we mustfirst be clear about the terms“American” and“exceptionalism”and their history. Alas, that is easier said than done. For one thing, in colloquial English the word“exceptional”has a number of different meanings, and“American” can be contrasted with any number of other nationalities. Complicating matters further, the phrase“American exceptionalism”(henceforth: AE) has a long and checkered history. In political parlance, AE is a highly contested and often polemical term, not only between the left and the right, but also within them.
Understanding AE therefore means outlining its various connotations and documenting how the term is deployed in political debate. Thefirst task of this essay is therefore to supply some historical perspective and analytical clarity about the shifting and manifold meanings of AE. The second task is to determine whether Obama adheres to AE, and if so, in what way. To anticipate: We conclude that Obama is indeed an American exceptionalist—of a certain sort. What sort? Here, we distinguish two main types of AE: a“crusader exceptionalism”(CE) favored by most of Obama’s Grand Old Party (GOP) rivals, and a “prophetic exceptionalism”(PE) articulated by Obama himself. CE envisions America as a
blessed nation charged with exporting democratic capitalism throughout the world. It is generally triumphalist in tone and loudly celebrates America’s successes. PE defines America in terms of certain founding ideals—ideals of potentially universal significance which the nation tries, but often fails, to live up to. It is more reflective in tone and more apt to repent of America’s excesses. Each brand of exceptionalism rests on a somewhat different understanding of what makes America“exceptional.”For example, CE places greater stress on personal freedom and national sovereignty, while PE gives more emphasis to social equality and civic inclusion. At a deeper level, each exceptionalism pulls on different strands of the Judeo-Christian tradition—more millennial and apocalyptic in the case of CE; more prophetic and ethical in the case of PE.
The New American Exceptionalism
It is important to stress that theideathat America is somehow“unusual”or“special”is nothing new. In fact, exceptionalist claims arrived with thefirst Puritans who envisioned themselves as a chosen people and New England as a New
Philip S. Gorskiis Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Yale University, where he is also co-director of the Center for Comparative Research and the MacMillan Initiative on Religion and Politics. His recent publications includeThe Post-Secular in Question(New York University Press, 2012). He is currently completing a book on the history of American civil religion.
William McMillan, M.A. & M. Div. (theological studies), is a graduate student in the sociology department at Yale University. His research interests focus on the intersection of religion, culture, and politics, with particular interest in faith and globalization.
Israel.3The Revolution simply superimposed a new exceptionalism on the old: Americans were blessed with republican government.4During the Civil War, Unionists and Confederates alike thought of themselves as exceptionally Christian.5The wars of the 20thcentury (including the Cold War) appended still more dimensions: America was exceptional in power and prosperity—in the might of its military and the dynamism of its (capitalist) economy.6
However, theconceptof AE, the actual phrase “American exceptionalism,”is less than 100 years old.7And the currentdiscourseof AE, the particular set of interlocking connotations the phrase currently possesses, is not even 10 years old. This raises a host of questions: In what ways do present-day conservatives presume that America is exceptional? How does the
conservative discourse of AE differ from earlier ideas about AE? And why did conservatives adopt the AE label in thefirst place?
Let us begin by unpacking the connotations of “exceptional”in everyday usage. Dictionary definitions distinguish two valences: (1) descriptive, as in“unusual”or“atypical”; and (2) evaluative, as in “unusually good”or“outstanding.”In
contemporary legal and philosophical discourse, “exceptionalism”has acquired two further
connotations, namely: (3) an“exceptional case”that is somehow exempt from the legal rules or standards that apply to other nations; and (4) the so-called “state of exception”in which the sovereign authority engages in extralegal actions vis-à-vis its subjects.8As we will see, it is these latter two connotations that set apart the old discourse of AE from the new.
Now let us turn to the term“American.” Because America is an immigrant nation, it must define itself in opposition to various“others”to an unusual degree. The wide and ever-changing distinction from the“other”has been: (1) civilizational (e.g., Indians, Negroes, Islam); (2) national (e.g., British, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian); (3) political (e.g., aristocrats, monarchists, imperialists, fascists, communists); and, (4) religious (e.g., antinomians, Catholics, Mormons, atheists, Muslims).
In crusader exceptionalism, America is the exception to the“European”rule.9Commonly drawn contrasts include:
. Demography: fecund vs. moribund (e.g., “Europe is dying”).
. Culture: masculine vs. effeminate (e.g., “Surrender monkeys”).
. Religion: Christian vs. secular (e.g., “Godless Europeans”).
. Society: open vs. closed (e.g.,“Europe is a class society”).
. Social policy: freedom vs. dependency (e.g., “The nanny state”).
. Fiscal policy: responsible vs. spendthrift (e.g.,“unsustainable expenditures”). . Foreign policy: unilateral vs. multilateralist
(e.g.,“power or paradise”10).
Because“Europe”is multivalent—because it is a civilization, an international institution, and a diverse set of nation-states—critics can draw different contrasts according to the political occasion. Worried that America is in decline? Europe is much older and sure to nosedive before us. Up in arms about bureaucratic overregulation? Look at the EU! Feckless spending? Greece is a basket case! Geopolitical impotence? They don’t even have an aircraft carrier! Religious decline? The French are card-carrying secularists.
This contrast with“Europe”not only helps tie together a disparate set of concerns about America’s future; it also helps to separate“real Americans”from“pseudo-Americans.”The same set of binaries can be used to portray liberals as crypto-Europeans: as infertile, effeminate, socialist, egalitarian, dependent, spendthrift, multilateralist, secularist, cosmopolitan, and so on.
We use the adjective“crusader”because it captures an unspoken premise of the new conservative AE, specifically the presumption that the American people have received a“great commission”—a dual commission—to defend Christian civilization and the Jewish state from secularists and Islamists, and also to export democratic capitalism to the rest of the world, by force of arms where appropriate, and that in so doing, they are playing the leading role in a great historical or eschatological drama. Note that it is the crusade that underwrites the exceptions. Insofar as American arms are an instrument of progress, even of providence, they are not bound by positive or earthly law; they
answer only to the higher laws of history or the eschaton.
Under the influence of neo-conservatism, Republican positions on foreign policy have become steadily more unilateralist, exemptionalist, and preemptive, particularly since the election of George W. Bush and the advent of the War on Terror.11Likewise, Republicans have increasingly made“personal freedom”the lodestar of their social policy and steadily defined down“social equality,” particularly during the last several years, following the formation of the Tea Party and Ron Paul’s second campaign for the presidency.12Believers in the“crusader”version of the concept are
particularly apt to wear the new“American exceptionalism”label as a badge of honor.
An Ironic History: From Stalin to
Kagan to Romney
But where did the label come from? As it turns out, the AE concept has had a rather checkered and ironic career.13Conservative champions of AE often attribute it to Alexis de Tocqueville. But this is a red herring, designed to throw opponents off the scent. While Tocqueville did use the word “exceptional”in one passage inDemocracy in America, he did not coin the actual phrase AE.14 Its origins are to be found in the heyday of the Second International, when socialist theorists and activists, such as Werner Sombart and Jay Lovestone, wondered whether Marx’s laws of historical development would apply to the United States.15(Marx and Engels pondered this themselves.) They fretted that“special conditions” in American society, such as the strength of racial and ethnic divisions, and the weakness of class consciousness, were impeding the development of the socialist movement and called for a different set of tactics. Remarkably, Stalin eventually declared their views heretical, sparking a major schism within the American Communist Party.16
After World War II, the AE concept slowly diffused into academic discourse (see Figure 1). In the 1970s and 1980s, during the heyday of academic Marxism, the question of AE sparked a major scholarly debate.17On the heels of this, historians and sociologists such as Sean Wilentz and Seymour Martin Lipset revisited Sombart and Lovestone’s question: Why is there no
socialism in America?18How do“American conditions”differ from European ones? Racial division, ethnic conflict, Lockean liberalism, religious vitality, a decentralized state, corporate power, a violent culture—these are just some of the“special conditions”identified by scholars of AE. Interestingly, it is the historians—generally inclined to emphasize particularity—who have been most critical of AE, while the social scientists—vocationally attuned to historical generality—have acted as its main defenders.
Over the last decade or so, the AE concept has gradually migrated from neo-Marxist debates into neo-conservative rhetoric. This trajectory is not as improbable as it seems. Manyfirst-generation neo-conservatives were former socialists who had come of age in the 1930s and participated in the sectarian debates amongst American Marxists.19It seems likely that their biological and/or intellectual progeny—men such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan—would have imbibed the AE concept with their mother’s milk and still had it lingering on the tips of their tongues in the 1980s when they began advocating for a policy of“national greatness,”raging against liberal multilateralism, and denouncing the alleged utopianism of the Europeans.20
Shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, the AE concept entered into the wider public discourse where it now circulates with ever-increasing ferocity (see Figure 2). The initial impetus came from the pen of Karl Rove. In a widely-read op-ed in the April 23, 2009 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Rove accused Obama of “apolog[izing] on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors.” What is worse, lamented Rove, is that the opening act of this“apology tour”played before“the French (the French!).”Rove’s charges: Obama was pandering to the Europeans, airing the nation’s dirty laundry, and engaging in multilateralism. His evidence: Snippets from four speeches, all quoted out of context. His closing argument:“Mr. Obama was asked in Europe if he believes in American exceptionalism. He said he did—in the same way that‘the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism.’That’s another way of saying,‘No.’”21
Two months earlier, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli had launched into his now-famous rant
philip s. gorski and william mcmillan
against the bank bailouts and the stimulus package. Speaking from the tradingfloor of the Chicago Commodities Exchange, he urged his listeners to organize a new“Tea Party”in protest. “I’ll tell you what,”he concluded,“if you read our founding fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson…what we’re doing in this country now is making them roll over in their graves.”22 By the beginning of 2011 it had become clear that both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were going to make AE a central component of their 2012 campaigns. This was already evident just from the titles of their campaign books:No Apology: The Case for American Greatness(2010)
andBelieve in America(2011) by Romney, and To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine(2011) andA Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters (2011) by Gingrich. Following Rove’s lead, they and the other GOP candidates repeatedly charge that Barack Obama does not believe in AE.
Are they right?
Contemporary Conservatism
’
s
Narrative of Exceptionalism
Before we convict or acquit, let us review the charges. The key tenets of CE might be summed up as follows: piety, liberty, capitalism, and Figure 1. “American Exceptionalism”in Academic Discourse
Source: JSTOR.“American exceptionalism”search. Accessed 12 March 2012. www.jstor.org.
Figure 2. “American Exceptionalism”in Public Discourse
Number of print media mentions by year found in Lexis Nexis search.
Source: Lexis Nexis.“American exceptionalism”search. Accessed 12 March 2012. www.lexisnexis.com. Note: Data for 2012 is projected from January 2012–March 3 2012 count (552)
unilateralism. CE affirms that America is unusually and perhaps uniquely God-fearing (Judeo-Christian), freedom-loving (and government-hating), capitalist (and therefore prosperous), and powerful (militarily), especially as compared to“Europe.”23
The orthodox creed appeals to a particular narrative of American history. The synoptic gospel of CE has three chapters and a coda: (1) America was founded by“people of faith,”meaning an “orthodox”or“traditional”Christian faith, putatively shared by both the Puritans and the Revolutionaries; (2) the Revolution was a struggle for“liberty”or“freedom,”specifically a negative, anti-statist liberty and a pro-market economic freedom; (3) the Progressivism
of the 1930s and the liberalism of the 1960s were aberrant and heretical creeds that led to an era of moral backsliding and decay (in McGovern’s famous formula:“amnesty, acid, abortion”) that was ultimately reversed by the rise of conservatism and the election of (Saint) Ronald Reagan; and, (4) coda:
Because America is religious, democratic, and capitalist, American military strength is usually or always a“force for good in the world.”24It is therefore legitimate and necessary that America act alone and use any means necessary because the outcome will always be good. This is the triumphalist narrative of a virtuous and generous people who simply wish to share their (well-deserved!) blessings with the rest of the world.
It is important to note that a good many self-described conservatives would dissent from one or another of these tenets. For example, some of the more secular-minded neo-conservatives who loudly trumpet liberty, capitalism, and
unilateralism suddenly go silent on piety.25 Conversely, many thoughtful religious
conservatives are uneasy about unilateralism and sometimes even about capitalism, if left
unchecked.26Meanwhile, white working-class voters sometimes have a more jaded view of capitalism, which they associate with Wall Street and corporate raiders.27Finally, libertarians (of
the Ron Paul, but especially the Ayn Rand stripe) are not especially enamored of piety or power.28 In short, there are varying degrees of AE within the ranks of the contemporary GOP. What has united them for a full generation is their revulsion at the“excesses of the 1960s.”
Apart from Ron Paul’s opposition to unilateralism, however, the current crop of GOP hopefuls has embraced the new AEin toto. As indeed they must, in order to hold four of their main constituencies together: National greatness neo-conservatives, socially conservative religious voters, right-wing economic populists, and hardcore libertarians. If they really wish to carry the nomination or win the presidency, the
candidates have little choice but to espouse a full-throated version of AE.
Is Barack Obama an
American
Exceptionalist?
Obviously, Barack Obama is not this sort of American exceptionalist. While he accepts the main tenets of CE —piety, liberty, capitalism, and unilateralism—he qualifies them in various ways. For example, he recognizes the central role of religion in American history, but welcomes non-believers into the public square.29He is likewise a strong defender of personal liberty and human rights but also seeks some measure of social and economic equality. While he is a member of a political party that is, by comparison to most parties of the“left”around the world, very friendly to capitalism, he still insists on uniform rules of the road in the free market.30And although he believes that American military power entails a special American role in the global security regime, he believes that America must abide by the rules of just war, international law, and the Geneva Conventions, so far as possible.31But these qualified affirmations count for little amongst American conservatives. For them, Obama’s version of AE—what we would call prophetic exceptionalism—is watered-down at best.
Obama’s version of the American gospel story overlaps with the CE narrative on some points
MANY THOUGHTFUL
philip s. gorski and william mcmillan
but diverges on others. Obama does portray the Puritan emigration as a quest for religious freedom and the Revolutionary War as a struggle for political freedom, and he interprets World War II as a just war against totalitarianism.32But he also makes the abolitionist struggle and the Civil War into a pivotal chapter of the American story, casts the social policies of the New Deal in a more positive light, and reads the 1960s through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for women’s liberation.
Note that these two American stories give rise to different morals. In the conservative CE narrative, America’s founding documents and institutions are perfect and God-given. The challenge is therefore to preserve and protect their original meaning and structure. In Obama’s PE narrative, by contrast, the founding documents and institutions are stained and imperfect—stained most obviously by the original sin of slavery and imperfect because of their denial of full human equality and solidarity.33The challenge, then, is to purify and perfect their core ideas and purposes.
Three such ideas and purposes recur again and again in Obama’s speeches and writings. Each echoes another phrase from the founding documents. Thefirst is Obama’s insistence that Americans must practice solidarity with one another:“Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper.”34 It echoes John Winthrop’s famous injunction to his fellow Puritans that:“We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’necessities…as members of the same body.”35The second is Obama’s insistence that social equality—and not just individual liberty—is one of the founding ideals, or, as the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence puts it, that“all men are created equal.”The third is Obama’s call for mutual recognition across lines of culture, class, and race. Here, he frequently invokes the Preamble to the
Constitution, which urges Americans to“form a more perfect union,”and the original motto of the United States,e pluribus unum: Out of many, one. For Obama, what truly sets America apart and gives it a potentially universal significance is the possibility of equality, solidarity, and unity
amongst people from all parts of the globe. In a world of increasing movement and
interconnection between nations and cultures, Obama suggests, the American experiment is a crucial one, with world-historical significance.
Given these emphases, we do not regard Obama’s version of AE as just a watered-down version of CE, but rather as an altogether different type of AE. The two forms of AE are both rooted in the Bible, but they draw on different parts of it. The narrative template for CE has two biblical sources: The tales of conquest and holy war found in the books of Judges and Kings, and the millenarian and apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and John. The biblical sources for PE are quite different; they are found in the deliverance story of the Israelites and their covenant with God, detailed in Exodus, and in the ethical teachings of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Jesus. The narrative of CE is a linear one: A steady march towards the eschaton. The PE narrative meanders: It includes wanderings and backslidings,fleshpots and idols. The promised land located in the founding covenant is never quite realized; it is always still just over the horizon.
Each exceptionalism leads to a very different understanding of America’s relationship to the world. CE emphasizes action and conversion. It enjoins Americans to use their considerable power to spread the saving gospel of democratic capitalism throughout the world. Its political theology and cultural soteriology are broadly “evangelical,”insofar as they emphasize the holiness of America and the possibilities of perfection. PE entails reflection and witness. It urges Americans to repent of their collective sins and strive to be an example to the world. Its political theology is more Augustinian, insofar as it emphasizes the plenitude of America’s sins and the difficulties of reform.
Conclusion: Looking Forward,
Looking Backward
As of this writing, the political constellation seems to favor Obama’s reelection, yet the overall geopolitical and economic contexts remain highly volatile and could reconfigure the race in short order. Regardless, the foregoing analysis does shed some light on the likely dynamics of the race and possible foreign policy implications.
During the primaries, the GOP candidates often framed the fall elections as a“battle for the soul of America.”It would be more accurate to describe it as a debate about the story of America, and the story of its exceptionalisms. It has not always been that way. There was a time, not so long ago, when the Republican Party had a virtual monopoly on AE. The conservative patriotism of “faith, family, andflag”was really the only game in town, and Democrats could either play along or sit on the sidelines.
That began to change in 2004, not because the Democrats chose a decorated war hero (John Kerry) as their standard bearer, but because John Kerry chose a young state legislator from Illinois to deliver a keynote address at
the Democratic National Convention. In that speech, Obama laid hold of theflag in a way that no Democrat had since John F. Kennedy, using the themes of national solidarity, opportunity, and unity that would become the hallmark of his 2008
campaign, and articulating them in the language of the founding documents. The
un-impeachability of Obama’s own family values and his ability to speak openly and articulately about his Christian faith—in a way that did not immediately alienate secular progressives— further insulated him against the old-style culture war attacks used against Bill Clinton and Kerry.
Of course, there are a great many“low information voters”—and some well informed politicos—who actually regard, or cynically portray, Obama as a“European,”a“Muslim,”a“socialist,” and, in sum, an impostor. But the Republican Party no longer has a monopoly on patriotism.
Will the differences between the two strands of American exceptionalism impact foreign policy after the 2012 election? We might try to answer this question by looking backward to 2008. When we compare Obama’s foreign policy to George W. Bush’s, we discover several
continuities. At the level of doctrine, for instance, both administrations have used just war theory to legitimate their actions, and both have
interpreted preemptive action so expansively as to
border on preventive attack, Bush in Iraq and Obama in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the level of action, there is considerable evidence that the Obama administration continues to engage in “rendition”and perhaps even in“enhanced interrogation techniques,”notwithstanding Obama’s promises to halt these practices. American progressives who thought they were voting for a peace president have been sorely disappointed.
There have been, however, some striking discontinuities between the two administrations. At the level of strategy, for instance, Obama has shifted America’s focus towards Asia in an effort to rebalance against China. In terms of tactics,
Obama has relied much more heavily on drone strikes and special operations to take out high value targets (including at least one US citizen). There have also been at least two subtle if important shifts in doctrine. While the Bush administration committed itself to promoting electoral democracy, the Obama administration has made human rights its overarching goal. Accordingly, while Bush aimed for regime change in Iraq, Obama has pledged to protect civilians in cases of domestic instability, as in Libya (but not Syria).
Another way of assessing Obama’s foreign policy is by imagining what Senator John McCain’s would have been, had he been elected. Given McCain’s protests against the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, it seems highly likely that the American occupation would have continued through thefirst term of a President McCain. Likewise, given McCain’s calls for“red lines”that Iran must not cross, it seems highly likely that the United States would have undertaken a preventive strike against that country’s nuclear program had he been commander-in-chief.
We suggest that Bush and McCain’s foreign policy proclivities and positions were informed by the monologic certainty of the CE narrative, whereas Obama’s foreign policy decisions have been tempered by the dialogic critique inherent in the PE narrative. The former posture meets
OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY
DECISIONS HAVE BEEN TEMPERED BY THE DIALOGIC
CRITIQUE INHERENT IN THE PROPHETIC EXCEPTIONALISM
NARRATIVE
philip s. gorski and william mcmillan
other nations via the one-way golden street envisioned by crusader exceptionalism; the latter via the guiding path marked out by prophetic exceptionalism—with its mirror for self-evaluation and historical critique in hand. A CE-flavored foreign policy is prone to run headlong where others fear to tread; a PE-flavored foreign policy proceeds with a greater degree of circumspection. In sum, while the Obama
presidency to date has not exhibited as sharp a break with Bush’s policies as many of his supporters may have hoped, it has set American foreign policy on a different trajectory. This trajectory subtly reflects the differences between the American exceptionalisms of the GOP and the Obama administration—differences that will likely become even more apparent as the 2012 presidential election unfolds.v
1. See, for instance, Factor,“American Exceptionalism“; Heilbrunn,“Is Barack Obama Anti-American or Simply Mediocre?”; Lowry and Ponnuru,“An Exceptional Debate.”
2. See, for instance, Chomsky,Hopes and Prospects; Landreau,“Obama’s My Dad“; Zinn,“The Power and the Glory.” 3. See Bellah,The Broken Covenantand Cherry,God’s New Israel.
4. See Hatch,The Sacred Cause of Libertyand Noll,America’s God.
5. See Noll and Blair,The Civil War as a Theological Crisisand Stout,Upon the Altar of the Nation.
6. See Gamble,The War for Righteousness; Haberski,God and War; Inboden,Religion and American Foreign Policy.
7. See Alpers,“How did‘Exceptionalism’Become a Conservative Shibboleth?”and Karabel,“‘American Exceptionalism’and the Battle for the Presidency.” 8. See Koh,“On American Exceptionalism.”
9. See Hannan,Why America Must Not Follow Europe. 10. See Kagan,Of Paradise and Power.
11. See David and Grondin,Hegemony or Empire?and McCarthy,“From Modernism to Messianism.” 12. See Skocpol and Williamson,The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. 13. See Lipset,American Exceptionalism.
14.“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no other democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.”In Tocqueville,Democracy in America, 36–7.
15. See Sombart,Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?and Morgan,A Covert Life. 16. See Fried,Communism in America.
17. See Kammen,“The Problem of American Exceptionalism“and Rodgers,“American Exceptionalism Revisited.” 18. See Lipset,American Exceptionalismand Wilentz,“Against Exceptionalism.”
19. See Dorrien,The Neoconservative Mind; Heilbrunn,They Knew They Were Right; Vaisse,Neoconservatism. 20. See Kaplan and Kristol,The War Over Iraq; Kagan and Kristol,Present Dangers; Kagan,Of Paradise and Power. 21. Rove,“The President’s Apology Tour.”
22. CNBC,“Shout Heard Round the World.”
23. See Hannan,Why America Must Not Follow Europe; Lowry and Ponnuru,“An Exceptional Debate”; Steyn,America Alone.
24. This narrative of American history can be found implicitly and explicitly in Barton,Setting the Record Straight, and in Gingrich,A Nation Like No Other. 25. See Lowry and Ponnuru.“An Exceptional Debate.
26. See, for instance, Reno,“American Empire.”
27. Rick Santorum has often articulated this position on the stump. 28.The Daily Caller,“Paul.”
29. See Falsani,“Obama on Faith.”
30. See Obama,“Remarks by the President on Wall Street Reform.” 31. See Obama,“Renewing American Leadership.”
32. See Obama,“A More Perfect Union.” 33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Winthrop,“A Model of Christian Charity,”294–5.
References
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Barton, David.Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black and White. Aledo, TX: WallBuilders, 2004.
Bellah, Robert N.The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. 2ndedn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Cherry, Conrad.God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Chomsky, Noam.Hopes and Prospects. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2010.
CNBC.“Shout Heard Round the World,”February 22, 2009. http://www.cnbc.com/id/29283701/Rick_Santelli_s_Shout_Heard_Round_the_World (accessed March 12, 2012).
The Daily Caller.“Paul: American Exceptionalism Does Not Justify Overseas Intervention,”January 20, 2012. http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/20/paul-american-exceptionalism-does-not-justify-overseas-intervention/ (accessed March 21, 2012).
David, Charles Philippe, and David Grondin.Hegemony or Empire?: The Redefinition of US Power under George W. Bush. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
de Tocqueville, Alexis.Democracy in America. Vol. 2. Trans. Henry Reeve. New York: J.&H.G. Langley, 1840.
Dorrien, Gary J.The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993.
Factor, Mallory.“American Exceptionalism—And an‘Exceptional’President.”Forbes.com, August 31, 2010. http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/31/barack-obama-exceptionalism-america-opinions-columnists-mallory-factor.html (accessed March 21, 2012).
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