"the global exception"

If you liked this and this, you might have an interest in Scott McLemee this week:

The way of thinking called American exceptionalism comes in two major varieties. One is more or less religious: A faith that the United States has a special place under heaven’s watchful eye. Sometimes this involves a literal belief that the country has a role in the divine plan; in other cases, it’s just a matter of rhetoric verging on national egomania.

The other form of American exceptionalism has a more left-wing genealogy. It emerged from debates over the peculiarities of the United States compared to other highly industrialized nation-states — especially the lack of a labor party or a mass-based socialist movement of the kind that became standard elsewhere in the world. That, in turn, raises some interesting questions about what distinctive factors might explain the “exception.” Was it slavery? The lack of an aristocracy? All those natural resources on the frontier, ripe for the plucking?

In either version, the United States stands as a nation apart — somehow the product of forces cutting it off from the rest of the world’s history. But [this book] takes a different and rather paradoxical approach to American exceptionalism....