Is the United States "Exceptional"?

Abstract

"Exceptionalism" as an awareness of the differences between the United States and Europe (and the rest of the world) and a sense of superiority became components of American nationalism and have affected the way that Americans perceive the world and their role in it. There are many interpretations of how the country came to be, what its defining characteristics are, and how factual or merely self-congratulatory the elements of the nationalistic claims of exceptionality really were or are now. Like any nationalistic tenet, the exceptionality thesis certainly requires a deliberately selective and incomplete interpretation of the national history. This study examines the actual current performance of the country, in economic, social, and political terms, in comparison to other developed democracies, to assess the empirical validity of that "exceptionality" claim in actual practice. Many links to high-quality, cost-free online sources in English are offered to assist interested persons who wish to analyze further some aspects of the contemporary situation of the United States in a comparative context.