Let's stop trying to be great again and become exceptional

by Jason Safford

We as American people have been ingrained with the idea of exceptionalism. Our nation's history is an inspirational tale that includes fighting for our freedom and creating way of life to be more than what the world thinks we should be. We imagine ourselves as a people who “more than self their country loved and mercy more than life,” in the words of “America the Beautiful.” Our notion of patriotism includes the concept of liberty in our nation lifting our light beside the golden door, allowing the poor, sick, weak and downtrodden to find refuge in our towns, cities and villages and to strive for more. We believe we are the land of abundance and prosperity, where anything is possible. So why do we suddenly believe we need to be great again, when we have always believed we are exceptional?

Although it is taught in our history books, few may remember the first person to apply the term “exceptional” to Americans was a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. He used it to describe us in his prophetic survey of American life in the 1830s, Democracy in America. But the idea has been around even longer, and it has never lost its grip on our imagination. President Ronald Reagan, in rallying Americans to his program for a new “Morning in America,” described America in almost mystical terms as a “shining city on a hill.” The light it shone with was like none that lighted any other nation. “I’ve always believed that this blessed land was set apart in a special way,” President Reagan said in 1983, “that there was some divine plan that placed the two great continents here between the oceans to be found by people from every corner of the Earth who had a deep love for freedom.”

Today, we are blessed with more resources than ever before in terms of technology, information and power to create the basic necessities of life - food, water, fire and shelter. We lack for nothing as a nation and as a people. We control the supreme ability to "uplift society and the world as a whole". And yet, we have not taken control of this power. We have not created abundance and prosperity for everyone. We are still living with a scarcity mindset and a belief that better days will come with good old fashion hardwork and perseverance. We leave our fate up to the Heavens or our political system or some other fool, instead of grabbing our destiny like our forefathers did when they fought for the Freedoms we now enjoy.

Acknowledging the American Revolution gave birth to American exceptionalism, we often fail to remember that this concept came from struggle, conflict and war. Having the determination to fight for our Freedoms, we were willing to sacrifice our lives. In one stupendous burst of energy, we as people overturned the entire structure—political, constitutional, legal, and social—of hierarchy. and applied concepts of equality and natural rights to practical politics. In this one effort, we made ourselves great forever, we do not have to be great again.

In our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson described the most basic of these rights—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—as “self-evident.” More than our US Constitution, this document is our guiding light as a people. It provides us the freedom to pursue the most valuable of all rights, "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." It was in our own statement that we chose to be exceptional. We proclaimed novus ordo seclorum. Frederick Douglass, who obtained his Freedom from slavery in this country, claimed exceptionalism in the voice of America “was as the sound of an archangel, summoning hoary forms of oppression and time-honored tyranny, to judgment. . . . It announced the advent of a nation, based upon human brotherhood and the self-evident truths of liberty and equality. Its mission was the redemption of the world from the bondage of ages.” If a man who was once a slave in this country can rise to a level of exceptionalism that we can acknowledge, we are all capable of this notion. Our choice is simple.

Our current times and our current struggles are not anything new or transcendent. We are angry and divided. We are fed up and desperate. What is new are the challenges and changes in the conditions of the planet and transformation of our society as people. We suddenly have been forced to work from home and have the great fortune to have the power to do so thanks to computers, smart technology and nationwide internet connection. But we need to do it better. We suddenly have been forced to wear masks because of a pandemic to save our own lives and our neighbors and we have the choice to do so, which demonstrates how much power we truly have.

Past leaders have helped shape America today by investing in an incredible infrastructure that makes up our nationwide network of energy, communications, transportation and the ability for Amazon to deliver everything you want to your doorstep. All of this already exists. We do not have to create it. And our future includes the ability to use more and more technology from robotics to AI computers to continue to improve our ability to get what we want at lower and lower costs.

Being Great is already establish in the fabric of America. It is in our nature to look forward as entrepreneurs and innovators and foster a new way of living, working and playing. Smart cities are on the horizon with fresh water, food, energy, fire, housing and an abundance of resources all within the sustainable architecture of greater efficiency and economy. This is where we have the opportunity to pursue our exceptionalism. Uplifting our people, our environments, our infrastructure and our nation, we can continue the improvement of our ideas and desires of how we choose to live. That is what has always made America great. Now more than ever, in this very moment in time, we have the opportunity to choose to stop fighting over that notion of whether or not we need to be great again, we can look forward and choose to be exceptional.