Obama on American Exceptionalism

Obama is such a dang beast. Here's part of a speech on American exceptionalism that he gave a Knox College commencement. Contrast it as you read it with the other version of American exceptionalism that you usually hear, i.e. the conservative one (America is the best, brightest, most perfect place ever, and it's our duty to spread our values around the world via our military whether they want it or not). Read on:

[America is a] place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier. And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream.

This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.

From Ivo Daalder