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Saturday 7 July 2012
Is America more exceptional today than in 1776?

Are we freer, or more liberty-loving, than the British today? Or the French or the Swedes or the Germans, all of whom magnanimously provide free healthcare to all within their borders? Those in this country who decry the Affordable Care Act, which they sneeringly call “Obamacare,” bring up plenty of bile in accusing an overreaching federal government of wanting to deprive individuals of their liberty. By the standards of 1776, their ideology is un-American. The oppressive and arbitrary power of private insurance companies, whose distinct lack of magnanimity toward ailing citizens is legend, pales in comparison to the damage a caring, if overly bureaucratized, Washington can do.

Knee-jerk reactions are dangerous. Buzzwords such as “big government” or “the Hollywood elite” are designed to make progressives appear as outsiders. The litmus test of “Do you believe in American exceptionalism or don’t you?” is perhaps the worst, because it wraps our well-enshrined national principle of magnanimity in hubris. A few years back, writing for the Financial Times Deutchland, Thomas Klau put it correctly: “In America, the collective image of foreign countries is a mythical one, preserved as if in formaldehyde, handed down from the time of the founding fathers.” The U.S., he said, “persists in describing itself as the freest country on earth, although by nearly every objective criterion, most European nations are more liberal and free than the United States.”

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