Cust, No Gun Ri, etc. etc.

This is pretty black & white argumentation. Nuance and sophistication are supposed to be the hallmarks of progressive politics. What's Mr. Jacobs' excuse, I wonder?

How can he come this close and still not get it. We're not blessed because of liberal democratic institutions and a strong economy. We have liberal democratic institutions and a strong economy because we're blessed.

Anyway, no that he's cleared up why we commit atrocities, what's everyone else's excuse.

Yeah, that's what struck me while reading this. Like no other country or culture in the world has ever killed an opponent group.

Too, of course, how could one objectively look at the nations of the world and *not* see America's exceptionalism? The richest, most prosperous country in the world....the country that saved the free West not once but twice (WW1 and WW2)...the country that overturned a political system that has caused 100+ million corpses.

You have to read more of the article to find out how totally off the wall this guy is:

"Therefore, they find themselves making the argument that somehow some way; the United States must repair what it has so ruthlessly destroyed in Iraq. If our friends in the movement did not believe in America's essential goodness, its exception to the rules that govern power and the desire for power, than how could they believe that the very same agents that destroyed the country of Iraq would be able to repair it? Indeed, why would such a good country have destroyed another in the first place.
...
America is not a better country than any other. Its citizens and residents are as venal and as great as any others in any other part of the world. The only thing that sets us apart is our wealth. The only reason we have that wealth is because we stole it. God didn't give it to us, nor did any greater American intelligence or know-how. Robbery is what our foreign policy is based on, just like our racial policies. It's not the policies that need to change, but the foundation upon which those policies flourish. Until US activists accept this and give up their conscious and unconscious acceptance of the myth of American exceptionalism, any movement against war, racism, and other ills of our world is bound to fail. Not because it doesn't have the right motivation, but because it doesn't have a radical enough conception of itself and the world it exists in."

I think he is saying that once we accept that we are not exceptional, we will be exceptional. If we accept that we have no power to solve the ills of the world, then the world's problems will be solved. He is guilty of a kind of reverse exceptionalism - America is so exceptionally evil that we are responsible for all the ills of the rest of the world. Without us, the world would be at peace (and no doubt intellects like he would be held in the high esteem that they deserve).

He is of the inverse exceptionalism school. The greatest villans in history. Trapped in a hall of mirrors. No Guide to lead him out.

Speaking of exceptionalism, Mr. Jacobs does seem more than exceptionally dimwitted.

Though perhaps to his credit, one would never dream of accusing him of exceptional hubris. Just the ordinary Nation variety.

Look carefully at the writer's conclusion: Bush is wrong, the culture warriors are saying, not because of his policies, which are after all, reasonable; he is wrong because he is a Christian, and our adgenda is to suppress Christianity.

Mark my words: real persecution will be our lot if we lose the culture war. What else could explain the left's love affair with radical Islam, which is simply insane? Obviously they hold that anything which opposes Christianity is to be preferred. I shall not even begin to set out how public education, with its militant secularism and "multiculturalism" which is nothing more than the dismantling of Judeo-Christian culture is the vanguard in this war.

Lou:

If by persecution you mean a collective effort to destroy religion in the public square and build an areligious society, it is already here and has been for a while. However, one of the reasons why so many ordinary folk don't really grasp what is going on is that the left, at least in the West, has pretty much abjured physical threats or harm as a tool. In fact, it is almost a sacred point of pride that they do. Both the right and the left are prone to conjure up visions of 1930's style camps and terrors as the ultimate objective of the other side, but I really doubt that will happen. Just as Jeff's and Harry's dream of the return of the Inquisition is unlikely to be fulfilled, so do we waste time and effort arguing that Michael Moore will lead us to the Gulag.

The name of the game is therapeutic brainwashing. The left has discovered that the carrots of sex, freedom from family and community obligations and happiness through psychobabble will bring most people along the statist road better than the stick of the OPGU, even if somewhat slower. You attack religion by declaring it to be the preserve of the ignorant, an emotional disorder or a case of arrested development. Hammer away at those themes over time in the schools, government bureaucracy social services, in the media and in popular culture and you will eventually conquer the world, mainly by lopping off children from their family traditions and leaving parents tongue-tied about how to raise them.

Unfortunately Peter you're correct and the left has western civilization well started down the road to Marxism. It's a "religious" movement that in the time of its success will fall to another utopianism, Islamism.

Western civilization is corroding from within and one has to be awed by the left's progress since the French revolution. They are "burying us" and when done will have set the stage for their own demise.

Gloomy thoughts but that's the mood the Main Stream Media puts me in these days.

I'm not so gloomy.
Just as America and the West crushed Communism, so too will Europe's Statist governments fall. They'll either become much weaker militarily and economically, as their populations decline and age, or they'll be engulfed by poorly educated Muslim immigrants, or, they'll get lean and mean to combat the threat of being engulfed.

Regardless of which scenario occurs, (and no doubt there will be examples of each), the end result is that America will pull further ahead, and be more clearly the best example of how to organize a society and economy, except in the "lean/mean" scenario, where they'll simply become more like the US.

Even as that occurs, there will still be those who advocate a turning away from America's current path, but just as we don't mind children playing fantasy games with imaginary friends, so too can we put up with adults who never mature intellectually.

Let's turn the argument, such as it is, on its head.

If you believed your society/economic system/etc. was not the best on offer, would you leave it alone, or change it?

All societies believe in their own exceptionalism. If they don't, they change.

Few do change.

They cannot all be correct.

To the contrary, they're all changing--most quite radically--to become like us. History Ended and the exceptional nation won.

Now if we could just get rid of the American Taliban and the tax and spenders and keep our robust foreign policy.

The difficulty is that all those attributes today reside in one party. Which leads me to believe that the party coalitions as they exist today will not outlast the election. The contradictions are too great.

A country that was indifferent to religion (neither help nor hinder) would suit me just fine. If government gets too involved in religion we may end up doing what the Europeans do with so many of their obligations: leave it to the state.

Their economies and their religious practices are in decay. Perhaps mixing government with belief is not wise. Perhaps the ideal of a Christian Nation if realized will do what it has done to so many other nations: de-Christianize it.

Fine with me if that is your ultimate goal.

Remember Christ's antagonism to the state. There is a reason. Power corrupts. Powerless religions are stronger in faith.

Think about it.

M. that is eminently sensible.

M:

This is and has been a Christian nation. The danger lies in it ceasing to be.

A condign warning to the Christians to behave better, then.

I see no danger in losing the Catholic pedophile ring.

Harry:

The pedophiles are always with us.

True. I merely object to exempting them from taxation.