The nomination of an African-American candidate for president is a very big deal. It reminds us that there are really two distinct kinds of American exceptionalism. This phrase is often used to describe the conviction or sense that America is a unique agent in and of world history, a special nation, different from all others and endowed -- perhaps supernaturally -- with a manifest destiny. The less pleasant side of this exceptionalism has been to authorize violence in the name of that destiny. The often enough venal motives of state action are the more easily passed off as expressions of a national mission, when we see ourselves as the instrument of a divine, or a democratic, or a divinely democratic imperative. For example, I think George Bush probably means it when he says that he feels an obligation to spread democracy and liberty. That his efforts to fulfill that obligation have led to unprecedented profits for the oil industry -- in which he and his friends share -- may strike him as divine affirmation of his mission rather than its point.
The prospect of electing an African-American president underlines another sense, however, in which American difference is, well, manifest. The European press is in awe of Barack Obama not simply because he is not George Bush (though that alone certainly generates excitement), nor because America seems about to turn on the dime of its long, racist history, but because, despite its long disdain for our vulgarities, Europe must know on some level that what is happening here cannot happen there. What other first world country is going to be governed by a black man? The French love Obama, but who will emerge from the suburban banlieues of Paris to challenge for the leadership of France?
The distinction lies in the fact that America is not a nation in the way that most other countries are. Nationality and race are historically entangled in the idea of an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Italian or a German in a way that, even the best efforts of American nativism have not had time to establish here. English common law, which is largely the basis of our legal system, is explicitly based on what has been English since time immemorial. Italians can think of themselves as the descendents of Rome, Greeks of the archaic conquerors of Troy. Whether or not it is historically sustainable, the idea of nationality for most of the developed world retains a genetic component. But America really is different. We have no immemorial past. Rather than emerging retrospectively from progressively dimmer workings of history -- of the machinations of Kings and nobles, tribal migrations and conquests -- we are, whether we like it or not, children of the enlightenment. America was an idea before it was a nation on the ground. Each year we celebrate as our national day not the anniversary of a victory, the birth of a monarch or the arrival of a particular group of people on our shores, but the signing of a birth announcement composed in Philadelphia and agreed to on July 4th, 1776.
To be sure the signers of the Declaration of Independence represented the enfranchised classes of Englishmen, but they also knew the difference between a republic and a kingdom and they understood the significance of a government based on a written consititution. Writing under a pseudonym in the Boston Gazette in 1774, John Adams both asserted the English origins of the new republic and its aspiration to something different when he famously quoted the English republican theorist James Harrington's call for an "empire of laws and not of men," strategically substituting the word "government" for Harrington's "empire." We have in the last seven years seen a sustained and often successful effort to replace that government of laws with something closer to the royal prerogative against which Harrington wrote in 1656.
In this respect the Obama candidacy is not about an individual, but about reasserting the distinction of a nation, membership in which is not hereditary but elective. To think of the unlikeliness of a similarly African-British, African-French, or African-German leader is on one level to be reminded of our peculiar national history and the role of slavery within it. But on another level it is in one fell-swoop to reassert the American exception the Bush administration has most assiduously suppressed -- that in America, citizenship -- in a technical sense -- is not by genetic inheritance or collective memory, but by subscription. "We the people" sign our names to a document that attempts to spell out and bind "a more perfect union." For us, this is the difference between being a subject and a citizen, and I suspect this reassertion is what remains truly revolutionary about us.
I suspect it is the underlying prospect of a deeply willed renewal of our national subscription to the government of laws and not of men that has made the Obama candidacy so exhilarating both here and in Europe. But this exhilaration comes also because we hang now, in the interim, by a very finely spun thread. What is at stake in the coming election could not be more clearly drawn than it was in the Supreme Court's five to four affirmation of habeas corpus last week. Five to four! The next President will almost certainly choose two justices during his tenure. John McCain has already indicated that he will choose justices who resemble Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas -- that is, justices who will reverse Roe v. Wade; but such justices will also fail to uphold the real American exception: the citizens' subscription to checks and balances and to the written-out rule of law. Justice Stevens is 88 years old. May he live forever. But as we rejoice over the prospect that America will soon once again be a nation of hope in which the rule of law is re-affirmed, we need also to remember that we stand today but one vote away from the end of the line.
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Congress does not have the Constituti
Every new regulation
Obama has said that he would provide another $50 billion in worthless economic stimulus. We will pay for this through inflation and interest as we will pay for the checks that are now being received. You may discover that you are not able to take that trip to Europe, get a new kitchen, or pay for your child to go the college of his/her choice. Your freedom will be limited. This is none of the government
You can pay for your freedom or your chains.
The Supreme Court has never been the diciding factor of anything political. They are judges, who interpret laws to see if they think they are Constituti
One other thing.
Who are the lawgivers in America? We the people are!
Government rules with our permission
Example: If the Supreme Court said that we no longer have a Congress or House, and only a President who declares law...woul
Despite it all, I believe America will always come out on top because of it's original lawgivers, you and me.
Obama may be a watershed moment (even if he doesn't get elected) but WE ARE THE EXEPTIONAL part of America. We voters.
Tell Jessee Jackson, Al Sharpton, Michele Obama, and Obama's preachers to quit the race baitting. If America is SO RACIST, then how did he get where he is today? Tell Obama, that us "Bitter Gun Owners who are religious and just clinging" are the same people he wants to vote for him.
Insulting voters is NOT a good campaign strategy, but I could be wrong.
Is it wrong when a child clings to his mother for comfort? or clings to his security blanket? or his teddy bear? When did 'cling' become a bad word? We cling to that which gives us comfort! That with which we are familiar with and gives us pleasure, that which we don't want to give up!
Obama in that phrase was trying to explain how government had failed these areas where jobs had been moved overseas, and promises made by politician
To deny that situations such as lack of employment and poor prospects for the future of our children do not anger and embitter people, is to prefer to bury one's head in the sand.
As for reacting to this situation by " clinging" to guns and religion? There's nothing wrong with that, unless it's spinned in a different way other than the one it was meant to be.
Hunting is a tradition passed on from generation
CONT'D in part II
A religious person looking for a job, might say a prayer everyday asking God for help in finding one, a less religious person might only go to church on sundays, one who has a family member facing terminal illness, might 'cling' to religion as one hope of cure.
On the other hand, some take a break from economic problems with recreation
Again, clinging to something that brings some sort of comfort or alleviatio
And this is what Obama was trying to explain.NO
It shouldn't be hard for any logical thinking mind asking the question: would any candidate in a sane mind deliberate
CONT'D on part III
That's so great that so many pundits worked toward manipulati
I wonder when the time will be when pundits will work just as hard to get a woman as the candidate?
We had one this time, and she was the candidate with all the experience and know-how that we knew could have turned this country around.
The black man didn't get the nomination because he deserved it. He mostly got it because he mezmerised the multitudes as a preacherma
This is why Hillary supporters like yourself are so absolutely disrespect
FACT: Obama worked as hard as anyone to get this nomination and he won it fair and square.
Until you recognize that fact, you will never get the respect you deserve. To throw out that kind of accusation that someone did not work for what they have with no proof is extremely insulting.
As for Obama's candidacy not being about an individual
Of course, if America wanted to make itself really exceptiona
The right to bear arms is not a right granted to you by the government
That's why the latest SC decision was so startling. Without habeas corpus, all other rights are lost. If the government can hold you without reason, then you have no other rights--sp
Mr. Grossman states-- "But America really is different. We have no immemorial past." That is not true. We DO have an immemorial past. It's just that we destroyed most of it through a government sanctioned and condoned policy of genocide in the 18th and 19th centuries and now we deny both that past AND the genocide.
Are you talking about a past that belongs to the land that is America or the people that are America? My view would be that Americans are those who "subscribe
While you are it this being the case and making the argument on this does the fact that the U.S. has not had a female voted into the highest office mean that in comparison the European nations there is something malign to the aspiration
But that would be a really simplistic and ludicrous argument wouldn’t it? Making it slightly more sensible then the one you’ve just proposed.
You do clearly disagree with the post, but you could learn a little from the clarity of his writing.
What this tells me is the unease much of America- even the Dem primary electorate by the virtual tie - has with Obama as President- NOT because of his race but his inadequacy for the job and the unsavory associatio
Photofarm the idea that liberal judges make law instead of letting Congress do so is a familiar refrain of conservati
If that doesn't make any sense to you, I suggest you google the phrase "checks and balances" or perhaps "three branches of government
Roe vs Wade was about the Supreme Court inventing a new right that wasn't in the U.S. Constituti
We could go on and on, but when you have rulings of 5-4, there is a huge divide from legal people about the issue. The two rulings from this year he mentioned in the article were 5-4.
Thanks