[WalterBright]

A nation founded on the principles of all men being created equal, along with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is indeed exceptional.

The results have been exceptional, too.

The US does indeed have plenty of problems, but those problems are usually traceable to neglecting those founding principles.

[randcraw]

White men of property, you mean. Nobody else was exceptional.

Of course, Jefferson's words established no basis in American law. It was signed before America existed. The Treaty of Paris ending the war established America only as a sovereign country, not a free one. (We were free of monarchy only). In fact, the intended audience for both documents was international, not national.

Never a legal document, the Declaration was mostly two things: advertising -- in the hope that enemies of England might give us money in order to annoy King George, and cheerleading -- in the hope America's troops wouldn't lose heart at the slow pace of the war and its woeful prospects, and desert, as many did.

We continue to harken to the Declaration only because the pretty words make it easier to dismiss proofs of contradiction like slavery and wars of adventure.

[WalterBright]

The DoI indeed does not have the force of law in the US. But its principles were foundational to the country.

BTW, the Constitution was amended to outlaw slavery. That counts.

[karpierz]

> principles of all men being created equal, along with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Unless you're black. Or female. Or Asian. etc.

Why does this founding myth persist?

[betwixthewires]

America has failed in it's lofty ideal many times, yes, but every step of the way shows an almost irrational desire to continue to correct course and hopefully, eventually, achieve that goal. The abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, reparations to Japanese internment camp prisoners... America loudly and proudly celebrated our first black president not too long ago. That says something about our principles. It's not a myth, it's a fact.

[refurb]

Would you argue being African is better in Europe?

Being Asian in Asia?

Do they have the same freedoms? Face the same discrimination?

If your measure is perfection than no country meets your standards.

[WalterBright]

It applies to Blacks, females, and Asians. Etc.

[Jensson]

Not when it was founded, your argument was that it was exceptional since it was founded on those principles but it wasn't. USA gave rights to black people and women about the same time the rest of the western world did, they weren't ahead on this.

[WalterBright]

The US did not give rights to Blacks, etc. The US recognized those rights. This is the genius of the Declaration of Independence. This is exceptional.

The criticism that the Constitution didn't go all the way in the first go is a bit unreasonable. People forget how far it did go. For example, it rejected the notion of a nobility class. It explicitly rejected establishment of a state religion. We forget how exceptional this was at the time, we just take it for granted.

[Hammershaft]

> A nation founded on the principles of all men being created equal, along with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Isn't the legacy of these 'founding principles' tarnished from the fact that many of the founding fathers owned hundreds of slaves? We are still within a living generation of segregation in southern states, an injustice that owes directly to how the founding fathers applied those principles.

[the_third_wave]

No, it isn't. Those principles are things to be strived for, both when the words were put on paper as well as now. The fact that not all of those who put those words on paper totally embodied all of those principles does not make them any less worthy, they are a guiding principle after all - not a description of the state of the nation or the world in the 1700s. Under that guiding principle the USA has gone from a state which inherited slavery to one which, together with the United Kingdom, abolished slavery as well as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While this did not totally end the practice of slavery - it existed long before the first slave was brought to the shores of the colonies and kept on existing long after the last slaver was boarded by the Royal Navy, indeed it still exists today in many countries in the middle east, Africa and parts of Asia - it did set in motion the cultural shift which made the concept of enslavement to be something which is unreconcilable with democracy [1]. There have been several ugly episodes in the history of the USA after slavery was abolished but this is one of the few cases where the arc of history indeed has tended towards justice. The wheels of justice may move slowly but move they do - unless obstructed. This is why the rise of identity politics - which aims to derail justice into ${identity_category} justice - is so harmful since prefix-justice is not justice.

[1] this did not use to be the case, the Athenian democracy had no qualms about slavery

[cat_plus_plus]

Not at all, slavery and near slavery conditions like serfdom was exceedingly common back then and neither African slave traders nor Native Americans saw anything wrong with it. In fact there are more slaves today than in any time in history. Just because founding fathers made significant advances to the status quo of society, doesn't mean that they should be held responsible for not solving all the problems in a single go. In fact, even if they wanted to free their personal slaves, the society was such that there may not have been a place for them to live in peace and earn to feed and clothe themselves. Don't take my word on it, read Thomas Sowell who has done extensive research on the subject and happens to be black himself.

Also, pretty absurd to blame founding fathers for segregation laws centuries later. People who made these laws were responsible for those laws.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-...

[WalterBright]

Can imperfect men create something greater than themselves? Yes.

Is the US an imperfect implementation of those principles? Yes.

Does that invalidate those principles? No.

Has the US done a pretty good job of implementing those principles? Yes.

[mhh__]

The principles may not be although I think it's a strong argument against the already silly concept of originalism

[code_runner]

These principles are too vague and there are far too many interpretations.

They’re so vague that we find some people trying to decipher what someone living in in the 1700s would think about society today instead of updating our laws and principles to suit modern times.

Convoluted example: “Well smartphones didn’t exist in 1776, so you don’t have a right to pursue happiness on that medium”.

It’s so frustrating to see such partisan gridlock where the voice of the actual citizens are not heard and translated into laws and regulations.

I don’t know what my point really is, but I guess I’m saying it’s not so simple. We can’t boil it all down to a sentence or two.

[ncmncm]

At issue, where "exceptionalism" is concerned, is not what we do for ourselves, but what we do for and to others. Domestic policies are domestic, and not germane.

[stevenwoo]

Also The Declaration of Independence is more an aspirational document that has almost nothing to do with the Constitution when it comes to laws, because some pigs were more equal than others, i.e. slaves and native Americans and women could not vote, and we are still dealing with problems from those parts and the undemocratic minority rule enshrined in the Constitution.

[WalterBright]

As I noted, the problems in America can be traced to not following those principles. That doesn't make the principles wrong.

> undemocratic minority rule enshrined in the Constitution.

The purpose of that is to protect the underlying rights of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I.e. the sheep is protected from the two wolves voting on what's for dinner.

[stevenwoo]

We have agree to disagree, the purpose of minority rule via voting rights/congressional apportionment was to protect the rights of property owners at the time, i.e. slave owners and land owners.

None of the nice thoughts that are in the Declaration of Independence was meant to apply to people not recognized as fully human beings (women/non-white males), if we go by the originalist mindset prevalent in the legal world now. We can't have it both ways, interpreting the Declaration of Independence in the broadest possible modern sense, then interpreting the Constitution in the meaning of the writers and state of the nation in 1789 when it was ratified.

[ncmncm]

There really was at the time the concept of "the tyranny of the majority". The whole notion of "rights" is specifically to limit the power of the majority.

The majority normally never needs to have its rights protected. The majority serves itself. Minorities are who need protection.

[stevenwoo]

Yes, but we have in the USA somehow created a perverse system where we have minority rule that has the ability to take decisions that are not about minority rights away from the majority or stripping minority rights from even smaller minorities, for one example historical suppressed voting rights of African Americans and other groups, where only the African Americans have legal standing because we could only manage to pass a few constitutional amendments and laws after 200 years of injustice, other majority/minority groups it's still perfectly constitutional to suppress their votes. Mormons (that did not recognize dark skinned people as human beings as policy until recently) who are tiny percentage of USA population have pivotal role in US senate with decisive control of 1-2 states, and Roman Catholics make up a unbeatable majority of the Supreme Court that decides rules so we have this endless cycle feeding more power into those with capital.

[s1artibartfast]

what definition of exceptionalism are you using to come to that conclusion? Is it possible to be exceptionally narcistic or exceptionally sadistic?

[ncmncm]

Clearly the ambiguity is taken advantage of wherever convenient.

[s1artibartfast]

I'm not sure I catch your meaning. Exceptional is a magnitude in my mind. It needs an adjective to go along with it

[ncmncm]

Like "fraught". Fraught with what?

But leaving it unsaid is more convenient all around.

[s1artibartfast]

I see, haha. Like problematic. Problematic for whom?