The vanity of American Exceptionalism: Charles Murray's latest mixes American history with self-flattery.

• Author: Gamble, Richard
• Position: Culture and Reviews - American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History - Book review

American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History, by Charles Murray, AEI Press, 59 pages, $3.95

Is the United States unlike any other nation in history? This may seem to be a simple question open to a straightforward answer reached with the help of comparative history, political theory, economics, and sociology. But American exceptionalism is rarely the stuff of dispassionate academic discourse. It has become wedded to modern nationalism. Politicians and journalists, Republicans and Democrats alike, invoke it as a creedal affirmation endorsing a range of American domestic and foreign policy agendas.

Charles Murray, social scientist and author most recently of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, enters the debate with American Exceptionalism, a modest booklet published by the American Enterprise Institute. The idea of exceptionalism, Murray argues, once enjoyed a broad consensus and helped unite Americans around what Abraham Lincoln called their "political religion." Astute European visitors, such as the celebrated Alexis de Tocqueville and the lesser-known Francis Grand, witnessed America's unprecedented achievements and through their books reinforced the young nation's powerful self-conception.

But recently, Murray laments, this once-dominant faith in exceptionalism has "eroded" into a minority creed, requiring a robust defense against a growing number of critics at home and abroad. Murray's bet is that a reclaimed exceptionalism will boost national self-knowledge and help re-right the ship of state, though he ends more with a call to personal reflection than with a prescription for renewed exceptionalism: "Which of the changes that have diminished American exceptionalism are gains to be applauded? Which are losses to be mourned? Thinking through your answers to those questions is one of your most important duties as an American citizen. Only after you have reached those answers can you know what you want for America's future."

The vision of exceptionalism laid out here will be recognizable. Seizing their moment and opportunity, Murray writes, the Founders laid out a blueprint for the American experiment, involving republicanism, a chief executive elected for a limited term, a written constitution, and the transformation of "an ideology of individual liberty into a governing creed." That noble experiment was boosted in the century ahead by a number of blessings: America's geographic remoteness from Europe's turmoil; her...