{"id":3943,"date":"2010-03-17T19:21:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T00:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3943"},"modified":"2010-03-17T19:22:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T00:22:28","slug":"american-exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/17\/american-exceptionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"American Exceptionalism…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Update: New American History Standards<\/strong><\/a>
By Ramparts360.com
By Ken Mercer<\/div>\n

\"KenI returned to Austin last week to continue the Texas State Board of Education’s battle against the Far Left and their outrageous attempts to rewrite and revise our state’s Social Studies standards.<\/p>\n

Together, you and I won huge victories in our fight for true and accurate U. S. History that promotes the American free-enterprise system and honors our Founding Fathers, Veterans, and American traditions. Here are just a few examples of the major victories achieved at the SBOE meeting.  Liberals sought to remove most of these from our U. S. History books.  Because of the majority votes by the SBOE, these are now secure in our state’s standards and will be placed in our Texas students’ textbooks:<\/p>\n\n\n
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-Veteran’s Day
-Independence Day
-Christmas and Rosh Hashanah
-The Liberty Bell
-Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley
-The Bataan Death March
-The U.S. Military advancement through the Pacific Islands<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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-The 1994 Contract with America
-The National Rifle Association
-Heroes of the American Revolution
-Neil Armstrong. Paul Revere, Christopher Columbus
-The Four Chaplains (World War II)
-American Exceptionalism<\/font><\/strong>
-American Patriotism
-The benefits of “American” citizenship rather than the liberals’ choice of “Global” citizenship<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

A few liberals went griping to their friends in the print media and implied that our Board refused to recognize the military.  What a preposterous allegation! These are the same liberals who every step of the way fought against our positive portrayal of the military, the promotion of American patriotism, and the belief that the United States is an exceptional country<\/font><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And here is another outrage; my politically ambitious opponent in the Republican Primary joined with those liberal Democrats in their attempt to purposely mislead voters. Again, throughout the debates, it was the liberals who severely understated the contributions of our military and fought against the promotion of American patriotism and exceptionalism.  The archived videotapes of the SBOE sessions document this.<\/p>\n

The truth is that the conservatives won big; and the liberal opposition lost.  In Texas, we will not allow the Far Left to rewrite and revise our history standards. When we have our next three-day SBOE meeting in March, the Board will laboriously and meticulously go through the standards for World History, Economics, and other Social Studies courses, making sure that they also reflect fact-based and unbiased content.<\/p>\n

The final Social Studies standards will promote the American free-enterprise system and will honor our Founding Fathers, Veterans, and American traditions.<\/p>\n

God bless Texas!
Ken Mercer<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
They always look this way, like their high school annual photographs – just older. And they call their opponents "liberals<\/strong>" or the "Far Left<\/strong>." They usually say things like, "… we will not allow the Far Left to rewrite and revise our history standards<\/strong>" as if the evil liberals were changing things. They are the ones changing things, not their opponents. In the list of things Ken Mercer sees himself as valiantly defending, I doubt anybody really cares much about including them, except for one – American Exceptionalism [I’ll have to admit that the "1994 contract with America" hardly seems to be at the center of our history, but again, who cares?]. But American Exceptionalism<\/font><\/strong>? What is it, you ask?<\/div>\n
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American exceptionalism<\/strong><\/a> refers to the theory that the United States occupies a special niche among the nations of the world in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions and unique origins. The roots of the belief are attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, who claimed that the then-50-year-old United States held a special place among nations, because it was a country of immigrants and the first modern democracy. <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The only person[s] I’ve ever heard talk about American Exceptionalism<\/font><\/strong> both had the same last name – Cheney.<\/div>\n
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    CHENEY [to Sean Hannity]:<\/strong> Well, I think most of us believe, and most presidents believe, and talk about the truly exceptional nature of America. Our history, where we come from, our belief in our constitutional values and principles, our advocacy for freedom and democracy. The fact that we provided it for millions of people all over the globe, have done so unselfishly. There’s never been a nation like the United States of America in world history. And yet when you have a president who goes around and bows to his host and then proceeds to apologize profusely for the United States, I find that deeply disturbing. That says to me, this guy who doesn’t fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism that I think most of us believe in.<\/div>\n<\/ul>\n
    It means something like "the chosen people" or "chosen by God" to those who use the term – like the Cheneys or the guy in Texas [Ken Mercer]. It’s the kind of thinking that lead us to Invade Iraq as keepers of the world order. It’s the kind of "we’re special" thinking that leads Israel to build on the Palestinian land, or the Jihadists to blow up the World Trade Towers, or Hitler to annihilate the Jews and the Gipsies. It pushes the idea of patriotism up a notch to the level of arrogance. I expect it’s the topic of the Proverb, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall<\/strong>." And American Exceptionalism is the buzz word in the conservative cosmology to attack their perception that "liberals" want to give America away to some world order, some "commie" idea. What they misunderstand is that they are correct, most "liberals" cringe at the notion of some kind of mystical "specialness" – realizing that such claims throughout history have lead to corruption and decline. The key to the Cheney quote is his use of the word "us."  He only considers people who think like he thinks as "us" – the conservative, neocon rich people he pandered to. The rest of us aren’t in his "us." Like most Cheneyisms, American Exceptionalism is just another code word for his form of Imperialism – the imperialism of his own thoughts.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Update: New American History Standards By Ramparts360.com By Ken Mercer I returned to Austin last week to continue the Texas State Board of Education’s battle against the Far Left and their outrageous attempts to rewrite and revise our state’s Social Studies standards. Together, you and I won huge victories in our fight for true and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}