"American exceptionalism" is a widely misunderstood political concept.
Alexis de Tocqueville (left) coined the term in his classic survey of the United States, Democracy in America.
De Tocqueville simply meant that democracy took a different course in America because we didn't have the old world's baggage, such as a class of aristocrats and a state religion. To de Tocqueville, exceptional meant different, not better.
But some Americans have long believed that we truly are "exceptional" in the sense of "above normal standards of behavior." These are the people who don't want us in the UN or at least not paying for it, and, under no circumstances, listening to it.
It seems to me that there are now two new strands of exceptionalism in the land.
On the one hand, are politicians who believe in "Beltway exceptionalism," the notion that Washington knows best. That's what seems to have the Tea Party in a boil.
At the other end of the political scrum are the Occupy Wall Street protestors who are all worked up about "Corporate exceptionalism," the idea that Big Business shouldn't be encumbered by the nusiances of regulations or held to any goal but piling up lots of cash.
The Tea Partiers and the Occupiers may have more in common than they think. In their own bizarre ways, they both object to factions whose sense of common good has been blinded by their own self-righteousness.
Now if they could only recognize it in themselves.
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