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Still Taking Exception

As embarrassing as the defenses of D’Souza’s article have been, something that I would like to add is that I doubt this article could have been published if there were not already widespread agreement on the right that Obama hates the idea of American exceptionalism. After all, D’Souza takes that for granted, and he knows […]

As embarrassing as the defenses of D’Souza’s article have been, something that I would like to add is that I doubt this article could have been published if there were not already widespread agreement on the right that Obama hates the idea of American exceptionalism. After all, D’Souza takes that for granted, and he knows that many conservatives do, too. D’Souza’s article is a ridiculous attempt to provide an answer to the dumb question many conservatives have been asking, “Why does Obama hate American exceptionalism?”

The claim that Obama rejects American exceptionalism that is every bit as untrue and laughable as the “anti-colonialist” claim, but it is one that has been made repeatedly and at great length. The Ponnuru/Lowry article in National Review was probably the most developed expression of this misguided view in the last year, and in it the authors claimed to have identified Obama’s “assault on American identity.” Near the end of the article, they wrote:

It is madness to consider President Obama a foreigner. But it is blindness to ignore that American exceptionalism has homegrown enemies — people who misunderstand the sources of American greatness or think them outdated.

It is also blindness to believe that Obama is one of the homegrown enemies of American exceptionalism, when he specifically, repeatedly declares himself to be one of its friends. As Ryan Chittum pointed out yesterday, the notion that Obama does not embrace American exceptionalism is absurd. In the very same remarks that his critics cite as proof that he rejects American exceptionalism, Obama goes out of his way to affirm the idea.

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