Exceptionalism

Norwegian exceptionalism — this sense that there is somehow something better, nobler, wiser about Norwegians than people from any other part of the world, and that only those with protestant roots can understand this — is the very worst of what Norway has to offer.

Israel will not be able to defend its exceptionalism for ever.

American exceptionalism is dumb.

I can't believe Tom unironically believes in American exceptionalism.

American exceptionalism is a form of chauvinism.

If Covid-19 eventually imbues human beings with some humility, it’s possible that we will, after all, be receptive to the lessons of this lethal pandemic. Or perhaps we will sink back into our culture of complacent exceptionalism and await the next plague that will surely arrive.

“This is a moment of American exceptionalism,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said when asked about the flight during a Tuesday news conference.

But in fact the antinomy of exceptionalism and assimilationism has been there all along, and otherwise puzzling decisions from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries become readily understandable when seen as moments when assimilationism was ascendant.