American Exceptionalism and President Obama

It is a really strange time in history. I know that I'm naive, but I never thought that I would see a time when our country would take such a dramatic turn; dramatic politically, ethically, economically and dramatic in our inability to read our moral compass. There are many, like political and pop cultural commentator Michael Medved, recent author of "The Ten Big Lies About America", who believe that America on the whole, is on a good trajectory and that any negative trends are not permanent and catastrophic. He writes that America has not fallen off the moral cliff and cites hard statistics to make his point. In spite of this optimistic view, I still disagree.

What is happening? First, is American Exceptionalism real or is it just a conservative myth? President Obama was asked by a French reporter if he believed in American Exceptionalism. He responded, "I believe in American Exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." I quote from the movie "The Incredibles" from a scene where the antagonist jealously aspires to sell everyone super powers, "When everyone is super then no one will be." Well, if everyone is exceptional then no one is.

The President may be speaking truth. Not that America hasn't been exceptional in the past, because I believe we were, but if we follow the President's vision we certainly will not be. The idea of American Exceptionalism began with the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville. He spoke of America's greatness, but warned, "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

What made America "good"? I submit that the Founding Fathers, however imperfect, made a good stab at creating our government using a Biblical model. The current struggles in our country can be directly connected with our departure from God and His word. For instance, God made fathers responsible for educating their children. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9) Fathers have passed this mandate off to teachers, schools and school boards. Now we have kids with truly substandard educations. Recently, the Goldwater Institute asked Arizona high school seniors ten civics questions. 9.2% of the kids got this question right: "How many justices are on the Supreme Court?" How about 26.5% know: "Who was the first President of the United States?" Kids are not only ignorant when it comes to civics, but also areas like economics, religion and history. The modern student is well versed however, when it comes to pseudo-sciences, (or so-called inductive science), like global warming ecology and evolution. (These inductive sciences are more strongly related to philosophy than to actual science.)

Another crisis area is the economy. Paul was very clear in 2 Thessalonians when he said, "if you don't work, you don't eat." Now, our new President is selling free healthcare, free food, (food stamps), and free mortgage money as a "right". As you might expect, as we continue to drift away from the Bible, we continue to warp reality, and right and wrong get more and more fuzzy.

Our military is the greatest in the world, technologically, but we have imposed strange moral laws on war that supercede Biblical principles governing war. Now we are fighting war as though we are a police force, always keeping in mind the "rights" of the "criminals" that we are pursuing. Boys die, families cry and we don't really win anything with our blood. It only takes a few minutes to scan the Bible to discover what is God's view of war. Unfortunately, we are drifting farther from even the way we faught the Revolutionary War.

Yes, we USED to be exceptional as a nation, but now we are relinquishing our superiority, superiority established by our adherence to Biblical principles, in order to follow a worldly, naturalistic philosphy that will eventually result in the United States becoming another footnote in world history. Internal moral collapse, loss of moral direction and then by some means the loss of our country as we knew it. Please pray for our President and this nation.