By Uche Onyebadi

America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong, but when with modest effort and risk we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act.  That’s what makes America different.

That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth — President B. Obama, September 10, 2013.

MOSCOW’S response to President Obama’s advocacy of America’s exceptionalism was swift and blunt. President Vladimir Putin put it this way: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” Since then, a number of Americans have castigated President Putin for daring to challenge what so many of their compatriots have always accepted and believe to be an incontrovertible, universal truth.

The idea of America’s exceptionalism has a history. But, that is not the primary concern here. What is more important is its meaning: that there is something qualitatively unique about America that sets it apart from the rest of the human community. Obama commenced his presidency with a global campaign to show that America is a partner with the rest of the world, not an exceptional leader designated by God to shepherd the international community. That pristine Obama can still be seen in the excerpt above. Although he acknowledges exceptionalism as an ‘essential truth,’ he does so with a measure of ‘humility’.

As arrogant and offensive as this catechism on exceptionalism may sound, there is evidence that in some respects, America is indeed unique. Talk about the notion of freedom of speech and assembly; the aggressiveness with which the country fights to protect its citizens and their rights anywhere on this planet; how the American society creates a congenial environment to unleash your potential and reach for the sky, no matter the odds (did black man Obama not become president?). You can go on enumerating all that is good about America. But, so can you make an endless list of exceptionalims about other nations. For instance, when it comes to healthcare and your child’s education, many Americans would wish they were from Sweden!

President Putin has a point. At the other end of the continuum of exceptionalism is bigotry; a sense of my-country-right-or-wrong, inequality, combative arrogance and justified segregation. Even within the United States, there is also a sense of exceptionalism among some members of racially and economically advantaged groups. If you attended certain educational institutions, that fact automatically places you above your colleagues with similar qualifications obtained from educational institutions that make them appear like children of lesser gods.

Here is an example of how exceptionalism can intoxicate and lead to doing the bizarre. As an instructor of record in an ‘exceptional’ school of journalism in the United States, my undergraduate student – a Caucasian girl – wanted to say something on the first day of class, after I had explained the course syllabus to the students. I thought she wanted further explanation.But, no. Hear what she told me to my face:  What you just said (on an issue) is not how we do things in America!

I kept my cool and philosophically asked her this question: When you add one plus one where I come from, the result is two; in America, what does that exercise give you? She got the message. After class, she came to me and apologized for her arrogance. Fact is, what she complained against was a standard regulation given to me by my head of department for the information of my students! But, she must have thought: how dare this non-American with an accent tell this exceptional American what to do in class? The fact that I just been judged competent to be her instructor must have meant a trifle, even an insult, in her definition of American exceptionalism!

Exceptionalism is like wine. And, as the Chinese say: First, a person takes the wine. Then, the wine takes the wine. Thereafter, the wine takes the person. Exceptionalism must have some qualifiers, or at least a sober, moderating influence.