Ramesh: Good catch on the Cohen piece. But there’s something else that bothers me as well. He writes:
The phrase has an odd history. As Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz reminds me, American exceptionalism once applied to the hostility that the American worker — virtually alone in the industrialized world — had toward socialism. Now, though, it is infused with religious meaning, which makes it impervious to analysis. Once you say God likes something, who can quibble?
As far as I can tell the only evidence that Cohen cites to support his thesis that “American Exceptionalism” is now an overwhelmingly and dangerously religious concept comes in the 8th paragraph (of a 10 paragraph column) where he notes that Gingrich uses the phrase “secular left” sometimes. That doesn’t strike me as a forensic slam dunk. It seems that Cohen is sort of right in one narrow sense. The term American exceptionalism is impervious to analysis — Cohen’s analysis.
I don’t dispute, by the way, that there is some significant religious resonance to American exceptionalism. What I vigorously dispute is any suggestion that Cohen understands what it is or has come within a thousand yards of explaining it.
For those interested they might consult the works of Seymour Martin Lipset, or Arthur Brooks, or Ponnuru and Lowry.