America hardly a beacon abroad

Stuart Weiss, Las Vegas

Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Pet peeves:

Violent video games that stereotype Muslims as terrorists to be shot on sight.

Candidates who say they will reform the complex tax structure when they know taxes fall within Congress’ jurisdiction, and it has shown no inclination to reform.

Constant macho chest-pumping from the left and right, as in the use of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism was once labeled our Manifest Destiny: divine providence intended that this continent belonged to white Americans, not Indians; it could be taken by conquest.

In 1898, after bloodily subduing the Filipinos and building a base in Subic Bay, we projected our power to China: the new Manifest Destiny. And since 1945 we have projected our power ever more widely, insisting that we are the most powerful country in the world, which is true, yet in a seeming contradiction, we are threatened and must fight.

American exceptionalism, if the concept has any meaning, originated with Puritan leader John Winthrop, who, nearing the shores of Massachusetts, wrote that he smelled “a garden,” which he meant as a metaphor for the Garden of Eden: purity. And he wanted it to be a “shining city upon a hill,” “a beacon light to all mankind.” Thus the New World was to be kept apart from the Old World, so it would not be sullied by the Old World’s impurities. This we have forgotten as we have gone abroad in search of monsters to destroy, failing to recognize the serpent in our own garden.