There’s a lot of talk these days about American
Exceptionalism. Tea Partiers jingoistically assert America is the greatest
country in the world with a divinely inspired manifest destiny, while
Progressives counter America cannot claim such a title when it does not lead in
the world in educating or providing healthcare and social justice for it
citizens. They are both wrong.
Many countries have surpassed America in the criteria used
to measure “greatness”. Our disappointing education system has produced
successive generations of Americans ignorant of: the world around them and the
history that has brought it to the point it is at today; great works of art and
literature; any sense of geography; and devoid of creative thought, and analytical and
deductive reasoning. While the primary purpose of any government is to protect
and promote the general welfare and well-being of its citizenry, America is one
of the few industrialized nations that views healthcare, not as a fundamental
right, but as a privilege of those who can afford it.
Yet, American Exceptionalism does exists. However, it does
not reside in our present achievements or status; to find it, one must look to
look to the past. In 1492, Queen Isabella declared all Jews within the
territory of the Spanish Empire must convert to Catholicism. Those who refused,
or only pretended to convert while secretly practicing their religion, were
subject to torture and execution. The Spanish Inquisition extended beyond Spain
to its territories and possessions, as Jews who had fled to Portugal and later
Amsterdam discovered.
Many of these Jewish refugees from the Spanish Inquisition
arrived in America and some made their way to Newport, Rhode Island. In 1658,
they founded a Jewish congregation and, in 1763, built Touro Synagogue,
America’s oldest synagogue. Jews found a haven in America that was nonexistent
in the rest of the world. They could live as Jews and worship freely in
Colonial America. Yet, even in the religiously tolerant colony of Rhode Island,
Jewish residents of Newport were denied the right to become naturalized
citizens – they were not allowed to vote or hold public office.
After the Revolutionary War, George Washington was elected
president of the United States of America. In 1790, President Washington,
accompanied by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, visited Newport. He later
wrote a letter to Newport’s Jewish congregation at Touro Synagogue. His words
declared this new nation would be different from all others that had preceded
it, in that certain rights – such as religious freedom – were fundamental rights
men were born with, not privileges to be bestowed or taken away by a ruling
class:
“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were
the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of
their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United
States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,
requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves
as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
America, its first president declared, would, from its inception, distinguish itself from every other nation on Earth, then or previous, by recognizing and protecting natural rights such as freedom of religion and speech, unlike other nations. This new nation would not tolerate bigotry or persecution. As I stood today, inches from the bench in Touro Synagogue that George Washington had sat on, gazing at a 500-year-old Torah handwritten on deerskin brought to Newport from Portugal, I realized the true nature of American Exceptionalism.
(Photo: Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI)
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