Friday, September 13, 2013

Equally Exceptional

I'm crossing my fingers and not going to further comment on Syria, because with any luck, we will not have a new story there, not our story.  Just bad stuff, over there.

But I've been thinking a lot about exceptionalism, given the President's speech this week and the follow-up letter to Americans by Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.  Our president was pointing to our policies, and how they make us different, how they make us exceptional.  Putin states that, since we are created equal, "it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation..."

The terms are not mutually exclusive, guys!  I think the message we can take to the table, the dinner table or the G20 summit table, is that, duh, it's a given, we are all created equal.  That's a baseline.  And then, what we DO with that, well, there's the freedom.  That's what has the chance of being something quite exceptional.


No comments:

Post a Comment