American Exceptionalism

American Exceptionalism

Introduction

Since 1945 America has displayed exceptional leadership in promoting international human rights. At the same time, however, it has also resisted complying with human rights standards at home or aligning its foreign policy with these standards abroad. Under some administrations, it has promoted human rights as if they were synonymous with American values, while under others, it has emphasized the superiority of American values over international standards. This combination of leadership and resistance is what defines American human rights behavior as exceptional, and it is this complex and ambivalent pattern that the book seeks to explain.

Discussion

American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States occupies a special niche among the nations of the world in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions, and its being built by immigrants. The roots of the belief are attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, who claimed that the then-50-year-old United States held a special place among nations, because it was the first working representative democracy.The theory of American exceptionalism has a number of opponents, especially from the Left, who argue that the belief is "self-serving and jingoistic," that it is based on a myth, and that "[t]here is a growing refusal to accept" the idea of exceptionalism both nationally and internationally . Koh recognizes that the United States has been Exceptional nation, and causing a serious problem, conflicts, between Europe and rest of the world (p.18). He states, by using Ignettieff approaches, that American Exceptionalism is “ways in which the US actually exempts itself from certain international law rules and agreement (p.8)”, perform legal self-sufficiency, and holds “double standards, which judges itself by different standards from those it uses to judge other states, and friends and its enemies by different standards (p.8).”

Different Labels: Reinterpret the USA's free speech tradition (p.18) -Koh explains that the US Supreme Court should reinterpret the “Free-Speech” tradition, which may decrease and stop the problems abroad. Nowadays, in a globalizing world (direct phrase from the sentence…), people can easily access and listen to numerous exceptional free speeches over the internet (p.18). Koh's argument is that this free-speech may be unpleasant for some group of people, and could cause misunderstandings or damage the healthy relationship with others. He sees freedom of speech, one of the fundamental freedoms that “emphasize comprehensive protection of civil and political rights ”, should not be terrifying other nations, just as their rights: “freedom of fear”. Overall, Koh suggests that the Supreme Court should “moderate these conflicts by applying more consistently the transnationalist approach to judicial interpretation.”

Debate between Koh and Bromund

Harold Hongju Koh, Dean of International Law at Yale University, argues that the idea of American-Exceptionalism could be both good and bad for the nation. He responds American Exceptionalism from 4 distinct approaches, and explains how this ideology could affect the relationship and treaties between other nations. The main argument that Koh discusses in the article is that American-Exceptionalism could create a serious problem of double-standard, which is originally introduced by ...