{"id":340,"date":"2024-07-03T18:22:32","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T18:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=340"},"modified":"2024-07-03T18:22:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T18:22:32","slug":"opinion-is-america-a-city-on-a-hill-or-a-nation-on-the-precipice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=340","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Is America a City on a Hill or a Nation on the Precipice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">In late 2016,<\/strong> during his final weeks as vice president, Joe Biden <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cnn\/videos\/biden-im-embarrassed-by-the-campaign\/10155718340671509\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">decried<\/a> the coarse presidential campaign the nation had just witnessed. \u201cSo much for the shining city on the hill,\u201d he said. Yet on Friday, the day after his painful debate performance, President Biden called the United States \u201cthe finest and most unique nation in the world,\u201d the only one built not on ethnicity, geography or religion but on the ideal of human equality. Donald Trump, for his part, has gone from <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oQsCW1hbOGw\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">praising<\/a> American exceptionalism (\u201creally a great term\u201d) to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=72wM6cqPS-c\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">dismissing<\/a> it (\u201cI don\u2019t like the term, I\u2019ll be honest with you\u201d) to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2020\/08\/27\/901381398\/fact-check-trumps-address-to-the-republican-convention-annotated\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">hailing<\/a> it again (\u201cAmerica is the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world\u201d) to claiming during the debate that, under Biden, \u201cwe\u2019ve become like a third world nation, and it\u2019s a shame.\u201d His version of American exceptionalism is about beating the world, not leading it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Barack Obama <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/the-press-office\/2014\/05\/28\/remarks-president-united-states-military-academy-commencement-ceremony\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">told<\/a> the graduates of West Point in 2014 that he believed in the nation\u2019s exceptionalism \u201cwith every fiber of my being\u201d and has lauded American values, including free speech and equality, \u201cthat, though imperfect, are exceptional.\u201d His exceptionalism is more self-critical, regarding the American story as a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sf\/national\/2015\/06\/03\/obama-and-american-exceptionalism\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">struggle<\/a> to live up to the truths of the Declaration of Independence, truths that may be self-evident but are hardly self-fulfilling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As a presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/documents\/remarks-the-simon-wiesenthal-center-los-angeles\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">declared<\/a> that God and history had chosen America as \u201ca model to the world,\u201d though, after Sept. 11, 2001, just modeling virtue would not suffice. \u201cThe survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,\u201d Bush said in his second Inaugural Address, a justification to export that liberty via aircraft carrier if necessary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Discussions of exceptionalism may seem obligatory among today\u2019s candidates and yesterday\u2019s presidents, but it was Reagan who cemented \u201cexceptionalism\u201d in the political vernacular. Throughout his two terms, the 40th president invoked \u201cA Model of Christian Charity,\u201d a sermon by John Winthrop, the Puritan lawyer and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who declared in 1630 that \u201cwe shall be as a city upon a hill; the eyes of all people are upon us.\u201d Winthrop drew on the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus told his followers, \u201cYou are the light of the world; a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.\u201d Reagan channeled Winthrop\u2019s formulation, forever burnishing it with one memorable adjective.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Reagan\u2019s city \u201chummed with commerce and creativity,\u201d he said, and his tenure in office had left it \u201cmore prosperous, more secure and happier.\u201d The city stood tall, proud and, yes, \u201cshining\u201d for all the world to see. There were other passages that seemed written for a national anthology \u2014 Reagan referred repeatedly to the \u201cgreat rediscovery\u201d of American values that had occurred during his term, for instance \u2014 but it was the shining city that captured the self-congratulatory ethos of the time, an era that would soon proclaim the end of history, witness the fall of the Berlin Wall and affirm the indispensability of a single superpower.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late 2016, during his final weeks as vice president, Joe Biden decried the coarse presidential campaign the nation had just witnessed. \u201cSo much for the shining city on the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[547,209,548,549,57,550],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Opinion | Is America a City on a Hill or a Nation on the Precipice? 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