And Stephen Walt completes the self portrait

After his paper at the Kennedy Ctr at Harvard and his book accusing Americans who happen to be Jewish of a choate/inchoate conspiracy based on dual loyalties (a very old, millenial old, antisemitic canard, btw) for the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the USA, here he comes to make the picture of himself a perfect Dorian Gray.

From Foreign Policy:

The Myth of American Exceptionalism

The idea that the United States is uniquely virtuous may be comforting to Americans. Too bad it’s not true.

Over the last two centuries, prominent Americans have described the United States as an “empire of liberty,” a “shining city on a hill,” the “last best hope of Earth,” the “leader of the free world,” and the “indispensable nation.”

Most statements of “American exceptionalism” presume that America’s values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration. They also imply that the United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.

Excuse me, but is there anyone else so self critical, so UNIQUE, as to launder what we DON’T like about ourselves on this stage. So DIFFERENT, that not only do we elect someone compulsively apologizing for ourselves, but we have, encourage, and LAUD ACADEMICALLY an entire CORPS of academics, and so called academics to keep telling us we’re nothing special, thus proving that point … and incidentally inculcating this entire culture so completely we DO elect one of them as president?

Has there been anyone else so reviled by an entire religion and culture whose ascendant and dominant malignancy refers to us as Great Satan? I wonder what that could mean? They worship the idea of martyrdom and death for it, we worship the freedom of the individual to pursue fulfillment.

Has there been any other society who promotion of the INDIVIDUAL rights of man has lead them to commit acts which later are the subject of these apologies? Or promoted those rights for so long? And why?

Has there been ANY OTHER NATION whose inheritance, acquisition and creation of colonies of others compelled them almost IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE OF THEIR CULTURE to spin them out as independent nations ?

Ironically, Walt mentions ‘a wartime conquest of the Phillipines’ never mentioning it was as Spanish COLONIZERS we were fighting and that we set about independence for the Phillipines which was to have occurred near the beginning of WW2. No doubt he feels we ‘reconquered’ them a second time in 1944.

Has there been any other nation to so express their guilt and sorrow for wrongs done so as to give MATERIAL ADVANTAGE to a specific group within for GENERATIONS (after sacrificing 600,000 dead and 1,000,000 casualties to free them) and then expand those advantages to other minorities, JUST IN CASE?

This article is worth reading to view the CULTURAL THINKING of this type of american man

We do wrong. We have committed sins, and we are not afraid to talk about them.

PUBLICLY.

It is why we do this, and why we go through this process so LOUDLY AND PUBLICLY that makes us unique on that world stage.

It is the founders ‘fundamentally flawed’ works which has made us never end the self critical analysis which gives birth to the Walts, and makes us a far different place.

Unfortunately the compulsive self loathing of men such as Walt will, in the end, cause some to begin to wonder, ‘if we are no different, why not just act no different and have done with it’