Mom & Apple Pie

Lots of buzz about a speech potential GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie gave at the Reagan Library last night.  Most of the chatter focuses on the big guy's will-he-or-won't-he game, but the following little dig at the current administration is what really caught my eye:  the Times reports that he had this to say about the current leadership in Washington:

Unfortunately, through our own domestic political conduct of late, we have failed to live up to our own tradition of exceptionalism.

First of all, doesn't the '-ism' suffix suggest that Christie is referring to a tradition of thinking in a certain way about something?  But this is misleading; although he seems to be referring to that lame GOP trope according to which Barack Obama doesn't pay enough obeisance to the idea that America is an exceptional country, one somehow not subject to the same moral and geopolitical constraints and expectations that people in other times and places are subject to (in other words, a way of thinking), my take is that he explicitly wants to say that we're currently falling below our own high standards of, er, exceptional-ness.

Governor Christie is entitled to his own opinion regarding how exceptional we're currently being.  But as for the doctrine of exceptionalism, that's just crazy talk.  The idea implied, namely, that we can and ought to play by our own set of rules, strikes me as little more than a license for imperialism.  And that's to say nothing of the epistemological hubris:  would I claim to have the best parents on earth?  No:  they're really the only parents I've ever had--how would I know what kind of parenting is available out there in the great, wide world?  Does that mean I can't love my parents?  Of course not:  there are many reasons to love my parents.  Similarly, I can love my country without claiming that it's the greatest country on earth, and it would be foolish of me, based on my biased experience, to make such a claim in the first place.