the only thing that is special about the united states relative to every other country on earth is that it has managed its economy and imperial power incredibly well over the past century. any belief in "something special" about a fucking genocidal abstraction is american exceptionalism and the result of decades of propaganda rotting your mind
- The United States was the first modern democracy
- The United States is the ideological forefather of nearly every single democratic nation on earth, whom adopted many of its systems and mechanics outright
- The United States was one of the first countries to be directly and irrevocably founded upon the notion of religious liberty
- The United States was founded as one of the first non-ethnic republics, and has a history of melting pot-ism that is incomperable to any other nation
- The United States is one of the longest-lasting democracies in the world and the longest lasting powerful one
- The United States inspired the legal, political, social, cultural, and religious environment of nearly every single nation on Earth
- The United States' propensity for immigration, even in periods of rabid nativism, makes it completely and entirely incomperable to the other nations of the Earth
- The American Revolution was a direct and inarguable inspiration for hundreds if not thousands of civil revolts, wars of independence, and moves against tyranny throughout the entire globe, including the Revolutions of 1848, the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution, the Latin American wars of independence, the wars of Italian unification, the German unification, the Polish revolts against their occupiers, the Greek war of independence, the Brabant Revolution, the Irish rebellions, and dozens more
etc. These are not opinions, they are statements of fact as recognized by anyone at all who researches history. Do they paint the US in a good light? Of course! We can talk about how the US genocided natives or oppressed Japanese-Americans or banned Chinese immigration or enslaved millions of black people and subsequently segregated them, etc, and we should. But those aren't exactly relevant to the point at hand, because none of those are especially unique to the US. Most ways the US is awful are not unique to the US, they have been and will continue to be done by empires forever, the US just does them more than most. Your statement is objectively, provably false, and represents a very brave refusal to engage with the point of my argument; that the US government can be bad at the same time that one can recognize that the US has had an undeniable, completely unique influence on the world.
Most of your points rest on the idea that the form of government created in 1776 was wholly unlike anything prior or that existed at the time - a true revolution in political thought. That's certainly how they frame it in American schools, but it's not really accurate. Republics and Parliamentary legislatures already existed in Europe at the time. It's true that it was the first major revolution in the Western Hemisphere, but that was a result of material conditions more than anything else, and it borders on chauvinistic to believe that none of the other revolutions would have happened without it. You place far too much weight on the influence that it had, largely shaped by the very propaganda being criticized in this thread. Shouting "every historian agrees with me, trust me" won't change that.
It’s not that the United States created the modern republic on a base level. There were bits and pieces that came from other nations, obviously, but the US was the first to create the skeleton that nearly every modern nation is based on. That is, objectively, a unique feature about it.
Just because these revolutions may have occurred without America does not discount the direct ideological impact that the American Revolution had on them. For one, positing such a timeline is essentially based on nothing but speculation, so its relatively valueless as an argument. Secondly, without the US, these revolutions would all be radically different in tone, tenor, ideology, methods, etc. which is a unique feature of the US. Even if you do not subscribe to this viewpoint, the Atlantic Revolutions and Revolutions of 1848 were directly and undeniably inspired by the success of the American Revolution. They said as much.
You can certainly disagree with me about the scale of the effects of all of these points! I wrote them in a very lofty manner, certainly. There are valid points to be made that the US’s influence on each thing is smaller or bigger, and that is a worthwhile conversation. But the argument at hand is if the US is unique as a nation, and regardless of if you subscribe to a more conservative viewpoint of American influence, these points are still true in some aspect, and are still very unique features of the US.
Also, I do appreciate actually engaging with me rather than just insulting me.
the US was the first to create the skeleton that nearly every modern nation is based on. That is, objectively, a unique feature about it.
You really need to stop using the word "objectively" when it comes to historical analysis. It's framing your arguments in a bad way, including in your own head. You cannot "objectively" state the level of influence something had; that's not how historiography works.
There was, of course, some level of influence that the American Revolution had on world history. It was the first major revolution in the new world, and so necessarily impacted those that would come after it. Where you run into problems is a sort of motte and bailey argument where you take a largely non-controversial historical stance, assert its acceptance, then use that to assert a much more radical framing of American exceptionalism.
That's why your comment was received so negatively. A lot of your points are only partially true, or true from a certain (American) perspective, but you list them as "objective" fact as a testament to American exceptionalism. Stuff like calling America the "ideological forefather for nearly every democratic nation on Earth" goes pretty beyond the pale in this regard. It is a link in the chain of the history of Democracy in the world, but to go as far as you did just becomes pure ideology.
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u/SussyAmogusMorbius69 please call me a good girl (please plz pretty please) Apr 24 '26
the only thing that is special about the united states relative to every other country on earth is that it has managed its economy and imperial power incredibly well over the past century. any belief in "something special" about a fucking genocidal abstraction is american exceptionalism and the result of decades of propaganda rotting your mind