What Are Charles Murray's Arguments For American Exceptionalism

In 2013, Charles Murray, an American political scientist, published his work, American Exceptionalism. In this 50 page treatise, Murray argues for an exceptional America countering the more prominent modernist views that America never was, and therefore is not, exceptional. Both sides of the debate are presented in this book, so that one can ascertain whether or not America was exceptional, despite Mr. Murray’s obvious slant to the former. What are Murray’s arguments for American exceptionalism, was America exceptional, and is America still exceptional today?
Charles Murray lays several arguments for American exceptionalism from the setting, to the ideology, to the traits, to the politics. The first of these, the setting, is rather unique.

Murray postulates that only people who were willing to brave unparalleled dangers were those willing to cross the Atlantic and start a colony from the ground up. As a result, these people tended to be “courageous, honest, incredibly hardworking, and belonging to close-knit families.” Logically then, America started out as a country founded upon these traits. Geographically, America was exceptional in the fact that it had huge tracts of raw, untapped frontier. The next exceptionality, the ideology, is manifest in the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Both of these documents extensively detail human rights and accentuate the colonists’ philosophies of rights, freedom, and liberty. The traits of Americans were likewise argued to be special. From industriousness, to egalitarianism, to community life, to religiosity, these traits separated the American from the Britain. And finally in politics, America formed a government that gave the governed the power, granting “majority rule” and not “ruler’s whims”.
Overall, the arguments posed by Murray do point to the exceptionalism of colonial America.

Although Murray seems to over-exaggerate the “goodness” of the earliest settlers, it is true that only the bravest and most desperate would settle the colonies, resulting in a much more principled society, which manifested their traits. For example, the philosophy that “all men are created equal” remains to this day. We have social classes but these are terms to describe income differences rather than actual divisions of rank. The communal aspect, epitomized by Mayberry in The Andy Griffith Show, kept communities close and strong, resulting in quick societal growth. Industriousness was vital, especially in the western frontier and early colonies, where settlers quickly found they had to work hard or die. And underlying all of this was the most important trait of religiosity. The majority of colonist believed in God and thus built their lives, societies, and government on Christian principles. As to politics, the system of government that the Founding Fathers created was completely experimental. America was the first to successfully give the power to the people. And finally, the ideology, may possibly be the most well-known exceptionality. The ideas that humans had natural rights given by a Creator demonstrated that America believed human life and their rights to be sacred and divinely protected. And when the colonists created a country based on these earth-shattering ideas, America truly became

exceptional.
But is she still exceptional today? Yes, but less so. The politics of America have exploded from limited government to a more expanded and more intrusive government. American communities are much less integrated as before due to size, but history shows that communities will band together when the need arises. Statistically, America remains hardworking, but the decline in industriousness is evident owing in part to government welfare and economic troubles. The underlying ideology of “all men are created equal” still remains. Unfortunately, it has been inspected, probed, analyzed, and dissected for so long that it is not nearly as close to the original meaning as before. This is due mainly to the decline in religiosity. Religiosity is gradually diminishing as religion becomes relative or non-existent. The slow removal of God from the government is directly proportional to the decline of the American government and why many of these exceptionalities are less so.
In conclusion, America was resoundingly exceptional at its birth, and is more quietly so now. And although the modernist Left will argue she never was, America is still the most exceptional country in the world and has been since the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. And until such time that we become so far removed from our roots that we have extinguished our exceptionality, we shall hold our head high, proud to be citizens of the most exceptional country history has yet to record.