As the Republican party bounces around ideas for its nomination for the next presidential election, many candidates and their supporters insist wholeheartedly that they are “American Exceptionalists” and therefore the true conservatives and Americans. For a term used so often, no one seemed to really know what it means. One of many meanings the phrase assumes a divinely ordained mission given especially to the United States as the beacon of morality in the world — or that American forefathers founded our country on uniquely inspired principles — or that God has exempted America from the trends of history, sometimes calling America the “New Israel” and Ameri­cans “God’s chosen people.” American exceptionalism often also takes a more secular definition, simply the idea that “We got it right” accompanied by a feeling of superiority and eminence over any other country: past, present or future.

There appears an inherent hypocrisy with some of these con­cepts and how they have used in American politics. “We believe in equality, therefore we’re the best.” “We believe in self-govern­ment, so let us set up your government for you.” “We’re the heirs of the Western Christian tradition, therefore no one has thought of our principles before.”

As we all remember from American heritage — sorry, fresh­man — Edmund Burke characterized the American Revolution as a conservative force, which is certainly how the founding fathers thought of their actions. This essential motive differentiates the American Founding from the Reign of Terror in the French Revo­lution. They meant to restore the rights and privileges of English­men that they had enjoyed before, to get back to how things were, not to do something radical, new, or exceptional. In fact, few to none of the principles of the founding were uniquely or originally American.

It was Russian dictator Joseph Stalin who coined American exceptionalism to mean what he saw as America’s delusion of ex­clusion from the natural course of the world. It would be difficult and irresponsible to attempt to anachronistically claim the found­ing generation as “American exceptionalist” or not, but we can see how the term has been used since its birth in the twentieth century. Colonization, imperialism, and foreign wars have all been justified by American exceptionalism – “making the world safe for democ­racy,” spreading Americanism, and sentiments of moral supremacy. How are these conservative values?

“Conservatism, I repeat, is not an ideology,” Russell Kirk explained. “It does not try to excite the enthusiasm of a secular religion. If you want men who will sacrifice their past and present and future to a system of abstract ideas, you must go to Commu­nism, or Fascism, or Benthamism.”

“The high–minded conservative detests Abstraction, or the passion for forcing men and societies into a preconceived pattern divorced from the special circumstances of different times and countries,” he said.

This lies at the heart of conservatism — understanding the context of one’s time and place — that the American is obligated to love his country over all others just as the Irishman is obligated to love his country and so on. The word “patriotism,” should inspire a familial bond with our home. We love it because it is ours, not be­cause we love abstractions about it that can blind us to its fallibility and mortality.

The conservative places himself first with God and Church; then family, community, state, and country; and finally human­ity, instead of in the un-conservative, nationalistic, ideological, perverted patriotism called American exceptionalism.