Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

...There are many Americans who love their country in pretty much the way the president does... special, often an enormous force for good in the world, but also fallible.... You don’t have to be black to see things that way.... There’s the guy who described one of our foreign wars as ‘the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation’... Ulysses S. Grant... [on] the Mexican-American War.... We are becoming... more sophisticated... people do understand that... [those] shouting ‘USA! USA!’... are often less patriotic than the people they’re trying to shout down.... We really are an exceptional country... that has played a special role... [and] always stood for some of humanity’s highest ideals. We are not... about tribalism--which is what makes all the shouting about American exceptionalism so ironic, because it is... an attempt to tribalize...