Visitors to the US see a distinct American character

The argument

This argument rests on the testimony of an outside observer, on the reasoning that a national character is most visible to someone who does not share it. French traveller Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his travelogue of the United States that Americans were exceptional compared to Europeans. The comparison is what gives the observation its force: de Tocqueville was not describing Americans in isolation but registering a difference from the society he had left, which is a judgement only a visitor is positioned to make. What he identified was a particular relationship between citizens and their country. Americans were, for de Tocqueville, more concerned with their nation's future than other people. They "care about their country's interests as though they were their own," and "feel for their homeland a feeling analogous to what a man feels for his family." The analogy does the work in that second observation: family is the relation in which obligation is felt rather than owed, and de Tocqueville found citizens relating to their country in that register. Consistent with this, they were more concerned with matters of law and government, he believed, than his own countrymen — public affairs being treated as their own business rather than as something conducted above them. He also offered an explanation rather than only a description. Democratic society, de Tocqueville argued, had created a new and exceptional connection between the people and their government, which locates the character in the political arrangement that formed it rather than in the people themselves. Because visitors to the US have observed a distinct American character and traced it to something genuinely new, this argument holds that America is exceptional.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the argument rests on a single nineteenth-century observer whose key term has been widely misread. Tocqueville's remark described the United States as unusual in its situation — its geography, its want of a feudal past and a hereditary aristocracy, its Puritan inheritance — rather than as superior, and the celebratory sense that "American exceptionalism" now carries post-dates him. A traveller's impression is also evidence about the traveller: Tocqueville was writing to argue a case about democracy for a French audience, and Democracy in America has long been criticised for generalising from a nine-month visit that left much of the country unseen. The comparison class matters too. He was measuring the United States against the monarchies and aristocratic societies of 1830s Europe, and the traits he singled out — civic participation, attachment to local self-government, identification with the nation — are ordinary in democracies today, so distinctiveness observed then need not survive the comparison now. Critics add that visitors have reported a distinct national character wherever they have travelled, which makes the observation a general feature of travel writing rather than evidence of one country's uniqueness, and that being distinct is not yet being exceptional in the sense the question asks — as the sibling position that America is exceptional but not necessarily in a good way points out.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The observation is one traveller's impression from a nine-month visit, written to argue a case about democracy for a French audience, and Tocqueville's "exceptional" described an unusual situation — no feudal past, no hereditary aristocracy, a particular geography and inheritance — rather than superiority. [Rejecting P2] His comparison class was the monarchies and aristocratic societies of 1830s Europe, and the traits he singled out — civic participation, local self-government and identification with the nation — are ordinary in democracies today. [Rejecting C] Visitors report a distinct national character wherever they travel, so the observation is a general feature of travel writing rather than evidence of uniqueness, and being distinct is not yet being exceptional in the sense the question asks.