Likewise, gushing about how awesome America is can lead one to conclude that it exists as the final chapter of some global narrative. To describe the country as some shining city on a hill is one thing, to add an element of destiny is another. Considering all the people that had to die for America to happen, and all the shameful chapters in our national history that led up to this point, if America has any divine mandate it is on behalf of a genocidal, Old Testament sort of deity at odds with the benevolent God most Americans say they worship. More importantly, claiming that America represents the most that any nation can aspire to blinds us to what we can learn from other countries, or even to the possibility that we can improve ourselves.
Nevertheless, I still think America is an exceptional country, and it doesn't have anything to do with deserving special treatment or our holy destiny.
Whereas other, later colonies were founded on the backs of subjugated indigenous populations, providence saw fit to clear out America's natives with diseases, and the survivors were able to be pushed westward or onto reservations as more colonists arrived. The result was a lot of land just ripe for the taking, especially attractive if you're coming from a continent where all the real estate was divvied up between a bunch of old, feudal families. America, once those troublesome natives were swept from it, was a blank slate, a place where someone with no prospects in the old country could make something of himself, become a landowner, and rise to the local aristocracy based on his own efforts, not a family inheritance or passed-down title.
This may be as much to blame for America's conception of men and kings as all those Enlightenment scholars like Locke who are usually cited when discussing the Founding Fathers' ideology. If Goodman Joseph can get off his boat in New England, work hard for a decade or two, and become a respected landowner with a prosperous farm and associated business, it might be harder to believe that the inhabitants of a distant palace are somehow inherently better than the rest of us. You might start to think that maybe people are created more or less equal to each other, and their differences in station are due to circumstance and their actions more than anything else.
At any rate, the end result was America's reputation as the Land of Opportunity. Now, this may not be as true these days as it was a few centuries ago. America eventually developed an aristocracy of sorts, and has political and business dynasties such as the Kennedys and Bushes, the Rockefellers and Waltons. The gap between the richest fraction of a percentage of the population and the rest of us is growing wider, and despite our "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" national myth it's a lot easier for a millionaire to become a billionaire than it is for a poor man to become rich. The frontier is gone, jobs are getting harder to find, and we have a looming water shortage that will one day prove that America does in fact have a maximum sustainable population. But the main thing is that Americans like to believe that, with the right opportunity, anyone could improve their lot and prosper, and those who are wealthy aren't necessarily "better" than the rest of us. We can recognize the differences in income while still viewing each other as equal.
This is all important because it attracted so many people to come start a new life in America, and that I think is the most exceptional thing about America. We're a nation of immigrants, with a strong British heritage but also representatives from every other country on the planet. Granted, this process was not without friction, and whatever minority population characterized one generation tended to assimilate in time to voice their dismay at the next wave of foreign invaders. But generally we recognize that anyone on the planet is a potential American, if they buy into our national values.
In short, "American" is not an ethnicity, though it might be a suffix to one. Anyone, from anywhere, can come in an become part of our country. They can wholeheartedly embrace their new homeland, or adopt America's culture and values while retaining the parts of their old country that they want to bring with them as a ___-American, either works. You can do this in other countries, of course, but you won't fit in as well. It's a lot easier to become a French or Swedish citizen than it is to become French or Swedish, because those are national identities tied to specific ethnicities and histories.
This is special because it puts us ahead of the curve, in a way. The basic international unit for the past century or so has been the nation-state, a political entity inhabited by a national entity. The French live in France, the Swedes live in Sweden, and so on. The problem is that the world is changing, and populations are moving about - blame globalization for shifting economic opportunities, and modern transportation for making it possible to chase them. The result is friction, strife, fears of a country being taken over by its immigrants, reactionary xenophobic nationalism, and so on.
America doesn't have to deal with that - or at least, it isn't acceptable to openly admit as much. When we rail about Central American immigrants, it's because they crossed the border illegally, not simply because there are now Mexicans living in our country. Oh, there are efforts to enforce English as a national language through de jure legislation rather than de facto custom, and some alarm about immigrant enclaves that are refusing to assimilate into the local culture, but America isn't "threatened" by newcomers in the same way as other countries are. Beyond being one of the architects of the current globalized world, we're well-situated to weather the turbulence of globalization. So long as they buy into national values of equality and share our belief in opportunity, we're generally accepting of immigrants.
It's the whole e pluribus unum thing, how a diverse population when it comes to ethnicity, religion, and subculture can still belong to the same ideologically-based nation. It's why the European Union is so interesting to watch, at least from the perspective as an international affairs-minded American - we can see our own history in it, as a collection of states take steps towards becoming something more. Granted, a collection of English colonies with limited capacities had an easier time unifying than a continent's worth of nation-states that are or were great powers in their own right, and that's probably why a unified "European" identity isn't taking precedence over national identities yet. But that may change. I'm not advocating an "end to history," but I do think America can be considered the future, or at least a future, that other countries can follow.
Until that day, well... in a world with shifting populations, and where states' borders may not necessarily align with, or may even divide, national distributions, the fact that America has been able to build such a successful country that people keep wanting to be a part of, a country based on lofty ideals of equality and opportunity rather than an ethnic identity or totalitarian adherence to a religious or political doctrine, remains pretty exceptional.
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