American Exceptionalism is exactly what it sounds like – or, at least, it used to be.
American. Exceptional. It is, or was, the act of being American and doing exceptional things. It seems odd, that on Presidents’ Day, when we should be celebrating those Presidents who exemplified the very spirit of American Exceptionalism, we instead can be directly reminded of it’s decline.
It’s the date. Today’s date. February 20th, 2012, which directly calls into question the exceptionalism which used to be ours but sadly, is now in steep decline.
Why IS today’s date SO important to this discussion?
50 years ago today, American Exceptionalism was on full display. We did something THAT day we can’t do today and it was a matter of technology, bravery, spirit and sheer force of will.
The bravery is still there, spirit too. What we are sorely lacking today is the will and the technology.
On February 20th, 1962, we put John Glenn into orbit. No American had done it before. It wasn’t perfect but we got him back alive. While in flight, warning lights indicated that the heat shield which would protect Friendship 7 on reentry, had come loose. This cut the planned 10 orbits down to 3 and the decision to keep the retro rocket pack attached to the heat shield, to hold the latter in place was made.
Friendship 7 containing John Glenn would splash down about 40 miles off it’s intended target. Once the craft was lifted to the deck 
of a Destroyer, Glenn would try to exit through the top hatch but, he found it too hot and instead, blew the bolts to release the side hatch.
John Glenn became an American Hero that day and would go on to become a Member of the United States Senate.
His feat, in 1962, was a prime example of American Exceptionalism. That he later became a Senator, also an example of Exceptionalism, but John Glenn wasn’t done yet.
In 1998, John Glenn did it again.
In October of that year, Glenn, already a Member of the Astronaut Hall of Fame and a Congressional Space Medal of Honor winner, returned to space aboard the Shuttle Discovery and became the oldest man to ever fly in space.
John Glenn is an Exceptional American and on this date, February 20th, 1962, he did something which today, we lack the technology and the will to do.
He was launched into orbit aboard an AMERICAN spacecraft.
Back then, in 1962, we were in the very early days of the space race against the Soviet Union. President Kennedy offered the challenge to put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of that decade.
When Kennedy issued that challenge, he did so only 3 weeks after America had FIRST sent an astronaut into space and just barely 8 years later, in July 1969, American Exceptionalism MET that challenge when Armstrong and Aldren walked on the moon.
Of course, American Exceptionalism is not limited to flying in space.
Long before manned flight was even thought of, American Exceptionalism was alive and well. Those who first came here on the Mayflower, the first Americans, were exceptional in that they left everything they knew to begin a new life. They were met by Exceptional Native Americans.
Those who created a new nation and declared it independent?
Exceptional.
Those who first explored this nation?
Those who settled the west?
Exceptional.
Our inventors, builders and captains of industry?
American Exceptionalism.
Presidents who created this nation and its foundation?
The President who saw us through the war between the states and set a nation free from slavery?
Exceptional.
Regrettably, we now have a President who deplores American Exceptionalism. He started his term bowing to other world leaders and making apologies for, of all things, American Exceptionalism.
He would rather stand with those who occupy public places, exhibiting violence and disgusting behavior than with those who build and create companies and jobs.
His actions are more aimed at making our country dependent on foreign energy than in producing our own.
He is actively engaged in building a society dependent on government rather than advocating self reliance and individualism.
Success used to be a sure sign of American Exceptionalism in action; but today, under this President, success is something to be frowned upon and punished.
This President started his political career in the home of an admitted and unapologetic domestic terrorist, attended a church for more than 20 years where anti Americanism was preached from the pulpit and whose own wife admitted that the first time in her adult life that she was proud of her country was the day her husband was nominated.
Those who voted FOR him either felt about this nation as he does or they voted for him on the basis of his skin color or they were snowed and didn’t realize for what they were voting. Those who plan to vote for him again will do so knowing full well what he is and they must agree with his anti Americanism or their vote is solely based on his skin color.
On Presidents’ Day, we should celebrate leaders who spurred this nation to exceptional heights through their belief in the people.
Half a century ago, we went from never having a man in space to putting men on the moon in only 8 years and today, after the retirement of the Space Shuttle, we can’t build a rocket to do what we did 50 years ago today? Put a man in orbit?
Today we must rely on Russia to send OUR astronauts to orbit?
We won’t build an oil pipeline to create jobs and provide known and successful sources of energy to our nation? We have a jobs 
creation adviser to the President who sends jobs to China? We have a guy heading up the IRS and tasked with finding ways to increase revenue who cheated on HIS taxes? We have a President whose party placed a Judge on the Supreme Court who doesn’t believe OUR constitution should be a model for OTHER nations and who refers to European law to guide her in deciding matters of law in OUR country?
American Exceptionalism IS in steep decline.
God Speed John Glenn?
We CAN be Exceptional again.
God Speed American Exceptionalism!
Very well stated Capt-Dax and extremely well researched. You described what is going on in Washington D.C. very well. Yes, it is time for the American People to stand together and dissolve the current Elected Government Officials. 2012 is an Election Year and as Americans’ we can make a change by “NOT” re-election anyone that is currently in office in Washington D.C. We need people who believe in “Common Since” in Washington. Someone who has to balance a budget weekly to be able to pay their bills and support their family. An American that will support the Constutition of the United States, believes in God and Peace; but is not afraid to fight (should need be), and must be over the age of 38.
We Are Americans
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
..He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_downloads.html
We are in a mess because we abandoned our moral compass, dismissed the Captain & are actively scuttalling the ship. The Founders had their roots in the values of the Bible. The church today have lost their way, becoming clubs to support an agender or false doctrine. How do I know this? By the fruit. The church should be the biggest influence of the day.
The Media are telling us the bad guys ( which we already know) hows about talking up the the guys who keep the Constitution.
Exceptional article, Craig! Bravo!
Thanks for the reminder, Craig. I must admit I did not remember this anniversary. John Glenn Jr. brought a whole new vision to America and the rest of the world, and reminded us that patriotism was alive and well. Sadly, the youth of today has no idea what the word means, and could care less. 47 years ago today I married my soldier sweetheart, and we are still going strong. Wish I could say the same about my country.