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Comment by orbitingpluto | Hacker News Reader

Unsurprisingly, non-Americans take exception to American exceptionalism.

America is literally pulling a, "We're better than you so we can violate any of your laws - including our own - and then murder, torture & kidnap. We are sovereign over the entire world."

Few non-Americans think that's a swell idea, so it will only last as long as American power lasts.

If you agree with Chomsky or not or if you think American power will last or not, you at least have to be able to concede that everybody else in the world has a valid gripe about the benevolent bully who really likes his big stick. Chomsky is just an American who noticed that...

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American Exceptionalism is the worst kind of circular logic. "We're special because we're a nation built on values and laws. That means only we are allowed to violate those values and laws, because we're special. You're welcome."

Every nation is sovereign as to every other nation. The implication of that is that every nation reserves the right to do whatever it wants to other nations. As in the state of nature, the only governing law between nations is power. America is unexceptional in this regard, they just have most of the power. But if you see how other major nations treat countries in their back yard, it becomes clear that power really is the only governing law. America's back yard is just bigger.

As an aside, I've always found Chomsky's continued association with one of the major pillars of the defense industrial complex, MIT, rather hypocritical. Maybe he could move to a university that doesn't take a billion dollars in DOD money every year, if he's so critical of it...

Do you know what "American Exceptionalism" means? What do you think is wrong with that characterisation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

Approximately all of it is wrong. The USA is exceptional precisely because it's the most powerful, and nothing more.

That's what you're claming American think, or that's what you think?

That's what I think. Many Americans in my experience believe the "American exceptionalism" described there, in terms of the country being uniquely classless, or free, or whatever.

Do you honestly think other nations don't do the same? Treating the U.S. as an exceptional case in this regards is just ridiculous.

Nationalism is indeed horrible everywhere it is found. Patriotism should be treated just like racism wherever it is encountered. It is a mechanism for one group of people to dehumanize another or at least feel superior to another. But I think the most powerful nations are the most frightening.

Yeah, us New Zealanders have kidnapped lots of US citizens and handed them over for torture in opposition of own laws. We've established an overseas prison explicitly to hold people who would have rights if we imprisoned them locally.

But, you know, it's cool : all states do the same thing.

don't be so smug. It almost happened, with kim dot com.

Though one could argue there is a big difference between "actually has and is continuing to be so" and "almost, maybe, kinda, sorta"

unquestionably, and to their credit the New Zealand authorities brought an end to the farce in a timely fashion. But, the statistics of small numbers can be deceptive. Certainly, in the US, plenty of farcical prosecutions are halted, but there are also plenty of counterexamples. And the population of the US is nearly 100x the population of new zealand.

Kim was kidnapped by NZ, really? I must have missed that.

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