I partially disagree, though. I do think Americans are exceptional, even if I haven't settled on exactly how, and I definitely don't think of it as a wholly positive trait. But this juxtaposition from your post is interesting:
Americans aren't exceptional in any way.
Americans love to believe that the individual is greater than his situation.
1) Americans are, historically, exceptionally willing to let immigrants integrate. My family is from Bangladesh, my wife's from Oregon, both going back many generations. She could never integrate into Bengali society the way I have been allowed to integrate into American society. She could live there her whole life, and she'd always be "bideshi" (foreigner).
2) Americans are exceptionally optimistic. At its best, Silicon Valley is uniquely American: too naive to know that you can't do that. This is a double-edged sword, of course. Most of the time, "you can't/shouldn't do that" is true.
3) Americans have an exceptional commitment to the rule of law. We're not at a high point in our history in this regard, but we're still a society where the great struggles of our day play out in front of courts, not in riots and mobs.
Now, we're not as exceptional as we used to be. But in large part because Europe spent the last couple of decades becoming more like us. They instituted market reforms, opened up to immigration, rooted out corruption. It's easy to say that America isn't exceptional if you pretend European history didn't happen prior to 1995.
I just hate the worship of the vague abstract ideals that make us feel good over the complexity and hard truths of reality.
Or perhaps things were set up really good for the US after WWII? Then eventually a lot of Europe started to catch up to that initial advantage.
In the case of the old Soviet Block, given their past, basically anything that they could have done w.r.t. their markets and governments would have made them more like the US, if they aspired to some kind of democracy and some kind of free market. So I'm not so sure if 'More like the US' is very descriptive.
Then look at a wealthy kid born to a wealty family who works his ass off every day.
Even if they make the same on all of their standardized tests, make the same grades, and go to the same college, and get the same degree.....
Who's going to be more successful with the same amount of hard work?
And sure there's outliers but it's hard to argue that one's situation matters much more than the individual and this bizarre American sense of individual exceptional-ism is really naive.
I think stems from early Puritanical settlers who believed in pre-determinism and God rewarding people Materialistically the better person you are.
I'm pretty successful but I credit my family, being born in a 1st world country. My hard work was the tiniest of all parts of it. Had I been born in Romania or Zimbabwe I would not be where I am no matter how hard I worked. Conversely, I probably could have been way more successful if I had been born in a truly wealthy family.
That's what I'm getting at, maybe it's exactly that belief that sets us apart, and positing a distinctly American root seems to support the exceptionalist case.
It's like you're almost saying it's naive for the poor kid to believe he can be successful. If that belief is distinctly an American thing then I'm all in on exceptionalism.
>Who's going to be more successful with the same amount of hard work?
Success is tied more to education than anything. Good education just also happens to be tied to wealth as well. So by framing it with them getting the same education, you have actually eliminated most of the advantage the wealthy kid had. Unless you are just defining success as 'being rich', in which case the wealthy kid doesn't even have to be educated.
Passing down of beliefs and behaviors is almost more valuable than passing down money.
You're embedding positive or negative behaviors into someone's personality.
1>Passing down the belief that education is valuable
2>Passing down the belief that investing in the future is more valuable than short term spending.
etc.
Also having resources in general is a massive benefit. 1>having security allows wealthy kids to take more risks/reap more rewards.
2>More free time to learn and advance themselves
3>ability to take low paying jobs purely to make connections/build job skills
4>Status is a language that every one understands at a primitive level and so just getting more respect in general which means better promotions, better mates, etc.