How To Measure American Exceptionalism
Scoring America and our rivals on 5 critical components for civilization: God, speech, guns, innovation, and trust
Comrades: We must protect American exceptionalism from ideological subversion.
My robust scientific method assigns 10 points each to 5 categories that make America the greatest country in the world:
God: How religious, moral, and virtuous a society is.
Speech: How free its members are to say what they want, debate each other, and criticize those in power (First Amendment).
Guns: How much fighting spirit a nation’s citizens have to defend themselves against tyranny from within and military capability to deter enemies from without (Second Amendment).
Innovation: How well technology and natural resources are harnessed to maximize prosperity and creativity.
Trust: How much trust people have in each other and the government through rule of law, low crime, and a cohesive aspirational culture.
How do we score against our rivals? Here is a summary with commentary below.
America
It is obvious that America ranks first in the American exceptionalism scorecard. However, MAGA and woke America diverge in their God, speech, guns, and trust scores. Innovation remains strong in both parts because the left runs Hollywood and Silicon Valley. MAGA America stands head and shoulders above the rest because of its dedication to the founding principles of the country. Note how Woke America scores in a similar range as Europe, Russia, and China. That is the abyss that every blue state has fallen towards and what the USA would look like under uniparty DNC rule.
Europe
Europe mirrors Woke America with low levels of religion, fighting spirit, and free speech. America has subsidized their defense spending. Instead of innovating, they have squandered our largesse on welfare and regulation. Outside of the cities that have been taken over by mass migration, Europeans still live in high trust societies that most Americans can’t imagine. The unelected bureaucrats of the EU and their leftist puppets will not hesitate to throw their subjects into the gulag for mean Tweets. Canada and Australia fall into this category as well.
The “experts” think that Europe and Canada have stronger democracies than America ;)
Russia
Russia is stronger than Europe in God and guns. They are feared warriors under the resurgent Orthodox Church. However, entrenched cronyism has sapped innovation and trust. Strongmen like Putin have ruled since the fall of the czars. That is unlikely to change.
China
The CCP has destroyed religion and free speech, scoring the lowest in those categories. However, it has built up its military and technological base thanks to naive American politicians and business leaders who profited from it. Although China is a homogenous society, state control and corruption make it relatively lower trust than the west. The average citizen has no self defense rights against the government, which makes it hard to resist totalitarianism. Crime is low thanks to tough enforcement and a culture of shaming.
How To Slay the Dragon and Wrestle the Bear
Comrades: The CCP is 10x more dangerous than Russia, yet American “elites” behave as though the opposite is true.
American exceptionalism is embodied by all the soldiers who have fought and died for our country. For Memorial Day, honor great patriots like Pat Tillman by holding all of us to a higher standard:
Remembering Pat Tillman: An American Patriot, NFL Player, and Army Ranger whose Friendly Fire Death was Turned into War Propaganda
Comrades: Pat Tillman’s life was as much a white pill and as his death was a black pill.
Woke America does not have an 8 in innovation haha! Their whole ethos is redistributive, not creative or explorative at all. And the memes alone bump MAGA America's innovation up to 9.
In 2024 when a friend from Portland Oregon was trying to convince me to vote Kamala, he said, "Well, I don't believe in American exceptionalism anyway. I think socialism is the way." I told him that we already have socialism and it's for sure not exceptional rather the global norm and when anyone bemoans with sophisticated airs about "late-stage capitalism" they are actually talking about our sclerotic socialism – so why not aspire for a republic that holds exceptional values such as liberty rather than settling for the mediocre least common denominator of globalist values? As often happens, I didn't get a response but he simply blocked me lol!
I note that the scores for America are in all cases, the mean for Woke America and MAGA America. This means that what passes for a country is evenly divided between two incompatible visions.
Oh, and someone needs to work on the AI to get images to keep their fingers off the damn triggers. For God's sake, even the Taliban and Sudanese militiamen can manage this.