Posted on 05/12/2014 9:35:31 AM PDT by i88schwartz
Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss talks to FOX News' Mike Huckabee about the importance of teaching the constitution and American exceptionalism.
"We were responsible for the greatest revolution in the history of civilization. We gave to 98% of the human race freedoms that they have been lashed for, lost fingers for or had their heads chopped off for and we gave it to them for free and we are the most revolutionary nation that has ever been and ever will be and we don't know enough about our constitution or our history to know why we should be proud of it," Dreyfuss said on FOX News' "Huckabee."
"Whenever you hear someone say American exceptionalism [doesn't exist], you should turn to that person and say, 'if you don't prove that statement, I'm going hit you right in the mouth.' Because they don't prove it, and they can't," Dreyfuss said.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
The guy is like 70.
There used to be an era when US democrats has a large percentage of members that were not Wilson Progressive, FDR Progressives - Soviet sympathizers, and not those that would make up the New Left of the sixties that has gone on to subvert that Party.
These people, like conservatives of the Republican cast that weren’t TR progressives, believed in common with us the US motto, Novus Ordo Seclorum — A New Order for the Ages. We were the inspiration for the whole world at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. Our unique place in that history gave us this understanding of American Exceptionalism.
Dualism and Relativism along with much of twentieth century socialist and marxist determinism was at a constant battle with that understanding. The price from that battle is now being paid and still coming due. As is happens, our culture is being destroyed and even the bone head liberals that don’t think of themselves as Marxist are realizing the road we are on in our journey.
I thought he was a total libtard....
Check out the site and news listings Mr. Dreyfuss started working on this back in 2009. He just hasn’t linked up with the Tea Parties!
Hell freezes over.
Glad to see that even some liberals can see the good that America has in it and the exceptional history of this great Republic.
I would also note that some on the right, mainly libertarian types, have lost site of America’s Exceptionalism and see only the negative.
Richard Dreyfuss is from Hollywood and he doesn’t hate the United States? That’s weird... and wonderful...
Err, you might want to read the article.
That’s correct. I don’t agree. I don’t believe that America is exempt from history. I don’t believe that we are God’s chosen instrument. I don’t believe America has a God-appointed unique and messianic role in time.
Dreyfuss wrote a really great tribute to Charlton Heston on Heston’s passing, ticking off a whole lot of leftists. He seems to be that rare liberal who actually thinks for himself.
I’m not in favor of hitting people who disagree with me - but other than that, he’s on the right track.
He’s 66 according to Wiki..............Just a ‘little’ older than me.........;^)
And those of us that are Proud COSERVATIVE teachers, do we get to slap you back?
Uhmmm, Obama does not believe in American Exceptionalism. Hope Mr. Dreyfus enjoys speaking to Secret Service
Even Wikipedia does define “American Exceptionalism’ as narrowly as you do. It points to our position in the 18th century the first New nation and “based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, populism and laissez-faire” as being he nature of the features that defined American Exceptionalism.
The oft used City on a Hill biblical metaphor is more due to our visibility to the rest of the world rather than our religous foundations and character.
Can you abide the term applied without the religous context but as, instead of the fruit of the pre-French enlightenment, the fruit English/Scottish enlightenment as analyzed by de Toqueville?
I’ll add the actual quote from Democracy in America:
The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people
Many people come to their senses sooner or later. Better late than never...
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