American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States is inherently different from other nations.[2] In this view, American exceptionalism stems from its emergence from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called “the first new nation”[3] and developing a uniquely American ideology, “Americanism”, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy and laissez-faire. This ideology itself is often referred to as “American exceptionalism.”[4]
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense.[4][5] To them, the U.S. is like the biblical “City upon a Hill”—a phrase evoked by British colonists to North America as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries…
The exact term “American exceptionalism” was occasionally used in the 19th century.[8] Its common use dates from Communist usage the late 1920s. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin chastised members of the Jay Lovestone-led faction of the American Communist Party for its claim that America was independent of the Marxist laws of history “thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions”. Stalin may have been told of the usage “American exceptionalism” by Brouder & Zack in Daily Worker (N.Y.) on the 29th of January 1929, before Lovestone’s visit to Moscow. American Communists started using the English term “American exceptionalism” in factional fights. It then moved into general use among intellectuals.
