Calling Yourself Exceptional Isn't

Just a quick Fourth of July note. Hope you set off lots of fireworks, and eat lots of hamburgers. But here's also hoping that you do it with a clear head.

This civil holiday celebrates resistance to tyranny. And of course, some of the most ardent participants at such events are those who want to justify contemporary tyranny, the kind who want to keep everybody well occupied over celebrations of resistance to yesteryear's tyrants....

Calling yourself exceptional isn't. Recognizing that we are mortal men just like other mortal men, and that we are vulnerable to all the same temptations, is rare. Boasting in American achievements barely manages to clear that Ozymandian low bar -- it is the kind of ordinary hubris nailed in a poem that was written before we defeated the Nazis, landed on the moon, built the space shuttle, and started selling iPhones that could serve as navigation systems for the space shuttle -- and when we invite mighty observers to look on our works and despair, we are acting like pretty much everybody else in the history of the world.

[via BlOG and MABLOG, emphasis mine]