Liberals generally don’t oppose American exceptionalism, just various conservative versions of it.
The Iraq war, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern affairs show liberals usually disagree on the methodology to be used, but agree with spreading not just American democracy but all of its sociological trappings. Implicit in this agreement is the common believe in American exceptionalism, namely that these ideas are worthy of being spread.
But are they? From our point of view, it might be great that women aren’t forced to wear burkhas, but here in America we went more than 130 years from the adoption of our constitution to women having the right to vote across the country, let alone the sociological changes that followed from that.
And yet, we blithely expect that we can change Afghanistan on the fly.
In many cases, it’s probably more that “they” laugh at us, or shake their heads at us, rather than, or at least before, they hate us.
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