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American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword By Seymour Martin Lipset. (New York: Norton, 1996. 352 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-39303725-8.)
American Exceptionalism molds successfully together in monograph form a series of essays published between 1977 and 1995. The result is a clear presentation of the ideas of Seymour Martin Lipset even if the book does not add much to what he has been writing for decades, which means that the idea of exceptionalism cannot be developed beyond the point reached in the 1950s. To European eyes this idea seemed even at the time more a nationalist ideology than a scientific analysis of American history and society, but what made it meaningful was its proudly ideological aim of creating a democratic myth to set against the political myth of Soviet totalitarianism. Today the reiterated claims of Lipset that "to be exceptional does not mean to be better," far from making the concept more appealing, empties it of...