Good news: Exceptionalism can be spread
The recent uproar over President Trump's alleged comments about "s---hole countries" has created a dilemma for leftists. How can they, at once, espouse the virtuousness of those coming to America illegally and not simultaneously denounce the conditions of those same said countries from which immigrants are seeking to flee?
Are we to import immigrants to vote for the same type of leaders who created the circumstances under which they have fled?
Herein lies the dilemma for those of us on the right – what are we doing to educate newly arrived immigrants and inner-city minorities on the virtues that built and sustain our American system? And what are we doing to export those (universal) virtues to these third-world nations?
Sadly, we've been derelict in our responsibility. We've allowed leftists (the Clinton Global Initiative, the U.N., and Sean Penn) free rein to espouse a different kind of virtue: statism. These "s-hole countries" as well as leftist-run municipalities in America (see Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, et al.) all have the same thing in common: democratic socialism.
America was not meant to remain exceptional.
While Marco Rubio has since jumped the shark, his 2011 speech at the Reagan Library (17:45 mark) is the clearest articulation of the universality of our founding tenets (as maintained by Ronald Reagan) that has recently been uttered.
[Ronald Reagan] understood [that] the desire to be free, prosperous, and compassionate, although shared by all Americans, [is] universal. The desire to leave our children better off than ourselves is something we hold as Americans, but so do people all over the world. Because he understood, the principle that this nation was founded upon was not that the people of North America were endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, but that all people are endowed by their creator with these inalienable rights. That transcribed in our hearts is the desire to live in freedom and liberty, that it is our natural right, and the government's job is to protect those rights, not grant them to us. This is the natural state of man.
Our exceptional nature is not, as Emma Lazarus opined, and as leftists have so enthusiastically embraced, centered on the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Our exceptional nature is premised on the virtues enshrined at our founding and in our founding documents (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights). This is to say that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that it is not government's job to grant these rights, but to protect them.
Our exceptional nature is, as the Bible informs (Matthew 5:14), and as articulated presciently by Ronald Reagan, like a shining city on a hill.
Is it not time, and our eternal duty, to spread the light to the world?
As Donald Trump has made major inroads in Making America Great Again, we should, to coin a phrase "spread the (ideological) wealth."
Let us light a candle and not put it under a bushel, but place it upon a lampstand (or statue), that others may see the light. We should endeavor to spread our exceptional nature to every corner on Earth.
Let's embark to Make Haiti Great, and West Africa, and Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, and Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Ferguson and Flint, and any other places that have lived in the darkness of democratic socialism.
Let's spread the (ideological) wealth.