The Problem of Exceptionalism

Patrick Smith finds hope in the Princeton University student protests over Woodrow Wilson's racism--an act to recover a past that has been buried in silence.

The policy cliques and corrupt, know-nothing pols who now run Washington are allergic to history—and try to keep us away from it at all cost—for a very good reason. History is a weapon. In our past—another distinction I have made before—there is mythology and there is history. When you listen to these people, you hear the sound of mythology, of American exceptionalism. We need the sound of history now