Marco Rubio triumphed in Florida with a stump speech that focused on American exceptionalism, notes Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard. (Sample line: "It's sometimes easy to forget how special America really is.") More Republicans would be wise to follow suit in part because it's true and in part because it "drives Democrats right around the bend," writes Ferguson.
Liberals think the idea of American exceptionalism is a dangerous conceit, he says, but they've got it all wrong. Americans truly have created a unique country. "That’s why Glenn Beck and all those Tea Partiers prattle endlessly on about the Founders," he writes. "Thanks to the ingenuity, persistence, and sacrifice of earlier generations, our obligation now is to conserve the arrangements that make us exceptional, reaffirm them, and prepare to pass them on, with an abiding faith in personal liberty." For an opposing view, see Michael Kinsley's recent column in Politico.
(More American exceptionalism stories.)