American Political Culture: An Encyclopedia

Few people view their own country in such sharply ideological terms as Americans. They see America as an embodiment of certain values: a sense of mission and feelings of superiority as if the USA is the bearer of glad tidings for the rest of the world. It is this which had given rise to the doctrine of exceptionalism – to put it bluntly, the feeling that America is “different”. At home, the message is one of limited government, a free market and the notion of individual “growth”, all of them underwritten by a system which, traditionally, offered only national security...