"Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because ... America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist. ... One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015), p. 8
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
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American exceptionalism
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