The Liberal Traditions in the Americas

The term American Exceptionalism usually references two things: first, the fact or belief that the United States has been exempt from the kind of domestic class conflict that has afflicted the development other nations; second, the fact or belief that the United States has been able to project an unprecedented degree of global power free from the kind of direct colonialism and militarism that has defined previous empires. But in all the debates over what is and isn’t distinct about the United States, little discussion has been paid to one variable that can, at least in relation to its global ascendance, unambiguously be called unique: its relationship with Latin America. This lecture will contrast Latin America’s “sovereignty-social rights” complex with the United States’s “interventionist-individual rights” one, as a way of sketching out an integrated history of “Greater America.”