Other similar beliefs

     There exist two other particularly narcissistic beliefs that America has clung to in its early days as a nation. These two beliefs are nativism, and Manifest destiny.

   Manifest destiny is the belief that Americans had this "god-given right" to take and rule american land, while spreading their religion and ideologies across the land. This idea, while it pushed us forward towards expansion, also did its share of harm. While in the process of expanding, people would end up settling in occupied land, logically something had to be done about this, so, you know what they did? You guessed it, they removed the native Americans form their land, often by force. This belief that it was the destiny of these white Americans to take the land and "save" its inhabitants from their sinful and non-christian ways had a mostly negative impact on the Native Americans. It is also due to this belief and a lust for power and land that America decided to butt heads with Mexico over who would get everyone's favorite state, Texas.

   Nativism is an anti-immigrant belief, meaning that the only people who should get to live in America should be the Americans (the European ones, ones, not the native Americans).This belief consisted of two types of conflicts: a racial conflict between Americans and Europeans, and a religious conflict between the Catholics and the protestants. Of course as with most conflicts between two parties or beliefs, there were stereotypes, particularly ones that the white Americans held against the immigrants such as a belief that immigrants are intellectually inferior ("Getting the Message Out! Political Culture: Nativism."). Despite this opposition, immigration continued on through the centuries up to modern day, where this conflict with immigration has taken new form, and new meaning. However that's a different discussion for a different day.

At the end of the day; While our pride as a nation got us into some trouble and perhaps a few wars here and there, it was our pride that aided in pushing us into westward expansion (that and other social and economical problems including increasing population and a few economic depressions here and there “Manifest Destiny Overview" pbs.org).

   In the end, American exceptionalism is just another way of saying nationalism, only more narcissistic. Every nation has a sense of nationalism, in fact, every nation must at least have some of this, otherwise, they wouldn't be a nation. It is easy to be prideful, but hard to be humble. the challenge lies in not being exceedingly humble, but to acknowledge one's strengths and weaknesses, and the strengths and weaknesses of others, and being cold-truth honest with oneself about these things. This applies to both individual people, and whole nations. Only then can we work our way out of this rut of exceptionalism, and ensure we don't enter its entitling trap again.