If there a recurrent pattern in American history, it is the tension between the U.S.'s isolationism and its exceptionalism.
Dictionary definitions -- Isolationism: "A national policy of abstaining from political or economic relations with other countries.
Exceptionalism: "The theory or belief that something, especially a nation, does not conform to a pattern or norm."
On the one hand, we Americans tend to think we are God-blessed extraordinary people who don't need to soil ourselves with dealing with "the world." (The authors of the Declaration of Independence would probably not totally agree with this, given their concern with the "opinions of mankind," although their "mankind" was a small part of the 18th-century world).
On the other hand, citizens of the USA, while wary of overseas wars in these hard economic times, think we do need to save the outside world, given its sinful pattern or norms against the Almighty God (us?); so we drone-kill citizens in Muslim countries, for the sake of "national security."
Such is a very brief, rudimentary attempt to define the international mentality of my dearly-beloved, regrettably Bush-named, "homeland" and its current leaders.
Of course, some would say, American "isolationism" and "exceptionalism" are two sides of the same coin:
In other words, American provincialism masquerating (unintentionally?) as superiority.
A worthy subject for discussion at State Department-sponsored "American Spaces" overseas.
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