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<font face="Verdana">Bill<br>
<br>
The history of the term "US exceptionalism" that you relate is
truly illuminating (no irony intended).<br>
<br>
However, I have to disagree with you when you come to the
contemporary moment and the contextual space (global IG).<br>
<br>
"</font> <font face="Verdana">The jaw dropping assertion that
everyone around the world who supports multistakeholderism a la
ICANN or is skeptical that UN-based alternatives would be better
is a proponent of US exceptionalism (whatever that means) is just
another, and one you can only get here, so enjoy. " (Bill)<br>
<br>
No one has called support to ICANN multistakeholderism as US
exceptionalism. (Please show one instance.) Only the ICANN
oversight model attracts the label of US exceptionalism.<br>
<br>
Why would you want to confuse/ conflate the two. (I do however
understand why the US government works overtime to confuse/
conflate the two.) They are very different things - the ICANN's
multistakeholder model and ICANN's oversight model. Dont you think
they are very different.<br>
<br>
I am hundred percent sure that US exceptionalism has never been
mentioned on this list in relation to ICANN </font><br>
<font face="Verdana"><font face="Verdana">multistakeholder model.
However, it has often been applied to the ICANN oversight model,
and to those who support it.<br>
<br>
I support ICANN's multistakeholder model, and have in fact
often, on this list, called for it to be institutionalised
through a treaty. <br>
</font><br>
I consider support to ICANN oversight model as supporting US
exceptionalism. In principle, it is no differnet than supporting
US's global expansionism and unilateral actions in other areas
that you describe.<br>
<br>
Also, when you speak of 'sceptical that UN based alternatives will
be better' again you need to explain whether you are talking of<br>
<br>
1. UN based alternatives for running the domain name systems, and
Internet technical standard systems (something which a 'very few
countries' want ITU to do, and an overwhelming majority does not)<br>
<br>
or<br>
<br>
2. UN based alternatives to US oversight of the ICANN. (almost all
non US countries really seek some kind of a non US, multilateral
oversight of ICANN, whether UN based or not)<br>
<br>
Again, ICANN own work and its oversight have to be seen as two
very distinct issues. <br>
<br>
I think if we undertake a category and 'boundaries of an issue'
clarification exercise first, something that Norbert seems to be
attempting, we can actually do a useful discussion on these
issues. Who knows, maybe we can even agree on some issues, and
make valuable contribution to the evolution of global IG.<br>
<br>
parminder <br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Sunday 20 January 2013 06:14 PM,
William Drake wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:2FF29726-86DC-4F81-83CF-664A4ABABFAD@uzh.ch"
type="cite">
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Hi Adam
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<div>On Jan 20, 2013, at 10:30 AM, Adam Peake <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:ajp@glocom.ac.jp">ajp@glocom.ac.jp</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite"><font face="sans-serif"><span
style="line-height: 19.190340042114258px; ">I understood
the term "US Exceptionalism" to mean something along the
lines that US culture was in some what superior. Guru,
your comment encouraged a search, and finding a result
on wikipedia "American exceptionalism is the proposition
that the United States is different from other countries
in that it has a specific world mission to spread
liberty and democracy." And this would fit with Riaz's
use, given the context. </span></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div><font face="sans-serif">
<div><span style="line-height: 19.190340042114258px; "><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="line-height: 19.190340042114258px; ">To
the first, hard to think how US culture is superior
(special and often great, and often not so great).
Second, idea that the US has some god given mission
to spread liberty and democracy does seem to live on
in the US State department and they seem blind of
the hyprocacry of (etc etc) Bradley Manning, SOPA,
Guantanamo Bay... and (IG/IGF context) sale by US
companies of software/hardware that enables
repressive regimes to block/track/monitor etc (as
discussed at the 1st IGF, when Google and Cisco were
criticized.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 19.190340042114258px; "><br>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 19.190340042114258px; ">I don't
recall support the notion of US Exceptionalism from
anyone on this list. </div>
</font></div>
</blockquote>
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<div style="line-height: 19.190340042114258px; "><br>
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<div>The first sentence you quote from the Wikipedia article is
a reductionist misrepresentation of not only the actual
history of the concept but the rest of the article itself.
The piece moves back and forth between distinctly different
uses of the term without comment---it could use more editing
and integration—and that sentence picks up on just one of
them. For social theorists from de Tocqueville and Tom Paine
to Louis Hartz and Seymour Martin Lipset, the concern was to
understand why the US appeared not to follow some high-level
generalizable patterns of social organization and development
found particularly in Europe, e.g. with respect to property
rights, money making, the balance between groups and
individuals, state/society relations, soccer and socialism,
etc. As the article notes, factors like the lack of a
transition from feudalism to capitalism, republicanism and the
revolutionary rejection of the British model (sorry),
puritanism and the frontier (real and imagined) have been
among the proposed causal variables, depending on the
analysis, but the core concept is an attempt to explain an
'exception from a pattern'. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Then you have all the agenda-based misappropriations by
various analysts and political actors that take you further
and further from the original concern. One step taken by some
was to add on the normative judgement of not only different,
but 'better'. Another was to draw the programmatic
implication that exceptionalism had to be protected from the
meddling 'old world' and its wars and social upheavals via
an isolationist foreign policy. Yet another was to draw the
opposite programmatic implication that exceptionalism provided
a mandate and even a moral responsibility to promote US values
and visions of social order around the world through an
expansionist foreign policy. There have been liberal (in the
US sense of the word—another instance an exception from the
pattern) and conservative versions of this notion, as well as
multilateralist and unilateralist versions, etc. In the past
decade or so, the neocon foreign policy establishment took
another step farther out with this totalizing construct where
expansionism is wedded to gun toting preemptive warring world
changing hubris. So that's one agenda-driven misappropriation.
The jaw dropping assertion that everyone around the world who
supports multistakeholderism a la ICANN or is skeptical that
UN-based alternatives would be better is a proponent of US
exceptionalism (whatever that means) is just another, and one
you can only get here, so enjoy. It's a fair bet though
that de Tocqueville might be a little confused…</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Bill</div>
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