Bill Maher: We Need To 'Get Over' The Idea Of American Exceptionalism

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In the Overtime segment of his show last night, Bill Maher argued that America would be wise to drop the whole notion of 'American exceptionalism.' In the past, Maher has criticized politicians like Mitt Romney (who wrote a book literally called No Apologies) for their constant praise of the United States without any acknowledgement of its perceived faults, and he returned to this argument again yesterday.

RELATED: Newt Gingrich Assembles Conservative All-Stars To Celebrate 'American Exceptionalism'

Maher said he thinks in a hundred years or so, the United States will be a Mormon nation because many people will certainly be turned on to an America-centric religion that pretty much makes the country out to be one big shining city on a hill. Also, as Maher succinctly put it, 'it's a stupid religion and a stupid country, they were made for each other.' E.J. Dionne tried to defend Mormonism from Maher, but Maher dismissed the religion as the work of a 'con man' in contrast to the sincerity of Jesus.

Dionne put forth the notion that we celebrate American exceptionalism because of the country's unique relationship with democracy and how our government was developed.

Watch the video below, courtesy of HBO:

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• Well, if Barack Obama is president for another four years, Maher will have a point.  We cannot be a great country and an exceptional country when we have a president like Obama.

  Luckily, Americans are starting to wake up to this fact, and Obama is struggling to stay even with Mitt Romney.

• The end of American Exceptionalism Anything started with Bill Maher and President Obama.

• It hasn't existed for decades.

• The prominence of the USA is only because we were lucky to get a larger number of mostly German Jews escaping the Nazis and who had all the theory and were given enough toys to develop the atomic bomb.  Other than that, America is just another country filled with nationalists chanting the jingoistic We're Number One! We're Number One!

• 'American exceptionalism' is one reason why an entertainment cable channel like HBO exists in the first place, and why this greaseball has a platform to wine from. 

• Regardless of what you think of Mormons/Mormonism, they are far better people than Bill Maher and his ilk.

• Can anyone more specifically conservatives tell me what is so exceptional & great about the US???

  The only thing the US can boast about today is its military might & they show it off by the endless military affairs they partake in allover the world especially the Middle East.

•  Nope '

•  whine*

• Mahr is such a wuss. He needs to spend some time in other countries. He's an elitist. When was the last time he got out of his plush and comfy HBO dressing room and studio?

• Okay I really have to give my two cents on this one. There's no concept of 'British exceptionalism' or in my case 'Australian exceptionalism'; and likely if you uttered such a phrase within the commonwealth or Europe or Africa or Asia or South America or Canada (pretty much anywhere but the US evidently) you'd get your butt spanked for douchebaginess and quite rightly so!

  That doesn't mean in my heart I don't think my country is the best in the world, far from it. In my heart resides my love, my willingness to even die to protect Australia if need be, my overwhelming appreciation for my grandfathers that served in WW2, my grandfather that won multiple medals as a light horseman in WW1, a ward of the state descended from a criminal that jumped ship here in colonial times and lived with the aborigines until the heat was off. On the other side are more ANZACs that go back to my ancestor that got transportation for stealing 7 geese and got 14 years. In everyone's heart their country reigns supreme. ..but unfortunately for humble good Americand so many others spoil that by trying to make the concept not a heart held belief but a public, 'we're superior' one. As a foreigner, I can honestly say we get it thrown in our faces far too much for comfort. Russia is a similar sized country and you don't hear constant bleatings about 'Russian exceptionalism' or indeed from the plethora of other countries that surpass the US in every measure, like do you hear of 'German exceptional ism?'

  Ummm, not for some generations actually. Oh dear that's a bit awkward now.

• We got it Maher' you don't believe in any organized religion and those who do are idiots. Is it so important to you that we come to view the world your way?  What happened to 'free will'?  Or should I ask, more corectly so, about what happened to your ability to respect the free will of others?  Maybe you never had any respect for others to begin with and the arguement is therefore irrelevent.  It must be so hard for you, seeing everything so clearly that differences in people become so intolerent to you.  Kinda like a king looking down on all his unsophisticated subjects.  So powerful but completely powerless.  Poor guy.

• Just because Maher feels inadequate, don`t blame the rest of us.

• Let's see, before the 'Jews escaping the Nazies', America had Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, William Otis, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Wright Brothers'

  'but yeah, America didn't invent anything useful until Jews escaping from Germany helped create the Atomic bomb.  Oh, except for the fact that the man who actually led the Manhattan Project ' Oppenheimer ' was born in (wait for it) NEW YORK CITY.  Of the remaining other five or six major contributors to the Project (like Manley, Bradbury, Feynman), only Enrico Fermi was born outside the US, although he had long become a naturalized American citizen before the Manhattan Project began.

  Tell me, does your stupid burn?

• I think he meant '..the democrats are not exceptional.

  Wisconsin is proof.

• And who says liberals don't hate the United States?

• And there's the swing, and a miss. That's a hard one to understand, Joe.
  Right you are, Jon. The at bat was set up by a completely rational point being made by Maher on how bogus American Exceptionalism is, joined up with an historically 100% accurate shot at the LDS church for its origins in classic self-serving snake oil salesman bogusity, not deflected in the least by that lameass capitulation by Monsieur Catholic Gentilly de Nice, and all served up straight as an arrow by pitcher Feldman, so there's really no excuse for that ridiculous attempt at a cricket shot, and it should come as no wonder to anyone that USS_Republitarian tooks one right square in the family jewels.
  And speaking of cajones busters, our production intern today is Figures McLogarithm, who's just passed me this note that USS_R is closing in on all-time record for balls on balls steerage.
  Hard to believe he can still walk half-way straight, Jon.
  Well, you're right you are back at you, Joe, because you can see the right-side list coming a mile away, right before totally uncalled-for cheap ad hominem shot at the President. You've really got to feel this could end up hurting USS_R's career numbers, Joe.
  I actually think it could be fatal, Jon; with partisan stupidity at those dimensions, not being able to father children is pretty much a public service, but eventually you gotta figure stomping all over his own nuts so much, it's gonna add up after a while.

• If you have to ask, you don't deserve to live here.

• How can a nation be exceptional when it engages in the same practices of other nations at its point of its origins, by which I mean slavery. Rome and Greece had slaves; so did England, Spain and Portugal. Even Dionne's explanation rings hollows when he invokes our country's pioneering   experimentation with democracy. The nation was conceived in liberty but held slaves. Wouldn't an exceptional nation, an exceptional people, set the captives free, as the Bible proclaims? It seems that the talk about American exceptionalism is a cover for a foreboding sense decline, which there is ample evidence of. However, I while do not buy into the claim of exceptionalism, I do subscribe that the US is a very, very dynamic nation, which can overcome setbacks and engage in self-corrective action.

• Wisconsin proved that republicans are exceptional, meaning: they ride the little bus for the exceptional children.

•  I knew we would get the grade 6 response.

  Well done.