America has come to embody the most extreme expression of progressive linearism. The first European explorers often saw in this fresh landmass—this New Atlantis, El Dorado, or Utopia—an authentic opportunity to remake humanity and therein put an end to history. Successive waves of immigrants likewise saw themselves as builders of a millennial “New Jerusalem,” inaugurators of a revolutionary “Age of Reason,” defenders of “God’s chosen country,” and pioneers in service of a “Manifest Destiny.” Thus arose the dogma of American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow
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