It’s December 1985 in Sydney, Australia. Two parents are at wits’ end. Something is not right with their 16 month-old child. For months, they have visited doctor after doctor. No one can tell them what is wrong. On the night before Christmas Eve, with their child more unsettled than unusual, they head for

the emergency room at Children’s Hospital. The ward is nearly deserted, but there is one overnight doctor—a young man with a smiling face and an accent. As he looks the child over, the smile evaporates: “I think your son has neuroblastoma. Get him in for tests first thing in the morning.” Next day, the parents’ worst fears would be confirmed. It was Stage IV neuroblastoma, a rare type of childhood cancer. The parents were mine. The child was me. The doctor, it turned out, was an American.It’s Why I’m Alive

The cause of neuroblastoma remains unknown today. Only 1 in 100,000 children get it. Notoriously difficult to diagnose, by the time it is, the tumor has usually spread. At Stage IV, an infant has just a five percent chance of life. For three years, I underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and an operation. Through the healing hands of God, the master physician, I defied the odds and lived. The instincts of the American doctor, fresh out of college, only in Australia for an internship, just in time, were crucial. So I haven’t only studied American exceptionalism. I’ve lived it. In fact, I’m alive because of it. American exceptionalism is often derided as a phrase of partisan polemics, or worse still a mere hypothesis, or even a myth. But it is an incontrovertible reality, however unwelcome or unpalatable this might be to those whose ears are attuned to a different siren.

Editor, John Andrews

Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute

Volume 7, Number 3 • March 2015

Publisher, William L. Armstrong

Your successrefutes leftism.

Nick Adams (B.A., University of Sydney) became Australia’s youngest deputy mayor at 21, and hasn’t slowed down since. He is the author of American Boomerang: How the World’s Greatest Turnaround Nation Will Do It Again. This essay is based on his talk at Colorado Christian University on Dec. 8, 2014.

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Immigration Right

AMERICA THE EXCEPTIONAL:AN AUSSIE’S LOVE LETTER

By Nick Adams

Striving for Greatness

In 5,000 years of recorded human history, there has been no nation even resembling the United States. The American model has offered, and continues to offer, a greater chance for dignity, hope, and happiness for more people than any other system.As Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” Lady Thatcher was right. The philosophy is one of individual liberty, free-market opportunity, and belief that it’s all a gift from God. America is the best idea the world has ever had, the greatest value system ever devised. What are these values that make America exceptional? Individualism, not collectivism. Patriotism, not relativism. Optimism, not pessimism. Limited government, not the nanny state. God, not Caesar. Faith, not secularism.

E Pluribus Unum, not multiculturalism. Life, not death. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Goodness, not moral equivalence. America is about being bold, not bland. Brave, not meek. Striving for greatness, not mediocrity. All the Right Enemies

Tellingly, all of these values are aligned with what’s called today a conservative outlook. On every single count, traditional America both viscerally and ideologically sides with conservatism. America thus represents the greatest impediment to leftist aims, and becomes the prime target of the progressive movement in all its manifestations. It is easy to love America simply for the enemies she makes.American success, by design not accident, is the most significant refutation of leftist ideals. That’s because

America has fostered a society that allows its citizens the widest latitude for creativity and innovation. It rewards success without government approvals and bureaucratic interference. It embraces religious faith, aspiration, and risk. As a result, the people of America have been the most enterprising, market-oriented, individualistic, and averse to taxation and regulation that have ever walked the earth. America has also shown uncommon valor against the sword of tyranny. She has frosted the neighborhoods of tyranny

and oppression, by freezing the sweat and chilling the bones of men harbouring such aspirations. From the beaches of Normandy to the sands of Iraq, America

has spread more freedom and fought more evil than any other country, expending enormous treasure. Put simply, the world is a better place for America being in it. This is not to say America is perfect. She’s not. But she is the best thing we have. Onslaught from the Left

The Left’s failures, by contrast, are equally clear. They have created economically unsustainable and character-destroying welfare states. They have undermined Western military strength. They have politicized universities and the arts. They authored the culture of complaint, and its close cousin, the self-esteem movement.Every area of our life in the world today is being downgraded because of the Left, their agendas, and their stranglehold on elite opinion. We are less free, poorer, weaker, less innovative, less confident, and less family-oriented. We are more divided and more faithless. America is therefore in the fight of its life. Individualism, patriotism, and liberty—the unique properties of American life and culture—are at diminished levels, beleaguered by the anti-American virus prevalent in schools and universities, entertainment media, and the arts. The elite’s inverted priority of climate over jihad speaks volumes of the problems that afflict the world’s pinnacle

Centennial Review ▪ March 2015 ▪ 2

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Virtue, faith,and libertyinterlock.

nation. The readiness of many opinion leaders to allege evil in the local police, but not in Islamic terror, stuns some of us who watch from abroad. We see America weaker today than she has ever been, making the world a more dangerous place for everyone.My earnest appeal is that Americans must not yield to the stress of circumstances. It’s time to stop the pity parties and fight back. It’s time to believe in breakthroughs, turnarounds, and miracles. Relearn the American Trinity

People still cross oceans to get to this country. They are as willing as ever to empty their life savings to get to America, legally or illegally. They are as prepared as ever to sell the shirt on their back just to feel the American winds of freedom and opportunity. Nowhere else can so many come with nothing and achieve anything.So I’m convinced that an American renaissance is not as distant, or as impossible, as many speculate. But neither

will it roll in on the wheels of inevitability. We must revitalize an informed patriotism across the land. We must recover a common recognition that the principles of freedom and responsibility found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are in every American’s self-interest, irrespective of identity politics. This must become again, as it once was, the lens in which all Americans view cultural choices,

political candidates, and public policy. Saving America requires bringing intellectual ammunition to the battle of ideas. Too many people have forgotten or never learned what makes America exceptional—and you cannot advocate what you cannot articulate. Reason and faith are the two wings by which the American eagle took flight. The arithmetic of the American trinity is simple: Virtue cannot be sustained in the absence of faith, and if virtue is absent, then liberty must be as well. Yet new generations of Americans are unable to write out the formula, let alone balance the equation.

But once that formula is relearned, confidence will return. Consensus on the American identity, a prerequisite for any renaissance, will re-emerge, and the syrupy indulgence of cultural pathologies will lose favor. Toll of Political Correctness

One of the worst of those pathologies, as I see it from half a world away, is political correctness—the cringing groupthink that forbids certain plain truths from being spoken or even thought, on pain of leftist obloquy and ostracism. Nothing is more anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-truth, and anti-reality than political correctness. It is a noose around America’s neck, growing tighter each day. From identity politics and secularism to the all-powerful welfare state and the war against national identity, every problem in America today is compounded by this suffocating regime of thought control. Political correctness, when allowed to flourish, extinguishes confidence, impairs judgment, inculcates victimhood, and entrenches division. It makes a peaceful, cooperative society impossible. It is oppressive, discriminatory, unjust.

Unless plain speaking is allowed, clear thinking is denied. Political correctness parrots messages that are more myth than truth. It is more interested in sustaining a narrative than asserting facts. It dulls the moral sense, blurring good and evil. It is a

communal tyranny, not dissimilar to the one America fought a revolution over.Political correctness is one of the major reasons why Europe today is lifeless. The cancerous conformity has left it sickly, pale, and limp. Fortunately, America is not Europe; not yet. Its proud, historic traditions of freedom, patriotism, and self-assertion make Western civilization’s last redoubt.Thank goodness that beyond the smug commentariat that monopolizes academia, politics and the media, the American frontier spirit remains strong. But your country, my friends, is nonetheless on the wrong path. Admit it to yourself: even here in the home of the brave, Americans are being bullied by the anti-bullying mantra. Many that deplore it are still cowed by it.You Have the Vaccine

Without free speech, creativity is dampened. We have lost so much already. Imagine the books we’ll never read, the movies that were never made. Let’s not lose any more. Our grudging equivocation with the thought police must be replaced by fearless repudiation of them.After all, to fear an idea, any idea, is unworthy of a free society. America must stand up for freedom of choice, freedom of speech, plain speaking, and the free marketplace of ideas. These are the safeguards against tyranny. Their retreat is tyranny’s advance. We must wrench the pendulum back toward free speech.

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Say no tothoughtcontrol.

Political correctness is to freedom as tuberculosis is to life. As Western civilization gasps with the fatal symptoms, America is the one nation that can reverse the prognosis. You have the vaccine: the American idea itself.Reassert the individual freedom of self-responsible citizens. Reclaim your confidence as the land of opportunity and open discourse where no one is silenced. Recognize that the unfettered American dream and the regimented politically correct mindset cannot coexist. Expose its agenda, puncture its pretense, make war on it. Believe you can win, despite the defeatists who despair you can’t. Through Foreign Eyes

It’s a curious fact that on occasion in American history, a fresh set of eyes visiting from distant lands has helped Americans see themselves more accurately. As the adage goes, sometimes a spectator sees more of the game. Alexis de Tocqueville, the prescient French nobleman, visited the United States in the 1830s when he was just 26. His book Democracy in America praised your country’s lack of a centralized government, deemed religion salutary for democracy, and described how political freedom and uninhibited commerce went hand in hand. Likewise with Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister and greatest figure of the 20th century, who led the fight against Hitler and sounded the alarm on Communism. Churchill genuinely loved this nation that he called “the Great Republic.” Churchill’s maternal family lineage no doubt assisted, but it was the people and philosophy that sourced his immense faith in the USA. Challenging his own country’s predilection for consensus and moderation, he displayed American-like leadership with indomitable will and bulldog tenacity.And both men remarked on America’s resiliency. “The greatness of America lies not in her being more enlightened than any other nation, but in her ability to repair her faults,” observed the Frenchman. The Briton jibed affectionately: “You can always rely on America doing the right thing, after it has exhausted every other option.” Maybe it is an “outsider” thing, but I immediately discerned the same American comeback capability as they did, vivid and irrepressible, from the moment

Tocqueville: Prescient

Churchill: Indomitable

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Centennial Review ▪ March 2015 ▪ 4

Stay the course,America.

America the Exceptional:An Aussie’s Love LetterBy Nick Adams

As with such foreigners as Tocqueville in the 19th century and Churchill in the 20th, a young Australian has words of praise and caution for Americans today. American exceptionalism is real, says Nick Adams: “I’ve lived it.” But leftism could undo us, he warns.

I set foot on US soil. That is why I am sanguine about America’s prospects.Trying Times

Yet the current season in America is confusion and uncertainty. Islamic storms, European winds, and secular clouds are battering, drifting, and distressing American life and values. Thomas Paine’s words from 1776 resonate with Americans today:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

What does America have to do to come back in these trying times of our own? How do we win this fight? How do we vanquish the forces besetting us and restore American glory? We do it, I believe, as Americans always have: through liberty, good constitutionally-limited government, free enterprise, and traditional Judeo-Christian values. This must be your country’s future. My book outlines a ten-point policy plan to get us there:

End the waste, pay back the debt, limit the government, axe political correctness, protect the borders, preserve Judeo-Christian traditions, end the culture of entitlement, cut taxes, exercise loyalty to the Constitution, and keep the peace through unquestioned military advantage.

Who can put the country back on that path? Who can vindicate American exceptionalism? Patriotic citizens with traditional values. People just like you.Since almost losing my life before it began, I have firmly believed God saved my life for a particular purpose. Is it a coincidence that I have been drawn to the United States for as long as I can remember? Is it chance that it was an American doctor that diagnosed what others had been

unable to do? Is it accidental that the dreams in my heart all involve America? As a man of faith, I don’t believe so. Today, at age 30, I proudly call myself an Australian by birth, a Texan by honorary appointment (thank you, Rick Perry), and an American by choice. I love America because it is confident, competitive, courageous, faithful, idealistic, innovative, inspirational, charitable, and optimistic. It is everything as a nation that I wish to be

as a person. That’s why I am devoted to helping achieve an American renaissance.After freedom, inspiration is America’s greatest export. To me, as it was to Churchill, America is the hope that banishes

all hopelessness. As Americans, you should never be intimidated into mediocrity or cramped into submission. You’ve been given so much more. For the sake of the world, you must remain the dream-makers and the dream-keepers.“To whom much is given, much is required,” said Jesus. Ponder that, my American friends. You have been bequeathed the high responsibility of continuing to support and export the greatest value system ever devised. Stay the course, America. ■

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