American Exceptionalism: What Makes America Great by Arthur Thompson

American exceptionalism is not a boast about national character; it’s a claim about design. Thompson contends that the United States is unique because its authority is layered — local, then state, then federal — bounded by the Constitution and animated by personal virtue. Against the fashionable story of “accidents” and “incompetence,” he insists that power aggrandizes by plan, and that only a people who understand their system can halt the slide.

Thompson walks readers through the principles that secured liberty: local police accountable to their communities, a bicameral Congress that restrains ambition, a republic instead of mob rule, and the Bill of Rights as an immovable barrier. He ties each safeguard to history — Committees of Correspondence organizing resistance, farmers on Lexington Green holding the line — and shows how these patterns of self-government became habits that endured.

But he also unmasks the counter-design: Marxist infiltration in the Western Hemisphere, regional power blocs, and the steady hollowing of institutions until they collapse into centralization. The battle is not abstract. It is unfolding now, where morality is undermined, law is manipulated, and sovereignty is traded away piece by piece.

For pastors urging their congregations, educators shaping the next generation, and officials or activists determined to hold the line, this book supplies a blueprint. It tells you what must be defended, why it matters, and how restoration begins — not in Washington, but in your county and state. (2023ed, 132pp)