If you think about it, the Republican Party's recent manic obsession with "American Exceptionalism" is a lot like the fuss the GOP's theocratic wing has been making for a century or more over Darwin's theory of evolution.  In both cases, it doesn't seem to matter to conservatives whether these belief systems are objectively true or not, so much as it does how these ideas affect the way conservatives think about themselves.

To an extent much greater than liberals, conservatives seem to feel the need at an elemental level to be part of some larger well-defined community, with their own identities subordinate to the sentimental or sanitized myths of a grand tradition, a heroic race, or a beloved country.  

The serenity conservatives must get from this sense of group solidarity makes them agreeable as loyal companions, but it also makes them utterly unaware and uncomprehending of how they are seen by others who aren't part of their inherited or adopted tribe.

And so, for religious conservatives, writes Susan Jacoby in Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, "the application of Darwin's theory to humans was not only blasphemous but ego-shattering."

One contemporary critic of Darwin, for example, noted that while the Bible "places a crown of honor and dominion on the brow of our common humanity, Darwinism cast us all down from this elevated platform and herds us all with four footed beasts and creeping things."

Such social and religious conservatives were far less interested in the scientific merits of Darwin's claims about natural selection than they were by the subversive impact of his findings on their own self-image.

According to Jacoby, when Darwin's theories were first published, the New York Times editorialized that so long as the ideas contained in Origin of Species remained securely "confined to the walls of the universities or the pages of scientific reviews" they could not do much harm "since their audiences would be both small and discriminating." More grave, said the Times, would be the dangers to "young and immature minds" should Darwin's seditions ever gain a wider circulation and thus prove "subversive of religion and values."

Indeed, when the freethinking Robert Ingersoll -- the "The Great Agnostic" -- first heard about Darwin's findings, he instinctively understood "how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the Old World." Think of the indignity, he said, "of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the Duke Orang Outang, or the Princess Chimpanzee."

There is a similar self-promoting flattery attached to the conservative infatuation with that profanity of pseudo-patriotic chest-thumping known as "American Exceptionalism."  

Those familiar with the style of Soviet propaganda during the Cold War might remember how our one-time Russian antagonists defined "world peace" as that state of affairs which would prevail once nations everywhere became Communist, while "an aggressor" was defined by the Soviets as anyone who didn't want "peace."

In a similar vein, Republicans seem to define "leadership" as whatever Ronald Reagan would do, while "American Exceptionalism" is just a short-hand designation for the unedited conservative agenda.

Indeed, in an essay titled "An Exceptional Debate: The Obama Administration's Assault on American Identity," the conservative National Review even goes so far as to beguile its readers into believing that the President of the United States denies those ideals that lie at the core of the American experience.  

And what is this American "creed" that makes us Americans exceptional?  Well, according to the National Review it's "liberty, equality (of opportunity and respect), individualism, populism, and laissez-faire economics," combined with other aspects of the American character that include "our religiousness and our willingness to defend ourselves by force."

In short, says the New Republic's Damon Linker, the editors of the National Review want us to believe that what makes our country special is that large numbers of Americans "affirm the ideology of the modern conservative movement," while at the same time relegating liberals, Democrats and other "contrary voices in our national narrative to the periphery of our history, and perhaps even to read them out of our history altogether."

Governor Chris Christie's September 27 speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley followed this well-worn script so slavishly it risked getting flagged for grade school plagiarism. Indeed, Christie's keynote address was even titled: "The Real American Exceptionalism."

Joining those who equate American Exceptionalism with American Conservatism, Governor Christie threw the halo of "leadership" and "compromise" around what is nothing more than Republicans playing hardball to get their way.    

Thus in New Jersey, Christie insists he was able to put "the interests of our state" above "partisan politics" by successfully enacting what to any fair-minded observer is a reasonable facsimile of the right wing Republican agenda: Two budgets balanced "without raising taxes;" a series of "reforms" in New Jersey's pension and health benefits system;" a cap on "the highest property taxes in the nation;" and a further cap on "the interest arbitration awards of some of the most powerful public sector unions in the nation."

At the national level, Christie proposes an equally right wing partisan agenda in the name of bi-partisan "compromise."  

He urges Republicans to solve our long-term debt and deficit problem by "reforming our entitlement programs and our tax code;" confronting worker unemployment "by giving certainty to business" about taxes and regulations; unleashing American entrepreneurship "through long-term tax reform, not short-term tax gimmickry;" and reforming our public education system "by applying free market reform principles" that put the interests of children ahead of those of adults - i.e. dismantling teacher unions so Republican governors and legislators can have a freer hand controlling the public schools.

We pay a high price as a country when the players in our political system refuse to "come together" and all behave like Republicans, says Christie.  The Governor didn't actually put it that way, exactly.  What he really said was: we pay a high price as a country when we cannot come together and "agree on the difficult but necessary steps to rein in entitlement spending or reform our tax system." But the message was the same.

But the strangest part of Christie's speech - creepy almost - was at the very beginning when he suggested that Ronald Reagan earned the street cred necessary to take on the Soviets and demand they "take down  this wall" by first breaking a labor union early in his term, when he fired the nation's air traffic controllers who'd gone on strike.

Somehow, right wing Republicans continue to believe that it is a mark of firm leadership and uncommon political valor when a right wing president behaves exactly like a right wing president and punishes a labor union for exercising its rights.  

Yet, to the genuflecting Christie, what Reagan did in dismantling PATCO wasn't "an empty political play" at all but rather "leadership, pure and simple." Taking on labor like that, said Christie, showed adversaries both at home and abroad that Reagan was prepared to "stand by his friends and stand up to his adversaries."

And so, to the Republican Party's "flavor of the week" as Sarah Palin calls contenders in the GOP presidential field, American labor posed equally as grave a threat to American freedoms as did the USSR at the height of the Cold War.  

Is this really what conservatives today believe?  Apparently so, for as Christie went on to say: "If President Reagan would do that at home, leaders around the world realized that he would do it abroad as well.  Principle would not stop at the water's edge. The Reagan who challenged Soviet aggression, or who attacked a Libya that supported terror was the same Reagan who stood up years before to PATCO at home for what he believed was right."

The economist Jeffrey Sachs encountered another example of right wing self-congratulation in the negative review his new book, The Price of Civilization (as in, the taxes we pay for living in one) got from the Ayn Rand-loving Congressman, Paul Ryan.

Sachs makes the case in his book for a "mixed economy" in which the federal government regulates business and invests alongside the business sector. Yet, in the review commissioned by the Wall Street Journal, Congressman Ryan described Sachs' book as not merely wrong-headed but "anti-American in its values," claiming that Sachs would replace "the ideals of individual liberty" with the beneficence of "an intrusive, unlimited government."

Instead, what Sachs says he's after is "rescuing democracy from the clutches of corporate power that Ryan champions in deeds if not in words."

Why can't conservatives debate policy on its merits just like everybody else? Why, instead, must they always wrap their agendas in red, white and blue bunting or 2,000 years of world history and tradition?

And so, "anti-American" is the best Ryan can come up with for describing Sachs' call for a government able to regulate banks, protect the environment from pollution, promote science, tax millionaires and billionaires, and limit the lobbying power of corporations.

But what Ryan calls "anti-American" turns out to be instead un-historical, says Sachs, if you consider that from the Founding Fathers forward "our greatest presidents have championed an affirmative role of government in the economy."

From Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt to now, says Sachs, "the federal government has played a vital role in public works: canals in the 19th century, highways in the mid-20th century, and someday a low-carbon energy system in the 21st century."

From the founding days until now, government has championed public education, such as in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act establishing America's great land-grant universities. From the founding days until now, the federal government has championed research, from Lewis and Clark's expedition under Jefferson to the mission to the moon under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, says Sachs.

There is extensive evidence that Americans support the values of a mixed economy, not Ryan's free-market libertarianism or conservative's "American Exceptionalism," says Sachs. Americans today by large majorities support public education, Medicare, Social Security, help for the indigent, stronger regulation of the banks, and higher taxation of the rich.

The problem is not with American values, says Sachs, but with the failure of our government to translate American values into American policies.

And because of this, America is losing its democracy to what Sachs calls a "Corporatocracy" with Congressman Ryan "at the center of it" and the Wall Street Journal as its "leading print mouthpiece."

The flattering, self-congratulatory myths contained in the conservative idea of American Exceptionalism is a half truth because it only tells half the story.

Conservatives heap all manner of praise on the spunky entrepreneur who grows a multinational firm from nothing but a basement idea -- and as Elizabeth Warren said in her celebrated YouTube rant: "and God Bless them."

But what conservatives conveniently leave out of their story are all the investments we've made together as one people which make entrepreneurship even possible.

According to the conservative narrative, those who have benefited most from the investments America has made have nothing to pay back because there is nothing owed.

Theirs is the myth of the rugged individualist carving out a life for themselves on the forbidding frontier as lonely pioneers. But it's a narrative that forgets entirely the community barn-raising that is equally an indelible part of the American story.

This omission is a measure of the ingratitude you'd expect from people who think "American Exceptionalism" means them.