The Inimitable Nation opens with a parable of American exceptionalism:
Once there was a farm located by a tranquil river. One day a duck from the river bumped into a chicken from the farm, and they immediately fell head over heels in love with each other. Sadly, no one else in the barnyard community could appreciate their romance, and both were mocked by all the other animals. ‘Ducks and chickens were not meant to fall in love,’ guffawed the cows and the dogs and the roosters — especially the roosters. Deeply mortified by the ridicule, the duck told his beloved hen, ‘We will flee these narrow-minded bigots. Come, let us find a place free from such ignoble prejudice.’ And with these inspiring words on his beak, the duck plunged into the river, followed by the love-stricken chicken, who, of course, promptly drowned.We are not told what lesson the duck learned from his tragic experience. Being a duck, he may not have learned one at all. He may even have gone to other farmyards and urged other love-smitten hens to follow him to their watery graves. Perhaps he thought, one day I will find a chicken that can swim.
Ever since our miraculously successful revolution in 1776, other countries, falling in love with our democracy, have tried to follow in our webbed footsteps, only to drown miserably in the misadventure, as France would do in its revolution of 1789, and as nations like Mexico or Venezuela would come to do after the collapse of the Spanish Empire in 1808. Sometimes we have, like the duck in the fable, cheered on the chicken to her aquatic death; sometimes we have merely been the inadvertent inspiration. Yet, in case after case, the chicken always ended up dead, while the duck went happily quacking down the river.
Why is this?
It is because Americans take to democracy, so to speak, like a duck to water.