In 1831, the United States was examined by a traveling Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville. He wrote a book on what he observed while in America. Today this book is called “Democracy in America” but the original title was “The Republic of the United States of America”. (See my post title “Spectacles of Turbulence and Contention” to learn the difference between democracy and republic.)
De Tocqueville, coming from the highly unstable and politically volatile France, wanted to know what made America the stable, prosperous and safe nation that it was. This was the conclusion he came to: “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” De Tocqueville understood that what made America an exceptional nation was its biblical foundation. David Barton of Wall Builders Ministries explains American Exceptionalism as the ideas and philosophies which establish the policies and institutions, which in turn establish the prosperity, freedom and stability that we enjoy. He points out that while France has had at least 15 since the French Revolution, the United States has had only one that has stood for hundreds of years.
As an aside De Tocqueville also warns against revisionist history when he writes, “History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.”