Where does one begin? What is the inciting force of history? What is the spark that lit the flame? One can see this across many different platforms. People attribute the modern world to different turning points in history. It is ultimately most compelling when the attributions are to the faraway past. It puts it all into a simple understanding that we live in a long canon of history. It makes much more sense than that we are in a special time or that something that happened at a university campus in 2017 really made all the difference.
The further you go back, the more you realize that today is a product of yesterday, is a product of last year, is a product of the millennium before that. And that history runs not in a circle and not linearly but in a helix. It reverts back in on itself and comes out the other end in a different place.
Here is an example. Widespread wokism is often attributed to ideas like Critical Race Theory and the LGBTQ movement in colleges. But if you go further back, you realize that, oh no, maybe this started not in 2010, but in 1960, and that the protests of the Vietnam War and the hippie movement were the inciting forces. But then you go further back and you realize that maybe it was not the end of segregation, but the enfranchisement of women or the abolition of slavery. The real kicker comes when you realize that the Revolutionary War, the beginnings of it at least, looked a lot like the 2020 riots.
This slow creep to the left toward equality is deeply American. And it is not only deeply American, but it is deeply Puritan, Protestant abstraction. Is this spiritual belief that all men are created equal, that lights the flame and pushes the rest forward into history.
No other empire has been powered by a force such as this. Most rely much more on racial exceptionalism or cultural exceptionalism. America, on the other hand, relies on the good word. Though we do not dwell on this often and many professors may snark at the admission that they are blind followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is no doubt the truth. America is the deepest manifestation of the belief that one should treat thy neighbor as though they would want to be treated. And that we should treat the foreigner as thy neighbor.
America is built on the almost basic abstraction of Christian teaching that all people good. Voice of People is voice of God.
Any good American believes that nobody is perfect; The People are Perfect.
His Children are Perfect - made in His image after all.
P.S. This is in no way meant to be a judgment positive or negative of America. I am just trying to provide context.