When I wish to elude so-called reality, I watch scenes projected upon a vivid mental screen. The last time the inescapable Pride and Prejudice made the rounds, my cerebral theater featured a rewritten novel, set in the 1980s in the penthouses of Manhattan and vibrant streets of Jackson Heights, with all characters the opposite sex. Pride, a female billionaire gentrifying Queens, and Prejudice, a brilliant but angry immigrant, with background music by Cyndi Lauper. When the youngest brother (Lydia character) is drawn to crime by an evil stepsister, Ed Koch appears in court for him, and the whole fantasy ends on a yacht at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Now the charming fantasies are vanishing. The colors and music are draining away as scenes of recent America pursue my imagination — dark images, fires, angry drumming, and gunshots. I don’t want to watch it. These scenes trace the crescendo of pivotal events in the life and death of a heroic young woman named Ashli Babbitt.

In 2009, Barack Obama infamously disparaged the doctrine that says America is special among the nations: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Obama was raised, educated, and installed in the presidency from traditions of blame for America and could not experience the essence of American exceptionalism. Throughout human history, loyalty to one’s land and people, and the willingness to defend homeland unto death, has been an extension of family, kinship, and religious loyalty.

Then America happened. Our exceptionalism derives not from loyalty to a land or ruler, but to devotion to ideals. The incomparable thoughtfulness and unique spiritual and philosophical intentionality of the American founding, with its extraordinary literature of inspiration, ideals, and methodology, remains the script for American exceptionalism. Obama was partly........

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