I know its difficult to judge a major plank of Shweikart's work from one excerpt, however this is the first time I've seen "American exceptionalism" given real historical consideration. He bases his claims on four factors responsible for making America exceptional. I have bolded them below in the first paragraph taken from his work. The following three paragraphs contain his defense of each factor. I always thought "American exceptionalism" was merely standard nationalism found in every country but here a serious historian is claiming it is a real force that through US power has tremendous impact on the entire world. I'd like to know if anyone more knowledgeable in U.S. history than myself can see any merit to Shweikart's argument.
What follows is all from Schweikart's work A Patriot's History of the Modern World: Vol. I.
"A second theme of this work is that the United States is, and has always been, "exceptional" in its founding and national character... It is more than the belief that one country has its advantages, appealing characteristics, and specific national identity. Nor is it the creature of "biased" Eurocentric or Amerocentric historians. At root, American exceptionalism is the confluence of four factors that collectively do not exist in any other country in the world. Some possess one or two; England possesses three and at one time had all four-but no longer. These are: 1) a heritage of common law; 2) a Christian and predominantly Protestant religious tradition; 3) a free-market economy; and 4) property rights, especially land rights.
This common law heritage held that the law was given to the people (later this was modified to include "by God") and that the ruler merely enforced the law that everyone observed and understood as divinely inspired. Thus, in common law, authority moved from the people upward, not the other way around, as with "Divine Right" and civil law, in which rights came from the monarch down... virtually the rest of the world adopted civil law, with its top-down aristocratic approach.
... Protestantism brought with it a heavy dose of individuality. Calvinist teachings insisted that each man read and understand the Bible for himself; Puritans and Quakers in America practiced congregational church government, which was exceptionally democratic and local; and the entire tone of Protestantism was antiauthoritarian.
... The American variant of capitalism, again with its Protestant overtones, relied heavily on individual entrepreneurship and eschewed state involvement. Failure was considered a learning tool, not a source of public embarrassment. And finally, American property rights, not only closely linked political rights to land ownership, but also established the principle that individual land ownership was a social goal to be advanced by government... the United States made it easy and relatively inexpensive for anyone not only to acquire property but also to gain legal title deed to that property-a characteristic that was rare in Europe... Therefore American exceptionalism was in fact unique, consisting of four "legs" not found anywhere else in the world by the mid-twentieth century."
One of the first expressions of the idea of "American Exceptionalism" came very early in the history of America, in John Winthrop’s famous “City on a Hill” sermon to the Puritan colonists on the ship Arabella, just before they landed in Massachusetts in 1630.
In this speech, Winthrop was referring to the Bible, Matthew 5:14, Jesus’s “Parable of Salt and Light” in the Sermon on the Mount, where he tells his listeners,
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.”
Winthrop, on the Arabella, preached,
“wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when tenn of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when hee shall make us a prayse and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us;”
Source: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/winthrop.htm
This plea, or prayer, or aspiration, that Americans should be exceptional, should be a “City on a Hill” resonated. It has been quoted many times by American politicians and presidents, notably and famously by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
So, the strand of thought that America should be exceptional, or should strive to be exceptional, (or even that America is exceptional) and the common (though not universal) corollary, that this is based on divine providence, is a long standing theme in American discourse.
Schweikart seems to argue that certain features of American institutions and society make America truly "exceptional". This is an interesting argument (but not one I am going to engage in). I think it could be said, however that the idea of American Exceptionalism dates back to the founding of the colonies. The idea has remained popular and prevalent ever since. So, regardless of whether this belief is "true" or not, the fact that it is believed has shaped the history of America and of the world.
A lot of these assertions are highly idealized and/or oversimplified portrayals of early American history. In the case of Protestantism/religious history, capitalism, property rights, and government involvement, especially, I would characterize his assertions and fitting with many commonly held narratives and beliefs about American history which in fact much more complex or even counter to what he's suggesting.
Don't upvote this comment because I'm not providing much to back up my assertions (I'll come back later if I have time to do the requisite brushing up on my notes, etc), but overall I'd characterize this passage as doing two things: playing to a crowd (meaning a non-historian audience which has only a basic knowledge), and being sufficiently vague as to let the reader fill in the gaps with his/her existing perceptions of US history, whether or not those are correct.
I see on Wikipedia that this guy has many articles published in reputable journals (about a variety of subjects, not directly related to the passage above). I might be interested in reading a few.