"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Luke 12:48

Is America "exceptional"? Yes. Of course. Often. But not always. Sometimes we are exceptionally good. Sometimes we are exceptionally bad. At other times we are all too exceptionally indifferent.

We honor the former. We do our best to fix the latter. And to the degree we succeed, we are exceptional.

In my lifetime the United States of America has stood as the classic example, the epitome, of a country to whom much was given, and from whom much was expected.

Sometimes we rose to the occasion. Sometimes we failed miserably. Sometimes we did shamefully little or nothing.

Our history has been marked by glorious achievement, dismal failure, and callous, even criminal indifference.

We have been exceptional in both the best and the worst senses of the word.

What I have found most admirable in truly exceptional Americans, however, has been their almost universal awareness that this is true.

Such people are exceptional, in my view, less for their genuine exceptionalism, than for their genuine modesty. They are not only self-effacing, they are embarrassed by those who aren't.

Indeed, hubris, for my father's generation, was a cardinal sin. He would insist that both people and countries who make a habit of beating their chests and insisting to all within ear-shot that they are "exceptional" . . . usually aren't. Or fear that they aren't.

Worse, they tend to treat their own self-proclaimed exceptionalism as a license to denigrate others, both individuals and states, whose true exceptionalism threatens the myth of their own.

"Exceptionalism," in the world in which I grew up, wasn't something one claimed for oneself. It is something recognized by others, people whose judgment and esteem one treasured and honored.

To be proclaimed "exceptional" was itself an honor, bestowed by others, not claimed for oneself, much less preached about or promoted.

Indeed, the word "exceptional" was meaningful ONLY when bestowed by others, and only by those with a right to bestow it.

Who were those "other" people?

Sometimes they were experts in their fields. We believed that those who bestowed Nobel Prizes and National Technology Medals and Rhodes Scholarships and Presidential Unit Citations knew what they were talking about.

Sometimes those qualified to grant such recognition were experts in a different way . . . people whose lives had been touched in meaningful ways by the people and institutions they chose to honor. They did what they could to honor those to whom they owed debts that they believed to be unpayable. They honored those who had truly gone above and beyond the call.

All too often they found that those truly exceptional people, who put their lives, or fortunes, or sacred honor at risk and expected no notice or reward were embarrassed to be pointed out.

That kind of exceptionalism is often recognized only with silence, or tears, or sometimes, if we are truly fortunate, with small shards of ribbon and bits of metal, later found in sock drawers and cigar boxes, all too often by those who never knew what had been done for them or at what cost.

Sometimes people who want to change us, or make us less indifferent aren't honored at all. Indeed, they are, sometimes, denounced or persecuted or even killed because they are deemed "un-American" by those who believed themselves to be the sole repositories of truth, and dignity, and honor and justice.

Happily, we still live in a country in which those who do good, those who try to fix what's bad, and those who call out our indifference are all honored eventually . . . either overtly, or in the hearts and minds of the people whose lives they have touched and changed for the better.

That, and those people, make America . . . exceptional.