Obama in 2009: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Obama in 2014: "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it's our willingness to affirm them through our actions."

In other words, he doesn't have a clue what it is. And, alas, he is not alone. Too many people believe that American exceptionalism is nothing more than a kind of cultural snobbery; rather like the French. In fact, it's more nuanced and comes not from Americans but from our earliest foreign observers.

Alexis de Tocqueville (French; go figure) in Democracy in America, wrote: "The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one." He meant that not only were Americans trying something very different than the world had ever seen, and on a much grander scale, but that it seemed to be working.

Curiously, the first person believed to have used the phrase "American exceptionalism" was Joseph Stalin who condemned it because it implied that a communist revolution was impossible in the United States.

The pluribus who made up the unum came here because they understood that something marvelously unprecedented was happening and they wanted to be part of it. American exceptionalism originated with the strong impressions of non-Americans.

Some of this was the upward social and economic mobility discouraged by the class-conscious societies of Europe. In short, personal freedom. Some was the very different way that Americans traditionally have viewed politics.

Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that America doesn't have an ideology; it is an ideology. We are the only country created around an idea rather than around some common characteristic like ethnicity or language.

This is not to say that such characteristics didn't matter. Ethnically, culturally, and linguistically we were essentially that combination known as British. Our religious idiom was Christianity. And geography mattered though ours was different because it was distant, vast, and populated only by a scattered, largely Neolithic people. These things formed the foundation on which America was built much as a house made of many different parts rests on a foundation that makes the whole thing possible.

Sociologist Charles Murray has noted four characteristics of American exceptionalism:

Industriousness or "work ethic;" fostered by men's knowledge that they could improve the lots of themselves and their families by their own hard work.

Egalitarianism; not the false "progressive" equality of outcome, but the real moral equality of men before God. Europe's aristocratic social structure could not take root here. Many Americans tilled the soil, but as land-owning free men, not as peasants or serfs.

Religiosity; a deeply-held sense of piety and belief understood even by our mostly non-churchgoing Founding Fathers. John Adams feared "human passions unbridled by morality and religion" and wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Community life or volunteerism; defined as Americans looking out for each other via private associations. Max Weber called this "specifically American" and said that American democracy was "a buzzing complex of strictly exclusive yet voluntary associations."

This kind of "non-governmental activism," as Murray called it, had never existed before. It was how Americans helped each other. And it worked. Still does when we let it.

American exceptionalism is real but, as always, it is threatened. Lincoln correctly warned that the greatest threat to our "civil and religious liberty" comes from within. He understood that American exceptionalism is, at base, cultural rather than political. To preserve it, to keep America as "the shining city on a hill," we must first understand and value our exceptionalism better than the president does.