The chants have become a staple of Republican rallies, often led by the vice-presidential candidate herself, as if the country were suited up for a global hockey game against - whom?

The loud and increasingly threatening cadence of the chant is of a piece with Sarah Palin and John McCain's often-stated belief in "American exceptionalism."

Palin and McCain talk about it often. Barack Obama says he believes in "American exceptionalism" as well. But you don't have to listen long to hear that they are not talking about the same thing. And that difference has critical ramifications for this country and the world.

The idea goes far back into our history to the Puritans. In a phrase first uttered in a speech by first Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop, reprised by John F. Kennedy and then by Ronald Reagan, America was created by God to be a "shining city on a hill" and to serve as a beacon to the world.

That special destiny was seen to give the United States special prerogatives to enforce its will, to justify "Manifest Destiny" and to abrogate Indian treaties on this continent in the 19th century - and intervention around the world in the 20th and 21st.

In its most benign form, "American exceptionalism" is the recognition that, as a nation of (mostly) immigrants, we are bound together not by shared ethnicity but by the ideals enumerated in our founding documents.

As Obama likes to point out, in no other country in the world is his rise to power "even possible." (Though for generations, Obama's story was not possible for untold numbers of Americans.)

But Palin and McCain use the term as shorthand for the idea that America Knows Best, always and everywhere, that our position in the world must always be dominant, that we are always "great" - in fact, "the greatest' - and always "good."

That we can, and should, have it all. And that God has decreed it so.

(GOP jester/scold Rudy Giuliani was quoted recently as saying the country plays a "divinely inspired role.")

That shorthand suggests that anyone who values building alliances over going it alone, who calls himself a "proud citizen of the United States and fellow citizen of the world" as Obama did in Berlin last summer is dangerously "cosmopolitan," and less than 100 percent patriotic American.

It is this form of American exceptionalism that promotes the myopic "We're Number One" vision that dismisses the possibility that we have anything to learn from other countries. Author Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and former Army colonel who answers to the label "conservative," points out in his newest book: " 'American exceptionalism' " has led us to live beyond our means as a nation, to take on debt without considering the consequences and to overextend ourselves militarily."

Decline is inevitable unless we as a nation recognize that there's a new world out there and America's place in it must change.

Only if we do that will America be exceptional among history's great empires. *