Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio says:

“This race is not your traditional race… It is a referendum on our identity. This race forces us to answer a very simple question: Do we want our country to continue to be exceptional, or are we prepared for it to become just like everybody else?”

For Rubio, of course, American Exceptionalism means much emphasis on economic freedom and laissez-faire Capitalism. This is what he says the Democrats are trying to take away.

But wait a moment. According to the Conservative Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the U.S. is not the most economically free country in the world, and haven’t been since at least 1995, when the index was started. That honor goes to Hong Kong.

This is where the materialism ends and the nationalism begins. With the Republicans, it is not merely a matter of allowing the materialistic interests of money to triumph; it is also a fervent belief in the God-given superiority of America to all other nations. They are not completely devoted to economic freedom; if they were, the cry would be: “let us be more like Hong Kong”, not “let us remain exceptional”.