American Exceptionalism. It’s a phrase we don’t hear about much any more. It used to be kosher. But today, not so much. And to those who strive to be politically correct, it’s a topic that is considered “not very proper” or perhaps not “polite”.
In our past, it was used to express the amazing ingenuity coming out of America and what she was in turn doing in and for the world. If you by chance kept up on the rescue of the Chilean miners of late, here is what it would look like:
- The engineer who designed the rescue module was a NASA engineer.
- The drill was made by Schramm Inc. from Pennsylvania.
- The drill bits were made by Center Rock, Inc. located in Berlin, Pennsylvania.
- The lead driller Jeff Hart and his team are from Denver, Colorado. They are on loan from the US Military in Afghanistan where they are drilling water wells for our Forward Operating Bases.
But let’s focus on one America hero if you will. Jeff Hart. An article by Michelle Malkin shares the story best:
“He spent 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out Saturday for 33 trapped miners. ‘You have to feel through your feet what the drill is doing; it’s a vibration you get so that you know what’s happening,’ explained Hart.
Hart was called in from Afghanistan, “simply because he’s the best” at drilling larger holes with the T130’s wide-diameter drill bits, Stefanic said.
Standing before the levers, pressure meters and gauges on the T130’s control panel, Hart and the rest of the team faced many challenges in drilling the shaft. At one point, the drill struck a metal support beam in the poorly mapped mine, shattering its hammers. Fresh equipment had to be flown in from the United States and progress was delayed for days as powerful magnets were lowered to pull out the pieces.
The mine’s veins of gold and copper ran through quartzite with a high level of abrasive silica, rock so tough that it took all their expertise to keep the drill’s hammers from curving off in unwanted directions. “It was horrible,” said Center Rock President Brandon Fisher, exhausted after hardly sleeping during the effort.
Fisher, Stefanic and Hart called it the most difficult hole they had ever drilled, because of the lives at stake.
“If you’re drilling for oil and you lose the hole, it’s different. This time there’s people down below,” Stefanic said.
“We ruined some bits, worked through the problems as a team, and broke through,” Hart said. “I’m very happy now.”
Miners’ relatives crowded around Hart on Saturday, hugging and posing for pictures with him as he walked down from the rescue operation into the tent camp where families had anxiously followed his work.
“He’s become the hero of the day,” said Dayana Olivares, whose friend Carlos Bugueno is one of the miners stuck below.
In a different day and age, Jeff Hart would be the most famous American in our country right now. He would be honored at the White House. Schoolchildren would learn of his skill and heroism. ”
Drilling may have had a bad rap of late due to the BP oil spill, but as we all know most things have great uses. It’s just how their handled.
Just my thoughts.
S.
resources:
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/10/12/celebrating-american-greatness-in-chile/
The French writer Alexis de Tocqueville first wrote about it in his 1831 work Democracy in America:
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. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.