Many Americans, particularly those who find the security ethos congenial, whether they do so consciously or not, like their history seamless, celebratory, and exceptional. They revise their own nation's history while denying others the right to fashion stories of their past absent America's influence. To the extent that America set out almost from its inception in the seventeenth century to improve humanity's lot either by example or active involvement, it arrogated to itself the right to act as the arbiter of what constitutes legitimate history. This sweeping sense of entitlement to determine how others know their own past is pertinent to a critical assessment of the authoritarianism that underlies the security ethos.

Perhaps the most enduring theme in American history is the never-ending battle between conflict and consensus as useful metaphors for comprehending the past. Efforts made to transcend this dichotomy, especially through what is called the cultural turn in scholarship, have not created a new paradigm.