American exceptionalism

The subject of American Exceptionalism has once again come up in the news and I would like to relate anecdotally a personal experience. In the summer of 1957 I was working in a flour mill in Springfield, IL and we had three mills. The C Mill was the largest and could produce 1,400 pounds per minute of whole wheat flour. That summer we packaged this flour in ten pound bags and we ran for four months and during that time we produced 24 million bags. We had to get special permission from the state to run more than 6 straight days and they allowed us to run thirteen days and then we would shut down for one day and start up again. These bags were printed on one side in English and on the other side in Arabic and they were sent to Saudi Arabia. The print said this flour is a gift from the people of the United States to the people of Saudi Arabia. At that time there were only 4 million people living there and they were mostly Bedouins roaming around the desert. This was enough four to give every man, woman and child 60 pound and that was a huge supplement to their regular diet. It was during this same time that big American companies like Standard Oil sent engineers and equipment there and developed the oil fields. This was a shared adventure with the country and the oil companies but later the country nationalized the oil business and today they own it all. Today Saudi Arabia is a thriving prosperous county owing in no small part to the early gifts of food and talent from the United States. Yes they had oil but for thousands of years they did nothing about it until the west came in to help. A good business deal is when both sides win and this was one. A small thing, perhaps compared to the way we helped Germany and Japan after the war but my guess is there are many other such examples of help that most of which we are not aware. Note that the religion of the two groups played no part in their cooperative effort as is the case in business. Capitalism is about creating profits and in the process creating prosperity.