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By Jeremy Nathan Marks

All of my life I have lived with a familiar mantra: “America is an exceptional country. The United States is the last, best hope of mankind.”

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Now that Donald Trump is president, perhaps this statement will finally draw the ridicule it deserves.

What is an exceptional country? Shouldn’t it be a country that thinks self-interest is not the final word? In our age of alleged realism, it might sound absurd to say a nation cannot be concerned with anything other than self-interest. After all, what examples do we have of nations acting on the world stage to promote human rights, for instance, before acting on behalf of their own?

Right now, none. But in 1940, nearly 80 years ago, there was one: Denmark.

In October 1943, the people of Denmark, with the sanction of their monarch, King Christian X, ferried scores of Jews across the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden. During two weeks, Danish fishermen and their families ferried Jews under cover of night. More than 7,000 Danish Jews — nearly the entire Jewish population of Denmark — were saved. This act was done in defiance of Nazi Germany, which was occupying the country.