Virginia Postrel, Columnist

American Exceptionalism Is Fading Yet Formidable

The backlash against Facebook threatens a major market advantage over China: freedom to grow out of control.

April 20, 2018 at 4:28 PM UTC

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

Only in America?
Photographer: Meg Roussos/Bloomberg

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One of the stranger moments in Mark Zuckerberg’s 10 hours of congressional testimony started as a softball question. Bucking the hostile script favored by members of both parties, Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, tried to position Facebook as an example of what makes the U.S. great.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, quite a story, right?” he opened. “Dorm room to the global behemoth that you guys are. Only in America, would you agree with that?”