Politics & Power Quote by Fareed Zakaria

Zakaria’s line is a tidy piece of rhetorical judo: it takes the most contested phrase in American political speech - “American exceptionalism” - and smuggles it back into legitimacy by anchoring it in immigrant agency. “Not by accident of birth but by choice” rewrites nationality as consent rather than inheritance, a civic contract instead of a bloodline. The phrase “voted with my feet” borrows the language of democracy to describe migration, turning a private life decision into a public argument: if democracy is about choosing, then choosing America becomes its own kind of ballot.

The subtext is aimed at two audiences at once. To nativists and culture warriors, it says: you don’t own Americanness; you can’t reduce it to birthplace or ancestry. To skeptical liberals uneasy with patriotic chest-thumping, it offers a cleaner version of pride: not triumphalism, but adjudication. America is “exceptional” not because it is pure or flawless, but because it can be selected, entered, and re-made by outsiders.

Context matters because Zakaria is a globally minded journalist often read as a critic of American overreach. That makes the declaration strategic. It’s not a slogan from a rally; it’s credibility work. By staking a personal claim to belonging, he earns room to critique the country without being dismissed as ungrateful or alien. The love here isn’t naive; it’s an argument about what kind of nation America should be: one defined by principles that can win converts, not pedigree that can exclude them.