American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword.

There is no dearth of opinions about what ails the United States today. Everyone seems to have a diagnosis as well as a prescription for our reputed moral decline. However, new books by political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset and by legal scholar Ronald Dworkin go beyond merely expounding a set of predetermined conclusions or recommendations and provide readers with analytic tools for use in the assessment of American political culture.

Lipset's title gives a reliable indication of the central thesis of this work, which proceeds in continuity, with a well-developed body of social science literature to which Lipset himself has been a major contributor. The United States is different from other countries because it is founded upon a national creed rather than upon the social bonds of ethnicity and history that normally cement peoples together. Our national sense of self is derived from a broadly shared ideology which includes commitment to liberty, equality, populism, individualism, and antistatism. This consensus does not, of course, eliminate all conflict, but it does constrict considerably the range of mainstream opinion to one or another form of liberalism (in the classical sense of the word). From these same cultural roots stem both faces of U.S. distinctiveness: the laudable (voluntarism, individual initiative, personal responsibility) and lamentable (self-serving behavior, atomism, disregard for the common good).

Lipset takes seriously the adage: "to know only one culture is to know none." Group traits are best highlighted by observing patterns of variation and contrast. This insight serves as an organizing principle of his book, which includes chapters comparing the political culture of the United States with that of our closest kin, Canada, and of our fellow misfit (or "outlier" in terms of social indicators) in the international community, Japan. Lipset's analysis of distinctive U.S. social, political, economic, and historical factors succinctly recapitulates the classic debate (started by Marx and Engels) over the surprising underdevelopment of class consciousness and socialist movements in the United States. Lipset joins such commentators as Louis Hartz, Richard Hofstadter, and Michael Harrington in seeing Americanism (the ideology of success that posits the existence of unrestricted opportunity) as, in effect, a substitute for socialism in the U.S. context. This phenomenon renders the American experience qualitatively different from the consciousness of limited opportunity and political power that prevails in other industrialized societies.

Lipset's use of contrast is not limited to cross-national comparison. Nearly half the book is devoted to "exceptions to exceptionalism," social groups within American society which have undergone experiences at variance from the national mainstream. Lipset chooses three: American Jews (who are notable for how their unusual material success remains coupled with an abiding commitment to social equality), African-Americans (whose marginalization is linked to a greater openness to such group-oriented solutions as affirmative action), and intellectuals (who are more likely to embrace leftist approaches because of their alienation from market-driven populist society). In all three cases, deviation from the U.S. norm sheds much useful light on the inner logic of the distinctive American ideology. Lipset's portrayals allow the reader a revealing glimpse of why our polity is capable of engaging simultaneously in noble attempts to institutionalize virtue or to impose an often intolerant, crusading moralism while we hold fast to a construal of meritocracy which fosters a ruthless instrumental pursuit of material success that is largely indifferent to social decay.

Ronald Dworkin's The Rise of the Imperial Self also interprets current American culture by means of a comparative technique. While Lipset contrasts late-twentieth-century America as a whole with other modern nations, Dworkin measures the dominant character type in America today (the "imperial self" or "expressive individualist") against ideal typical personas in various civilizations at key moments in their development: the crumbling Roman empire of Augustine, medieval European aristocratic society, Tocqueville's America, and the United States of the 1950s "organization man." The most intriguing aspect of Dworkin's project is how useful the categories of Augustinian psychology turn out to be in analyzing the ethos of diverse societies throughout history.

Dworkin is quite successful in substantiating his claim that "there is nothing new under the sun." We can use to great advantage Augustine's notions about true peace, detachment, time horizon, self-love, and faith in the transcendent to sort out the struggles of democracy and aristocracy or postmodernism and the therapeutic ethos, just as the author of the City of God did in defending orthodox Christianity against Manicheism, Donatism, Platonism, and Gnosticism. Even our current "culture wars" have been played out before, albeit in proxy form.

Intriguingly, Dworkin's argument can be interpreted as a refutation of those (such as Lipset) who contend that there is something truly new and exceptional about America. In fact, the early American character described by Tocqueville with such admiration was separated from its aristocratic forebears of the ancien regime by three psychological factors (the republican principle, the force of public opinion, and the salience of Christian faith) which, Dworkin observes, have proven fragile amidst the vicissitudes of late modernity. Once these sources of virtue and restraint are stripped away, the American character reveals its true self, hidden like a recessive gene. The imperial self which emerges is once again aristocratic and self-aggrandizing in nature. Barricaded in "lifestyle enclaves" against the imagined threats of any truly public life, this expressive individualist dissipates himself in pursuit of empty self-fulfillment, devoid of the transcendent principles which guided the lives of his ancestors. Tocquevillian virtue was a mere blip on the time-line.

Dworkin's analysis thus lends itself to a thoroughly pessimistic construal of the prospects of American life. No type of deliverance is possible because, as imperial selves, we engage in a systematic refusal to acknowledge dependence on the transcendent. We condemn ourselves to disappointment, so Dworkin hardly needs to utter an explicit word of judgment. Lipset, by contrast, carefully probes America's cultural inheritance in hope of discovering strategies to accentuate the virtuous face of the double-edged sword. His guarded optimism for America's moral future is bounded by the realization that we cannot escape the legacy of our established political culture. The communitarian approaches that appeal to many today are unlikely to take root in this liberty-loving soil. Realistic hopes for ameliorization rest with the development of a "moral individualism" consistent with dominant American values, but prescinding from the self-interested atomism which characterizes America in its worst moments. The distinctive American ethos is flexible, though not infinitely so.

While it might be possible to quibble with either Lipset or Dworkin for insufficient attention to the nuances of how religion and pluriform moral languages shape American public life, both books make sound contributions to our understanding of American political culture.