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AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
. AG
 BY SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
(IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

Agrarian Socialism
Union Democracy (with Martin Trow and James S. Coleman)
Social Mobility in Industrial Society (with Reinhard Bendix)
Prejudice and Society (with Earl Raab)
Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics
The First New Nation: The United States in Historical
and Comparative Perspective
Estudiantes universitarios y politica en el tercer mundo
Revolution and Counterrevolution
The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism
in America 1790-1970 (with Earl Raab)
Group Life in America
Rebellion in the University
Professors, Unions, and American Higher Education
(with Everett C. Ladd)
Academics, Politics, and the 1972 Election (with Everett C. Ladd)
The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics
(with Everett C. Ladd)
Education and Politics at Harvard (with David Riesman)
Dialogues on American Politics (with Irving Louis Horowitz)
The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor and Government
in the Public Mind
Consensus and Conflict: Essays in Political Sociology
Continental Divide: Values and Institutions of the
United States and Canada
Distinctive Cultures: Canada and the United States
The Power ofJewish Education
Jews in the New American Scene (with Earl Raab)
24)
m SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET

AMERICAN
EXCEPTIONALISM
A Double-Edged Sword

NEW YORK LONDON

 Copyright © 1996 by Seymour Martin Lipset
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

The text of this book is composed in 11/13 Fairfield Light

with the display set in Fairfield bold and heavy italic
and Futura Regular Condensed
Composition and manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsman, Inc.
Book design by Margaret M. Wagner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lipset, Seymour Martin.
American exceptionalism : a double-edged sword / Seymour Martin
Lipset.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. National characteristics, American. 2. United States—

Civilization. I. Title.
E169.1.L5447 1995
973—dc20 95-6147

ISBN: 978-0-393-3 1614-8

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
10 Coptic Street, London WC1A 1PU

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 Contents

List of Tables 11
Foreword 13
Introduction 17

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM—REAFFIRMED
1 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 31
2 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 53
3 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 77

EXCEPTIONS ON THE MARGIN

4 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 113
5 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 151
6 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some
Politically Incorrect 176

PACIFIC DIVIDE
7 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 211

CONCLUSION
8 A Double-Edged Sword 267
Appendix: Individualism and Group Obligation 293
Notes 297
Index 337
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 List of Tables

1-1 Litigiousness and Tort Costs in Six Countries 50

2-1 Productivity in the United States, Japan, and Germany 56
2-2 Attitudes Toward Absolute vs. Circumstantial Morality 64
2-3 Attitudes Toward Various Forms of Government Activity 75
2-4 Government's Responsibility in Different Areas 76
7-1 Differences Between America and Japan 224
7-2 Estimates of the Number ofJobs Held by Males Over a Lifetime in
Japan and the United States 231
7-3 Distribution Between Women and Men of Average Time Spent per
Week in Housework and Child Care: Japan, 1965-90, and the
United States, 1965-86 243
7-4 Attitudes Toward Individualism and Equality in Japan and the
United States 255
7-5 Attitudes Toward Freedom and Equality in Japan and
the United States 256
8-1 Membership in Voluntary Organizations 278
8-2 Doing Unpaid Work for Voluntary Organizations 279
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 Foreword

This book attempts to explain contemporary America, including the

nature and strength of American political parties, by reference to its
organizing principles and founding political institutions. These are, as
Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1830s, exceptional, qualitatively dif-
ferent from those of other Western nations. Hence the United States
has developed as an outlier. Yet I would add that I view the organizing
principles and institutions of the United States as double-edged, that
many negative traits that currently characterize the society, such as
income inequality, high crime rates, low levels of electoral participa-
tion, a powerful tendency to moralize which at times verges on intoler-
ance toward political and ethnic minorities, are inherently linked to the
norms and behavior of an open democratic society that appear so
admirable.
The United States was fortunate in its founders and their successors
at critical junctures. George Washington proclaimed (though he did
not practice it in the case of the blacks) that all ethnoreligious groups,
including the Jews, were equally American, that the concept of toler-
ance was invidious. Thomas Jefferson noted that less government is
better, and in commenting on the perpetuation of slavery voiced his
concern for the future of his country in light of a just God. James
Madison, who helped establish the new polity, emphasized the need to
find means for government to control itself; like most of the Founders,
he was suspicious of state power.
On July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Decla-
ration of Independence and the date of the deaths of its authors and
advocates, second and third Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jef-
ferson, Americans felt that the hand of providence was on the young
republic. How otherwise to explain these occurrences, when neither of
these elderly statesmen knew what was transpiring with the other?
More providential was the presence of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin
Roosevelt in the White House in 1861 and 1933. The former elabo-

Ue
 14 Foreword

rated the Declaration’s meaning of equality as applying to all, and saved

the Union. The latter enabled the republic to survive the most severe
economic crisis in world history, put the country on the road to a new
extension of the meaning of equality, and most important of all, set in
motion and led the struggle to “quarantine the aggressor,’ to preserve
and extend democracy.
The saga of American history puts into sharp relief the controversies
about the role of individual greatness in history. But however one
comes to this debate, there can be little question that the hand of prov-
idence has been on a nation which finds a Washington, a Lincoln, or a
Roosevelt when it needs him.! When I write the above sentence, I
believe that I draw scholarly conclusions, although I will confess that I
write also as a proud American. But, I should hasten to add, not as one
who thinks his country is better than other democratic societies, but as
one who believes that the greatness of free polities lies in their institu-
tionalization of conflict, of the continued struggles for freer and more
humanely decent societies.
This book has been a long time in the making. In areal sense, my
concern with American exceptionalism goes back to the beginning of
my writing and academic career. My first book, Agrarian Socialism
(1950), which was also my doctoral dissertation at Columbia Univer-
sity, took off from the issue of “why no socialism in the United
States?”? I have subsequently dealt with the topic directly in a number
of articles, the most thorough of which is a lengthy review of the
explanatory variables which have been suggested to answer that query.’
The unique American social class system was treated in another early
book I wrote with Reinhard Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial Soci-
ety, which appeared in 1959. It emphasized the impact of ideological
egalitarianism on the United States.* I elaborated on the topic of
exceptionalism in The First New Nation: The United States in Historical
and Comparative Perspective, which was first published in 1963.> More
recently, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United
States and Canada (1990) systematically analyzed the different cultures
of the United States and Canada, two countries which reflect the vary-
ing outcomes of the American Revolution in different sections of what
had been British North America.® The exceptional traits of the United
States have also informed a book by Earl Raab and myself, Jews and the
New American Scene (1995).”
This work originated as a plan to publish my recent articles in a
book. As I read through them, I realized that a number reflected a com-
mon theoretical thread and set of questions. They elaborated my analy-
 Foreword 15

sis of the way the organizing principles of the United States bore on the
country’s institutions and behavior. And much as I did thirty-five years
ago in the papers which in reworked form became Political Man: The
Social Bases of Politics, (1960, 1981), I tried to rewrite the recent ones
into a cohesive book.® Whether I succeeded is for the reader to decide.
Various people aided me in this endeavor. They include in particular
my research assistants at George Mason University, Scott Billingsley,
Jeff Hayes, Marcella Ridlen Ray, and Steve Wuhs. My intellectual
debts to former teachers, friends, and colleagues who have taught me
about America are many. Among the most important are Robert K.
Merton, the late Reinhard Bendix, Daniel Bell, S. D. Clark, Larry Dia-
mond, Nathan Glazer, Alex Inkeles, Gary Marks, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, Earl Raab, David Riesman, and Philip Selznick. Sydnee
Lipset’s devotion has made it all possible. A number of scholars sup-
plied me with relevant data. These include: Karlyn Bowman, Chikiu
Hayashi, Ron Inglehart, Everett Ladd, and Tatsuko Suzuki.
Different institutions have facilitated my work over the years. These
include four of which I am a member, the Hoover Institution of Stan-
ford University, the Institute of Public Policy of George Mason Univer-
sity, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson Center
for International Scholars. Funds which have paid for research assis-
tance and facilities, data collection, and travel have come over the
years from the Academic Office of the Canadian Embassy in Washing-
ton, and from the Bradley, Donner, Earhart, Ford, MacArthur, and
Olin foundations. I am grateful to the guiding officers of each of them.
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
Fairfax, Virginia
May 1995
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 Introduction

The American difference, the ways in which the United States varies
from the rest of the world, is a constant topic of discussion and in
recent years, of concern. Is the country in decline economically and
morally? Is Japan about to replace it as the leading economic power?
Why does the United States have the highest crime rate, the most per-
sons per capita in prison? Does the growth in the proportion of illegiti-
mate births of single-mother families reflect basic changes in our moral
order? Why is our electoral turnout rate so low?
Americans once proudly emphasized their uniqueness, their differ-
ences from the rest of the world, the vitality of their democracy, the
growth potential of their economy. Some now worry that our best years
as a nation are behind us. Americans distrust their leaders and institu-
tions. The public opinion indicators of confidence in institutions are
the lowest since polling on the subject began in the early sixties. These
concerns suggest the need to look again at the country in comparative
perspective, at the ways it differs from other economically developed
nations. As I have frequently argued, it is impossible to understand a
country without seeing how it varies from others. Those who know only
one country know no country.
The idea of American exceptionalism has interested many outside
the United States. One of the most important bodies of writing dealing
with this country is referred to as the “foreign traveler” literature. These
are articles and books written by visitors, largely European, dealing
with the way in which America works as compared with their home
country or area. Perhaps the best known and still most influential is
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.' The French aristocrat
came here in the 1830s to find out why the efforts at establishing
democracy in his native country, starting with the French Revolution,
had failed while the American Revolution had produced a stable demo-
cratic republic. The comparison, of course, was broader than just with
France; no other European country with the partial exception of Great

if
 18 Introduction

Britain was then a democracy. In his great book, Tocqueville is the first
to refer to the United States as exceptional—that is, qualitatively dif-
ferent from all other countries.? He is, therefore, the initiator of the
writings on American exceptionalism.
The concept could only have arisen by comparing this country with
other societies. Tocqueville looked at the United States through the
eyes of someone who knew other cultures well, particularly that of his
native country, but also to some considerable degree Great Britain.
Democracy in America deals only with the United States and has
almost no references to France or any other country, but Tocqueville
emphasized in his notes that he never wrote a word about America
without thinking about France. A book based on his research notes,
George Pierson’s Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, makes clear
the ways in which Tocqueville systematically compared the United
States and France.? At one point, he became sensitive to the fact that
America was a very decentralized country, while France was reputed to
be the opposite. Tocqueville commented that he had never given much
thought to what centralization in France meant since as a Frenchman,
he did what came naturally. He then wrote to his father, a prefect of
one of the regional administrative districts, and asked him to describe
the concentration of political power in France. His father apparently
sat down and wrote a lengthy memorandum dealing with the subject.
When Tocqueville or other “foreign traveler” writers or social scien-
tists have used the term “exceptional” to describe the United States,
they have not meant, as some critics of the concept assume, that
America is better than other countries or has a superior culture.
Rather, they have simply been suggesting that it is qualitatively differ-
ent, that it is an outlier. Exceptionalism is a double-edged concept. As
I shall elaborate, we are the worst as well as the best, depending on
which quality is being addressed.
The United States is exceptional in starting from a revolutionary
event, in being “the first new nation,” the first colony, other than Ice-
land, to become independent. It has defined its raison détre ideologi-
cally. As historian Richard Hofstadter has noted, “It has been our fate
as a nation not to have ideologies, but to be one.” In saying this, Hofs-
tadter reiterated Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln’s
emphases on the country’s “political religion,” alluding in effect to the
former’s statement that becoming American was a religious, that is,
ideological act. The ex-Soviet Union apart, other countries define
ipa by a common history as birthright communities, not by ide-
ology.
 Introduction 19

The American Creed can be described in five terms: liberty, egalitar-

ianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. Egalitarianism, in its
American meaning, as Tocqueville emphasized, involves equality of
opportunity and respect, not of result or condition. These values reflect
the absence of feudal structures, monarchies and aristocracies. As a
new society, the country lacked the emphasis on social hierarchy and
status differences characteristic of postfeudal and monarchical cul-
tures. Postfeudal societies have resulted in systems in which awareness
of class divisions and respect for the state have remained important, or
at least much more important than in the United States. European
countries, Canada, and Japan have placed greater emphasis on obedi-
ence to political authority and on deference to superiors.
Tocqueville noted, and contemporary survey data document quanti-
tatively, that the United States has been the most religious country in
Christendom. It has exhibited greater acceptance of biblical beliefs
and higher levels of church attendance than elsewhere, with the possi-
ble exception of a few Catholic countries, such as Poland and Ireland,
where nationalism and religion have been interwoven. The American
religious pattern, as Tocqueville emphasized in seeking to account for
American individualism, is voluntary, in other words, not state-sup-
ported. All denominations must raise their own funds, engaging in a
constant struggle to retain or expand the number of their adherents if
they are to survive and grow. This task is not incumbent upon state-
financed denominations.
The United States, as elaborated in chapter Two, is the only country
where most churchgoers adhere to sects, mainly the Methodists and
Baptists, but also hundreds of others.’ Elsewhere in Christendom the
Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox churches dominate. The
churches are hierarchical in structure and membership is secured by
birthright. Parishioners are expected to follow the lead of their priests
and bishops. Sects, by contrast, are predominantly congregational;
each local unit adheres voluntarily, while the youth are asked to make a
religious commitment only upon reaching the age of decision.
Churches outside of the United States historically have been linked to
the state; their clergy are paid by public authorities, their hierarchy is
formally appointed or confirmed by the government, and their schools
are subsidized by taxes.
American Protestant sectarianism has both reinforced and been
strengthened by social and political individualism. The sectarian is
expected to follow a moral code, as determined by his/her own sense of
rectitude, reflecting a personal relationship with God, and in many
 20 Introduction

cases an interpretation of biblical truth, one not mediated by bishops

or determined by the state. The American sects assume the perfectibil-
ity of human nature and have produced a moralistic people. Countries
dominated by churches which view human institutions as corrupt are
much less moralistic. The churches stress inherent sinfulness, human
weakness, and do not hold individuals or nations up to the same stan-
dards as do the sectarians who are more bitter about code violations.
The strength of sectarian values and their implications for the politi-
cal process may be seen in reactions to the supreme test of citizenship
and adherence to the national will, war.® State churches have not only
legitimated government, for example, the divine role of kings; they have
invariably approved of the wars their nations have engaged in, and have
called on people to serve and obey. And the citizens have done so,
unless and until it becomes clear their country is being defeated.
Americans, however, have been different. A major anti-war movement
sprang up in every conflict in which the United States has been
involved, with the notable exception of World War II, which for the
country began with an attack. Americans have put primacy not to “my
country right or wrong,” but rather to “obedience to my conscience.”
Hence, those who opposed going to war before it was declared contin-
ued to be against it after Congress voted for war.
Protestant-inspired moralism not only has affected opposition to
wars, it has determined the American style in foreign relations gener-
ally, including the ways we go to war. Support for a war is as moralistic
as resistance to it. To endorse a war and call on people to kill others
and die for the country, Americans must define their role in a conflict
as being on God’s side against Satan—for morality, against evil.’ The
United States primarily goes to war against evil, not, in its self-percep-
tion, to defend material interests. And comparative public opinion data
reveal that Americans are more patriotic (“proud to be an American”)
and more willing to fight if their country goes to war than citizens of
the thirty or so other countries polled by Gallup.
The emphasis in the American value system, in the American
Creed, has been on the individual. Citizens have been expected to
demand and protect their rights on a personal basis. The exceptional
focus on law here as compared to Europe, derived from the Constitu-
tion and the Bill of Rights, has stressed rights against the state and
other powers. America began and continues as the most anti-statist,
legalistic, and rights-oriented nation.
The American Constitution intensifies the commitment to individu-
alism and concern for the protection of rights through legal actions.
 Introduction 21

The American Bill of Rights, designed to protect the citizenry against

the abuse of power by government, has produced excessive litigious-
ness. It has fostered the propensity of Americans to go to court not only
against the government, but against each other. The rights of minori-
ties, blacks and others, women, even of animals and plants, have grown
extensively since World War II through legal action.
The American disdain of authority, for conforming to the rules laid
down by the state, has been related by some observers to other unique
American traits, such as the highest crime rate, as well as the lowest
level of voting participation, in the developed world. Basically, the
American revolutionary libertarian tradition does not encourage obedi-
ence to the state and the law. This point may be illustrated by examin-
ing the results when the American and Canadian governments tried to
change the system of measurements and weights to metric from the
ancient and less logical system of miles and inches, pounds and
ounces. A quarter century ago, both countries told their citizens that in
fifteen years, they must use only metric measurements, but that both
systems could be used until a given date. The Canadians, whose Tory-
monarchical history and structures have made for much greater respect
for and reliance on the state, and who have lower per capita crime,
deviance, and litigiousness rates than Americans, conformed to the
decision of their leaders and now follow the metric system, as anyone
who has driven in Canada is aware. Americans ignored the new policy,
and their highway signs still refer to miles, weights are in pounds and
ounces, and temperature readings are in Fahrenheit.
An emphasis on group characteristics, the perception of status in
collectivity terms, necessarily encourages group solutions (see chapters
Three and Four). In Europe, the emphasis on explicit social classes in
postfeudal societies promoted class-consciousness on the part of the
lower strata and to some extent noblesse oblige by the privileged. The
politics of these countries, some led by Tories such as Disraeli and Bis-
marck, and later by the lower-class-based, social democratic left,
favored policies designed to help the less affluent by means of state
solutions such as welfare, public housing, public employment, and
medical care. Americans, on the other hand, have placed greater stress
on opening the door to individual mobility and personal achievement
through heavy investment in mass education.
The cross-national differences are striking. This country has led the
world by far in the proportion of people completing different levels of
mass education from early in the nineteenth century, first for elemen-
tary and high schools, later for colleges and graduate institutions.
 22 Introduction

While America has long predominated in the ratio of those of college

and university age attending or completing tertiary education, the num-
bers and proportions involved have been massive since World War II.
A report on the proportion of 20- to 24-year-olds in higher education,
as of 1994, indicates that it is almost double, 59 percent, in the United
States to that in most affluent European countries and Japan: the
Netherlands (33%), Belgium (32%), Spain (32%), France (30%), Ger-
many (30%), Japan (30%), and Austria (29%).° And America spends a
greater proportion of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education,
7.0 percent, than does the European Union, 5.3 percent, or Japan, 5.0
percent.°
Conversely, European countries have devoted a much larger share of
their GNP, of their public funds, to bettering the living conditions of
their working classes and the less privileged generally. The European
social democrats have had frequent opportunities to hold office since
the 1930s. To transform the situation of the working class, they have
emphasized group improvement policies, such as public housing, fam-
ily allowances and state medicine. Until recently, however, they pre-
served a class-segregated educational system with elite high schools
and failed to focus on the expansion of university education.
American values were modified sharply by forces stemming from the
Great Depression and World War II. These led to a much greater
reliance on the state and acceptance of welfare and planning policies,
the growth of trade unions and of class divisions in voting. While these
changes continue to differentiate the contemporary United States from
the pre-Depression era, the prosperous conditions which characterized
most of the postwar period led the population to revert in some part to
the values of the founders, especially distrust of a strong state. Support
for diverse welfare entitlement policies has declined; trade union mem-
bership has dropped considerably, from a third to a sixth of the
employed labor force; and class-linked electoral patterns have fallen
off. Americans remain much more individualistic, meritocratic-ori-
ented, and anti-statist than peoples elsewhere. Hence, the values
which form the context for public policy are quite different from those
in other developed countries, as the results of the 1994 congressional
elections demonstrated.
These differences can be elaborated by considering the variations
between the American Constitution and those of “most other liberal
democracies . . . [which contain] language establishing affirmative wel- .
fare rights or obligations.”!° Some writers explain the difference by the
fact that except for the American, almost all other constitutions were
 Introduction 23

drawn up since World War II and, therefore, reflect a commitment to

the welfare state, to upgrading the bottom level. But as Mary Ann
Glendon has emphasized,

The differences long predate the postwar era. They are legal manifestations
of divergent, and deeply rooted, cultural attitudes toward the state and its
functions. Historically, even eighteenth- and nineteenth-century continen-
tal European constitutions and codes acknowledged state obligations to
provide food, work, and financial aid to persons in need. And continental
Europeans today, whether of the right or the left, are much more likely
than Americans to assume that governments have affirmative duties. . . . By
contrast, it is almost obligatory for American politicians of both the right
and the left to profess mistrust of government.!!

In much of the writing on the subject, American exceptionalism is

defined by the absence of a significant socialist movement in the
United States. This again is a comparative generalization, emphasizing
that socialist parties and movements have been weaker in the United
States than anywhere else in the industrialized world, and also that the
membership of trade unions has been proportionately smaller than in
other countries. Analysts have linked those facts to the nature of the
class system as well as to attitudes toward the state. Where workers are
led by the social structure to think in fixed class terms, as they are in
postfeudal societies, they have been more likely to support socialist or
labor parties or join unions. But class has been a theoretical construct
in America. The weakness of socialism is undoubtedly also related to
the lower legitimacy Americans grant to state intervention and state
authority. I discuss these matters in chapter Three, which deals with
trade unions and socialism.

METHODOLOGY
Sa

Some who criticize an emphasis on American exceptionalism as a way

of understanding current and future events have questioned the insis-
tence that historical factors linked to the settlement of the colonies
and the ideology of the founders continue to influence American
behavior and values. Max Weber dealt with this topic in an interesting
and insightful way, which I have relied on in earlier work. He sug-
gested that history operates to determine the future of a nation the way
a game in which the dice become loaded does. According to Weber, by
 24 Introduction

conceiving of a nation’s history starting as a game in which the dice are

not loaded at the beginning, but then becomes biased in the direction
of each past outcome, one has an analogue of the way in which culture
is formed. Each time the dice come up with a given number, the prob-
ability of rolling that number again increases.’
Frank Underhill, a Canadian historian, suggested processes similar
to Weber's in comparing the United States and Canada. He noted that,
in the United States in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the left-disposed forces favoring populism, egalitarianism, and the like
tended to win the major conflicts, starting with the Revolution, moving
to the war hawks of 1812, the Jacksonian period, and the Civil War.
The more conservative groups, the Federalists, the pro-British peace
forces in 1812, the Whigs and defenders of slavery, lost out. Underhill
believes that each outcome gave the egalitarian side an advantage in
the next major domestic conflict. Conversely, he argues that in his
native country, Canada, the conservative forces were dominant in each
important struggle from the American Revolution on, through the War
of 1812, the Mackenzie-Papineau Rebellion of the middle 1830s, and
the founding of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 under the aegis of
conservatives.'? Those who respected authority won in Canada, while
those who were more populist triumphed in the United States. Since
Canadian conservatives have been Tories, believers in what a British
Tory Harold Macmillan called “paternalistic socialism,” statism is more
acceptable north of the border than south of it. Ironically, as a result of
losing the Revolution, Canadian public policy has been closer to that of
social democratic countries, while the more libertarian ideology of rev-
olutionary America has made the country the most resistant to welfare
state policies and the social democratic and communitarian ethoses.
Other dissenters from the exceptionalism thesis contend that the
concept is too imprecise, too unmeasurable, to be useful in explaining
continuity or change in behavior on the national or group level. It may
be argued that survey or polling data, available since the 1930s, provide
quantitative indicators of attitudes and values which can be compared
longitudinally or cross-nationally. It is important to distinguish between
attitudes and values. Attitudes are much more malleable; they vary
with events and contexts. They may change to reflect current social
developments, recessions, corruption scandals, or violent periods, and
therefore may counter assumptions about deep-rooted variations
among nations. At given times, Americans may show up as more sup-
portive than others of certain government welfare policies, less hostile
to trade unions, less patriotic, or more willing to spend money to deal
with a given problem.
 Introduction 25

Values are well-entrenched, culturally determined sentiments pro-

duced by institutions or major historical events, for example, a new set-
tler society, a Bill of Rights, Protestant sectarianism, wars, and the like.
They result in deep beliefs, such as deference or antagonism to author-
ity, individualism or group-centeredness, and egalitarianism or elitism,
which form the organizing principles of societies. Value-based explana-
tions may relate to institutional differences to other countries, for
example, constitutional constraints on state power, divided or united
authority structures, religious systems. They also bear on behavioral
outcomes, such as litigiousness or propensity to use government to deal
with social problems—welfare, health, unemployment. Opinion sur-
veys may also provide indicators of values. For example, degrees of
egalitarianism may be reflected in the responses to questions in the
World Values Survey conducted in 1980 and 1990 concerning equal or
differentiated pay to persons of varying qualifications doing the same
job. Americans are the most likely to approve of merit-based difference
in reward, much more so than Japanese, Europeans, or Israelis. And
indicators of basic beliefs derived from data in surveys may be used to
test or elaborate hypotheses about sources of cross-national variations
in behavior, such as social policy or crime rates.
Comprehensive surveys of the attitudes of 15,000 managers from
many countries around the world taken from 1986 to 1993 find that
American executives emphasize individualism much more than their
counterparts elsewhere, and together with the Japanese are outliers with
respect to different indicators of values. (See Appendix, pp. 293-96.)
Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars conclude that

American managers are by far the strongest individualists in our national

samples. This means that they regard the individual as the basic unit and
building block of the enterprise and the origin of all its success. They are
also more inner-directed, i.e., they locate the source of the organization’s
purpose and direction in the inner convictions of its employees. No culture
is as dedicated to making each individual's dream come true. Americans
believe you should “make up your own mind” and “do your own thing”
rather than allow yourself to be influenced too much by other people and
the external flow of events. Taken together, these are the prime attributes
of entrepreneurship: the self-determined individual tenaciously pursuing a
personal dream,"

Some critics of the concept of American exceptionalism ascribe to

its exponents the belief that America had a consensual history, that its
past is less marked by conflict than other countries. Nothing could be
 26 Introduction

further from the truth. I have analyzed the interrelationship between

consensus and conflict in social science and historical analysis in my
book Consensus and Conflict and will not repeat the discussion here." I
would only note that as Sacvan Bercovitch, Richard Hofstadter,
Samuel Huntington, and Gunnar Myrdal, among many, have stressed
the United States is distinguished by an emphasis on adversarial rela-
tions among groups, and by intense, morally based conflicts about pub-
lic policy, precisely because its people quarrel sharply about how to
apply the basic principles of Americanism they purport to agree about.
Conflicts which are defined in moral terms are more intense, as in
America, than those which are seen primarily as reflecting interests, as
in Europe.
America continues to be qualitatively different. To reiterate, excep-
tionalism is a two-edged phenomenon; it does not mean better. This
country is an outlier. It is the most religious, optimistic, patriotic,
rights-oriented, and individualistic. With respect to crime, it still has
the highest rates; with respect to incarceration, it has the most people
locked up in jail; with respect to litigiousness, it has the most lawyers
per capita of any country in the world, with high tort and malpractice
rates. It also has close to the lowest percentage of the eligible elec-
torate voting, but the highest rate of participation in voluntary organiza-
tions. The country remains the wealthiest in real income terms, the
most productive as reflected in worker output, the highest in propor-
tions of people who graduate from or enroll in higher education (post-
grade 12) and in postgraduate work (post-grade 16). It is the leader in
upward mobility into professional and other high-status and elite occu-
pations, close to the top in terms of commitment to work rather than
leisure, but the least egalitarian among developed nations with respect
to income distribution, at the bottom as a provider of welfare benefits,
the lowest in savings, and the least taxed. And as I elaborate in the
chapters that follow, the positive and the negative are frequently oppo-
site sides of the same coin.
Here I would only like to note that those who emphasize social mor-
bidity, who focus on moral decline, for example, or on the high crime
or divorce rates, ignore the evidence that much of what they deplore is
closely linked to American values which presumably they approve of,
those which make for achievement and independence. As Robert Mer-
ton points out, the stress on success, on getting ahead, presses the
unsuccessful or those without the means to win out legitimately—the
poor and the oppressed minorities—to violate the rules of the game.'¢
Individualism as a value leads not only to self-reliance and a reluctance
 Introduction 27

to be dependent on others, but also to independence in family relation-

ships, including a greater propensity to leave a mate if the marital rela-
tionship becomes troubled. America is the most moralistic country in
the developed world. That moralism flows in large part from the coun-
try's unique Protestant sectarian and ideological commitments. Given
this background, it is not surprising that Americans are also very criti-
cal of their society's institutions and leaders. Europeans, who take their
national identity from common historical traditions, not ideologies, and
are reared in a church tradition, have been unable to understand the
American response to Watergate or the sexual peccadilloes of politi-
cians.
In the seventh chapter of the book, I seek to enlarge the compara-
tive perspective by looking at the United States and Japan. The Japan-
ese stress the extent to which they are a unique people. They are even
described occasionally as “uniquely unique.” The concept of Japanese
uniqueness goes back a long way. Like the Americans, the Japanese are
outliers; they are usually at the opposite ends of the value and behav-
ioral continua, as the Appendix at pp. 293-296 demonstrates. They are
the most group-oriented society; the United States is the most individ-
ualistic. Japan has extremely low crime and litigiousness rates; America
is at the opposite extreme among developed countries. The United
States, as the data of the 1990 World Values Survey demonstrate, has
the highest rates of membership and activity in voluntary associations;
Japan has the lowest.!”
The United States and other developed countries have obviously
changed considerably over the past two centuries as they have industri-
alized, urbanized, and become democratized. But I would argue that
the relative differences among them have remained. Thus, while sta-
tism has grown considerably in the United States, particularly since the
Depression of the 1930s and the New Deal, and the country clearly
can no longer be described as laissez-faire, it is still less welfare-ori-
ented, less statist, and more laissez-faire than almost all the European
nations, and more moralistic. Alone in the developed world, the coun-
try has not moved toward comprehensive health care under the spon-
sorship of the government. In general, we have hung back behind other
nations with respect to state industrial policies. In November 1994, the
electorate gave control of Congress to the most ardently anti-statist
major political party in the world, thereby rejecting the moderate (by
international standards) welfare-oriented policies of Bill Clinton and
the Democrats. The Republican campaign’s “Contract with America”
promised to drastically cut back on taxation and the scope of govern-
 28 Introduction

ment in a country which has been at the bottom among industrialized

nations in terms of the proportion of national income raised in taxes,
extent of public ownership, and expenditures for entitlements and wel-
fare. The major divisive, religion-linked social controversies in America,
abortion and gay rights, are non-issues in all the industrialized Euro-
pean countries, including the Catholic ones (non-industrialized Ireland
and Poland excepted). No one burns down abortion clinics in Europe,
Australasia, or Japan. But given the emphasis on moralism, American
politicians define interest issues as well as value conflicts in ethical
terms. Commenting on the Republican tactics in the 1994 elections,
Suzanne Garment notes that the author of the GOP Contract, House
Speaker Newt Gingrich, “thought the ‘secular religion’ he saw on the
left could be successfully opposed only by equally moralistic
rhetoric.”!® To understand why Americans act as they do, as distinct
from the Europeans and the Japanese, it is necessary to see the ways in
which the country has been exceptional all through its history.
This book addresses various aspects of American exceptionalism,
such as status, statism, economic and welfare policy, trade unionism,
politics, race relations, religion, crime, political participation, and eco-
nomic behavior. Aside from the concluding chapter, it is divided into
three sections. In the first, chapters One to Three, I examine the clas-
sic emphases of the discussion of exceptionalism, the United States as
a sociological, political, and economic outlier, as well as the issue of
“why no socialism in the United States?”, a topic which, as noted, is
taken by some as the principal meaning of American exceptionalism.
In the second section, chapters Four, Five, and Six, I analyze the
“exceptions on the margin,” three more statist groups which illustrate
the extremes: the African Americans of oppression, the Jews of suc-
cess, and intellectuals of alienation from a market-driven, or for a
minority of them, a populist society. In the third section, chapter Seven
presents a detailed comparison of the two sociological outliers among
developed countries, confronting American exceptionalism with Japan-
ese uniqueness. And in the concluding chapter, I discuss the positive
and negative outcomes of the two-edged American Creed, both foster-
ing initiative and voluntarism, and threatening community and trigger-
ing moral decline.
 AMERICAN
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 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance!

Born out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around

an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good
society. Americanism, as different people have pointed out, is an “ism”
or ideology in the same way that communism or fascism or liberalism
are isms. As G. K. Chesterton put it: “America is the only nation in the
world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic
and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence. . . .”
As noted in the Introduction, the nation’s ideology can be described in
five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-
faire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is
liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as dis-
tinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantil-
ism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed
cultures.?
Other countries’ senses of themselves are derived from a common
history. Winston Churchill once gave vivid evidence to the difference
between a national identity rooted in history and one defined by ide-
ology in objecting to a proposal in 1940 to outlaw the anti-war Com-
munist Party. In a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said
that as far as he knew, the Communist Party was composed of Eng-
lishmen and he did not fear an Englishman. In Europe, nationality is
related to community, and thus one cannot become un-English or
un-Swedish. Being an American, however, is an ideological commit-
ment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who reject American values
are un-American.
The American Revolution sharply weakened the noblesse oblige,
hierarchically rooted, organic community values which had been linked
to Tory sentiments, and enormously strengthened the individualistic,
egalitarian, and anti-statist ones which had been present in the settler
and religious background of the colonies. These values were evident in
the twentieth-century fact that, as H. G. Wells pointed out close to

3]
 32 American Exceptionalism

ninety years ago, the United States not only has lacked a viable social-
ist party, but also has never developed a British or European-type Con-
servative or Tory party. Rather, America has been dominated by pure
bourgeois, middle-class individualistic values. As Wells put it: “Essen-
tially America is a middle-class [which has] become a community and
so its essential problems are the problems of a modern individualistic
society, stark and clear.” He enunciated a theory of America as a liberal
society, in the classic anti-statist meaning of the term:

It is not difficult to show for example, that the two great political parties
in America represent only one English party, the middle-class Liberal party.
... There are no Tories . .. and no Labor Party. . . . [T]he new world [was
left] to the Whigs and Nonconformists and to those less constructive, less
logical, more popular and liberating thinkers who became Radicals in Eng-
land, and Jeffersonians and then Democrats in America. All Americans are,
from the English point of view, Liberals of one sort or another. .. .
The liberalism of the eighteenth century was essentially the rebellion
. .. against the monarchical and aristocratic state—against hereditary privi-
lege, against restrictions on bargains. Its spirit was essentially anarchistic—
the antithesis of Socialism. It was anti-State.*

COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
sis)

In dealing with national characteristics it is important to recognize that

comparative evaluations are never absolutes, that they always are made
in terms of more or less. The statement that the United States is an
egalitarian society obviously does not imply that all Americans are
equal in any way that can be defined. This proposition usually means
(regardless of which aspect is under consideration—social relations,
status, mobility, etc.) that the United States is more egalitarian than
Europe.
Comparative judgments affect all generalizations about societies.
This is such an obvious, commonsensical truism that it seems almost
foolish to enunciate it. I only do so because statements about America
or other countries are frequently challenged on the ground that they
are not absolutely true. Generalizations may invert when the unit of
comparison changes. For example, Canada looks different when com-
pared to the United States than when contrasted with Britain.> Figura-
tively, on a scale of 0 to 100, with the United States close to 0 on a
given trait and Britain at 100, Canada would fall around 30. Thus,
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 33

when Canada is evaluated by reference to the United States, it appears

as more elitist, law-abiding, and statist, but when considering the varia-
tions between Canada and Britain, Canada looks more anti-statist, vio-
lent, and egalitarian.
The notion of “American exceptionalism” became widely applied in
the context of efforts to account for the weakness of working-class radi-
calism in the United States.* The major question subsumed in the con-
cept became why the United States is the only industrialized country
which does not have a significant socialist movement or Labor party.
That riddle has bedeviled socialist theorists since the late nineteenth
century. Friedrich Engels tried to answer it in the last decade of his
life.’ The German socialist and sociologist Werner Sombart dealt with
it in a major book published in his native language in 1906, Why Is
There No Socialism in the United States?? As we have seen, H. G.
Wells, then a Fabian, also addressed the issue that year in The Future
in America.’ Both Lenin and Trotsky were deeply concerned because
the logic of Marxism, the proposition expressed by Marx in Das Kapital
that “the more developed country shows the less developed the image
of their future,” implied to Marxists prior to the Russian Revolution
that the United States would be the first socialist country.!°
Since some object to an attempt to explain a negative, a vacancy, the
query may of course be reversed to ask why has America been the most
classically liberal polity in the world from its founding to the present?
Although the United States remains the wealthiest large industrialized
nation, it devotes less of its income to welfare and the state is less
involved in the economy than is true for other developed countries. It
not only does not have a viable, class-conscious, radical political move-
ment, but its trade unions, which have long been weaker than those of
almost all other industrialized countries, have been steadily declining
since the mid-1950s. These issues are covered more extensively in
chapter Three.
An emphasis on American uniqueness raises the obvious question of
the nature of the differences.!! There is a large literature dating back to
at least the eighteenth century which attempts to specify the special
character of the United States politically and socially.'* One of the
most interesting, often overlooked, is Edmund Burke's speech to the
House of Commons proposing reconciliation with the colonies, in
which he sought to explain to his fellow members what the revolution-
ary Americans were like.!3 He noted that they were different culturally,
that they were not simply transplanted Englishmen. He particularly
stressed the unique character of American religion. J. Hector St. John
 34 American Exceptionalism

Crévecoeur, in his book Letters from an American Farmer, written in

the late eighteenth century, explicitly raised the question, “What is an
American?” He emphasized that Americans behaved differently in their
social relations, were much more egalitarian than other nationalities,
that their “dictionary” was “short in words of dignity, and names of
honor,” that is, in terms through which the lower strata expressed their
subservience to the higher.'* Tocqueville, who observed egalitarianism
in a similar fashion, also stressed individualism, as distinct from the
emphasis on “group ties” which marked Europe.”
These commentaries have been followed by a myriad—thousands
upon thousands—of books and articles by foreign travelers. The over-
whelming majority are by educated Europeans. Such writings are fruit-
ful because they are comparative; those who wrote them emphasized
cross-national variations in behavior and institutions.'® Tocqueville’s
Democracy, of course, is the best known. As we have seen, he noted
that he never wrote anything about the United States without thinking
of France. As he put it, in speaking of his need to contrast the same
institutions and behavior in both countries, “without comparisons to
make, the mind doesn’t know how to proceed.”!” Harriet Martineau, an
English contemporary, also wrote a first-rate comparative book on
America.'® Friedrich Engels and Max Weber were among the contribu-
tors to the literature. There is a fairly systematic and similar logic in
many of these discussions.!”
Beyond the analysis of variations between the United States and
Europe, various other comparisons have been fruitful. In previous
writings, I have suggested that one of the best ways to specify and dis-
tinguish American traits is by contrast with Canada.*° There is a con-
siderable comparative North American literature, written almost
entirely by Canadians. They have a great advantage over Americans
since, while very few of the latter study their northern neighbor, it is
impossible to be a literate Canadian without knowing almost as much,
if not more, as most Americans about the United States. Almost every
Canadian work on a given subject (the city, religion, the family, trade
unions, etc.) contains a great deal about the United States. Many
Canadians seek to explain their own country by dealing with differ-
ences or similarities south of the border. Specifying and analyzing vari-
ations among the predominantly English-speaking countries—Aus-
tralia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States—is
also useful precisely because the differences among them generally
are smaller than between each and non-Anglophonic societies.?! I
have tried to analyze these variations in The First New Nation.?? The
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 35

logic of studying societies which have major aspects in common was

also followed by Louis Hartz in treating the overseas settler soci-
eties—United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia, and South
Africa—as units for comparison.2? Fruitful comparisons have been
made between Latin America and Anglophonic North America, which
shed light on each.
Some Latin Americans have argued that there are major common
elements in the Americas which show up in comparisons with Europe.
Fernando Cardoso, a distinguished sociologist and now president of
Brazil, once told me that he and his friends (who were activists in the
underground left in the early 1960s) consciously decided not to found
a socialist party as the military dictatorship was breaking down. They
formed a populist party because, as they read the evidence, class-con-
scious socialism does not appeal in the Americas.2* With the excep-
tions of Chile and Canada (to a limited extent), major New World left
parties from Argentina to the United States have been populist. Car-
doso suggested that consciousness of social class is less salient
throughout most of the Americas than in postfeudal Europe. However,
I do not want to take on the issue of how exceptional the Americas are;
dealing with the United States is more than enough.

LIBERALISM, CONSERVATISM, AND AMERICANISM

ey

The United States is viewed by many as the great conservative society,

but it may also be seen as the most classically liberal polity in the
developed world. To understand the exceptional nature of American
politics, it is necessary to recognize, with H. G. Wells, that conser-
vatism, as defined outside of the United States, is particularly weak in
this country. Conservatism in Europe and Canada, derived from the
historic alliance of church and government, is associated with the
emergence of the welfare state. The two names most identified with it
are Bismarck and Disraeli. Both were leaders of the conservatives
(Tories) in their countries. They represented the rural and aristocratic
elements, sectors which disdained capitalism, disliked the bourgeoisie,
and rejected materialistic values. Their politics reflected the values of
noblesse oblige, the obligation of the leaders of society and the economy
to protect the less fortunate.
The semantic confusion about liberalism in America arises because
both early and latter-day Americans never adopted the term to describe
 36 American Exceptionalism

the unique American polity. The reason is simple. The American sys-
tem of government existed long before the word “liberal” emerged in
Napoleonic Spain and was subsequently accepted as referring to a par-
ticular party in mid-nineteenth-century England, as distinct from the
Tory or Conservative Party. What Europeans have called “liberalism,”
Americans refer to as “conservatism”: a deeply anti-statist doctrine
emphasizing the virtues of laissez-faire. Ronald Reagan and Milton
Friedman, the two current names most frequently linked with this ide-
ology, define conservatism in America. And as Friedrich Hayek, its
most important European exponent noted, it includes the rejection of
aristocracy, social class hierarchy, and an established state church. As
recently as the April and June 1987 issues of the British magazine
Encounter, two leading trans-Atlantic conservative intellectuals, Max
Beloff (Lord Beloff) and Irving Kristol, debated the use of titles. Kristol
argued that Britain “is soured by a set of very thin, but tenacious, aris-
tocratic pretensions ... [which] foreclose opportunities and repress a
spirit of equality that has yet to find its full expression. . . .” This situa-
tion fuels many of the frustrations that make “British life . . . so cheer-
less, so abounding in ressentiment.” Like Tocqueville, he holds up
“social equality” as making “other inequalities tolerable in modern
democracy.” Beloff, a Tory, contended that what threatens conser-
vatism in Britain “is not its remaining links with the aristocratic tradi-
tion, but its alleged indifference to some of the abuses of capitalism. It
is not the Dukes who lose us votes, but the ‘malefactors of great
wealth. ...’” He wondered “why Mr. Kristol believes himself to be a
‘conservative,’ ” since he is “as incapable as most Americans of being a
conservative in any profound sense.” Lord Beloff concluded that “Con-
servatism must have a ‘Tory’ element or it is only the old ‘Manchester
School,’ ” i.e., liberal.*5
Canada's most distinguished conservative intellectual, George
Grant, emphasized in his Lament for a Nation that “Americans who call
themselves ‘Conservatives’ have the right to that title only in a particu-
lar sense. In fact, they are old-fashioned liberals. . . . Their concentra-
tion on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with
nineteenth century liberalism than with traditional conservatism,
which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the
name of the common good.” Grant bemoaned the fact that American
conservatism, with its stress on the virtues of competition and links to
business ideology, focuses on the rights of,individuals and ignores com-
munal rights and obligations. He noted that there has been no place in
the American political philosophy “for the organic conservatism that
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 37

predates the age of progress. Indeed, the United States is the only soci-
ety on earth that has no traditions from before the age of progress.”
The recent efforts, led by Amitai Etzioni, to create a “communitarian”
movement are an attempt to transport Toryism to America. British and
German Tories have recognized the link and have shown considerable
interest in Etzioni’s ideas.’
Still, it must be recognized that American politics have changed.
The 1930s produced a qualitative difference. As Richard Hofstadter
wrote, this period brought a “social democratic tinge” to the United
States for the first time in its history.?® The Great Depression produced
a strong emphasis on planning, on the welfare state, on the role of the
government as a major regulatory actor. An earlier upswing in statist
sentiment occurred immediately prior to World War I, as evidenced by
the significant support for the largely Republican Progressive move-
ment led by Robert LaFollette and Theodore Roosevelt and the
increasing strength (up to a high of 6% of the national vote in 1912) for
the Socialist Party. They failed to change the political system. Grant
McConnell explains the failure of the Progressive movement as stem-
ming from “the pervasive and latent ambiguity in the movement” about
confronting American anti-statist values. “Power as it exists was antag-
onistic to democracy, but how was it to be curbed without the erection
of superior power?”
Prior to the 1930s, the American trade union movement was also in
its majority anti-statist. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was
syndicalist, believed in more union, not more state power, and was
anti-socialist. Its predominant leader for forty years, Samuel Gompers,
once said when asked about his politics, that he guessed he was three
quarters of an anarchist.*? And he was right. Europeans and others who
perceived the Gompers-led AFL as a conservative organization because
it opposed the socialists were wrong. The AFL was an extremely mili-
tant organization, which engaged in violence and had a high strike rate.
It was not conservative, but rather a militant anti-statist group. The
United States also had a revolutionary trade union movement, the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW, like the AFL, was
not socialist. It was explicitly anarchist, or rather, anarcho-syndicalist.
The revived American radical movement of the 1960s, the so-called
New Left, was also not socialist. While not doctrinally anarchist, it was
much closer to anarchism and the IWW in its ideology and organiza-
tional structure than to the Socialists or Communists.
The New Deal, which owed much to the Progressive movement,
was not socialist either. Franklin Roosevelt clearly wanted to maintain
 38 American Exceptionalism

a capitalist economy. In running for president in 1932, he criticized

Herbert Hoover and the Republicans for deficit financing and expand-
ing the economic role of the government, which they had done in order
to deal with the Depression. But his New Deal, also rising out of the
need to confront the massive economic downsizing, drastically
increased the statist strain in American politics, while furthering public
support for trade unions.*! The new labor movement which arose con-
comitantly, the Committee for (later Congress of) Industrial Organiza-
tion (CIO), unlike the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was virtu-
ally social democratic in its orientation. In fact, socialists and
communists played important roles in the movement. The CIO was
much more politically active than the older Federation and helped to
press the Democrats to the left. The Depression led to a kind of mod-
erate “Europeanization” of American politics, as well as of its labor
organizations. Class factors became more important in differentiating
party support.?? The conservatives, increasingly concentrated among
the Republicans, remained anti-statist and laissez-faire, but many of
them grew willing to accommodate an activist role for the state.
This pattern, however, gradually inverted after World War II as a
result of long-term prosperity. The United States, like other parts of
the developed world, experienced what some have called an economic
miracle. The period from 1945 to the 1980s was characterized by con-
siderable growth (mainly before the mid-1970s), an absence of major
economic downswings, higher rates of social mobility both on a mass
level and into the elites, and a tremendous expansion of higher educa-
tional systems—from a few million to 11 or 12 million going to col-
leges and universities—which fostered that mobility. America did par-
ticularly well economically, leading Europe and Japan by a
considerable margin in terms of new job creation. A consequence of
these developments was a refurbishing of the classical liberal ideology,
that is, American conservatism. The class tensions produced by the
Depression lessened, reflected in the decline of the labor movement
and lower correlations between class position and voting choices. And
the members of the small (by comparative standards) American labor
movement are today significantly less favorable to government action
than European unionists. Fewer than half of American union mem-
bers are in favor of the government providing a decent standard of liv-
ing for the unemployed, as compared with 69 percent of West Ger-
man, 72 percent of British, and 73 percent of Italian unionists.33 Even
before Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, the United
States had a lower rate of taxation, a less developed welfare state, and
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 39

many fewer government-owned industries than other industrialized

nations.

THE POLITICAL VARIABLES

ser} =

Fighting against a centralized monarchical state, the founding fathers

distrusted a strong unified government. As the major modern theorist
of classical liberal politics, Leo Strauss, noted: “The United States of
America may be said to be the only country in the world which was
founded in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles,” to the
power of the Prince.** The chronic antagonism to the state derived
from the American Revolution has been institutionalized in the unique
division of powers that distinguishes the United States from parliamen-
tary regimes, where parliament, or more realistically the cabinet, has
relatively unchecked power, much like that held by an absolute
monarch.
The American Constitution, the oldest in the world, established a
divided form of government, the presidency, two houses of Congress,
and a federal high court, and reflected a deliberate decision by the
country’s founders to create a weak and internally conflicted political
system.» The first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, called
for a Congress to pass laws, but not for an executive. The second and
present one, ratified in 1789, divided the government into many units,
each one selected differently for varying terms of office. The president
was to be chosen every four years by an electoral college, basically
made up of individually elected local elites, although this process was
soon altered by the emergence of slates committed to party nominees
who competed for the popular vote. Two senators were to be chosen by
the state legislators for six-year terms, with one third of the seats open
every two years, while the popularly elected House of Representatives
was to be filled every two years, with the number allotted to each state
roughly proportional to its share of the national population. The presi-
dent could reject legislation passed by Congress, but this veto could be
overridden by two thirds of each house. Changes to the Constitution
required a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification
by three quarters of the states. The Constitution provided for Supreme
Court justices appointed by the president for life, but their nomination,
like those of other federal justices, cabinet members, and high-ranking
officeholders, is subject to Senate ratification.
Almost all other democratic nations, those in Latin America aside,
 40. American Exceptionalism

have much more unified governments, with a prime minister and cabi-
net who are supported by the majority of the elected members of par-
liament. Given that the executive has to be backed by the parliamen-
tarians who placed him or her in office, prime ministers are more
powerful, particularly in the domestic field, than presidents.
The American system laid down in the late eighteenth century is
basically intact, although it has been amended to provide for the direct
popular election of senators. The procedures for nominating presiden-
tial and other candidates have also become more populist. Potential
nominees must run in party primaries (elections) held some time
before the general election. These primaries first emerged in some
western states around the turn of the century and became mandated
for almost all posts after the 1960s. Nominees were previously chosen
by party conventions, often controlled by “machines” or cabals of pro-
fessional politicians. These developments were paralleled by the expan-
sion on the state and local government levels of reliance on referenda,
many of which are initiated by petitions. Such reforms reflect a com-
mitment to populism, to the belief that the public, rather than profes-
sional politicians, should control as much of the policy formation
process as possible.
In a brilliant article on “The State as a Conceptual Variable,” J. P.
Nett] laid out the enormous differences between the European con-
ception of the state and the American. As he emphasized, the latter is
characterized by “relative statelessness.” No other elected national gov-
ernment apart from the Swiss is as limited in its powers. In the United
States, “only law is sovereign.” The weakness of the state, the emphasis
on individual rights and a constitutionally mandated division of powers
gives lawyers a uniquely powerful role in America and makes its people
exceptionally litigious. The Bill of Rights, until recently almost unique,
is indicative of a political system that has led to a steady enlargement
of basic freedoms in the areas of speech, assembly, and private behav-
ior, and to a variety of legal defense organizations to sustain such
efforts, the most prominent of which has been the American Civil Lib-
erties Union. American litigiousness is evident in the greater frequency
of appeals against convictions, as well as more malpractice and envi-
ronmental and occupational safety suits than elsewhere. Unlike the sit-
uation in Europe and Britain, “[I]n the United States, the law and its
practitioners have perhaps been the most important single factor mak-
ing for political and social change and have time and again proved to be -
the normal instrument for bringing it about.”
The institutional (constitutional) structure also inhibits the possibili-
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 41

ties for a multi-party system by creating the base for an electoral sys-
tem which comes close to requiring a heterogeneous two-party system.
Other countries encourage more parties either greatly, through propor-
tional representation of members of parliament, or somewhat, through
constituency elections in which voters need only be concerned
whether a party is viable in their district, not whether it can finish first
or second nationally. The American system focuses on electing one
individual president, who then appoints a cabinet responsible to
him/her, not to Parliament. Given that only one person and party can
win the presidency, voters usually recognize that effectively they must
choose between the two strongest candidates running for office. Sup-
port for weaker third or fourth nominees or parties is viewed as a
wasted choice. Hence, voters who are not enthusiastic about the two
major candidates still wind up supporting one of them as “the lesser
evil.” This situation, as E. E. Schattschneider convincingly demon-
strated, usually makes for a two-candidate race, for two broad electoral
coalitions.*” Those who have attempted to build third parties in Amer-
ica have never understood these limits, which imply the need for previ-
ously unrepresented forces to make their way to power through partici-
pation in one of the major party coalitions.** Third-party advocates
have taken heart from the success of the Republicans, founded in
1854, but the Republicans were never a third party. They basically
arose out of the break-up of the Whig Party, the major pre-Civil War
opponent of the Democrats, on the slavery issue, and included most
former northern Whigs.
There have, of course, been a number of strong third-party presiden-
tial candidates since World War I. Robert LaFollette, who ran in 1924,
was supported by 17 percent of the electorate, while George Wallace
secured over 12 percent of the vote in 1968, and John Anderson
obtained 7 percent in 1980. H. Ross Perot joined this list with 19 per-
cent in 1992. All of these candidates, except Perot, however, lost much
of their support during the campaigns as voters reacted to the “wasted
vote” argument. Since national opinion polling started in the mid-thir-
ties, third-party candidates have wound up with a much lower percent-
age than their standing in the surveys in spring and early summer polls.
In any case, no matter how many votes they received, they were not
able to institutionalize themselves and become a permanent party.
After each display of extra-party appeal, the two major parties success-
fully co-opted the protest with subsequent policies and nominees.
Perot may prove himself the exception to the rule.
What makes heterogenous coalition parties possible has been the
 42 American Exceptionalism

absence of party discipline, of the need for candidates and officials to

follow a party line and support party leaders. This intraparty diversity is
facilitated by the separation of powers, the fact that unlike a prime
minister, who must resign from office and usually call a new election if
he or she loses a vote for a bill in parliament, a president stays in office
no matter how many of his proposals are defeated in Congress. Parlia-
mentary parties, like the British Conservatives or the Scandinavian
Social Democrats, must maintain discipline if the system is to work.
Members of parliaments are expected, almost required, to vote with
their party. They may have to go along with policies favored by their
party leaders even when these are very unpopular in the districts they
represent. American congresspersons, however, are on their own and
generally must try to win their districts without much help from the
weakly organized national party. The American separation of powers
allows and even encourages members of Congress to vote with their
constituents against their president or dominant party view. Allan
Gotlieb, Canadian ambassador to the United States during the 1980s,
has noted that American legislators, including congressional leaders,
have voted against and helped to kill bills to carry out major interna-
tional agreements in response to pressure from small groups of local
constituents, such as those in the scallop-fishing industry or logging
concerns.*” As former House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill once
put it, in Congress, “all politics is local.” Various liberal or progressive
reforms, enacted before World War I and after World War II, have
deliberately weakened congressional party organization, thereby
strengthening these tendencies.”
In five of the six administrations prior to Bill Clinton’s election in
1992, the American electorate divided control of the government
between the two parties. This pattern indicates that congressional con-
tests are, to an extent, used to express discontent with some of the poli-
cies of those who control the national administration, even though vot-
ers do not necessarily wish to remove the president. In off-year contests
(those in which a president is not elected), the president's party almost
invariably loses congressional seats. The non-presidential party also
wins by-elections and in recent presidential election years has secured
many more votes for its congressional than presidential candidates. The
results of the 1994 mid-term contests reiterated this pattern.
By dividing the government in this way, the voters seemingly rein-
force the founders’ desire to have the different branches of government
check and balance each other. Under such conditions, the presidency
remains a weaker office than the prime ministership, whose party has a
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 43

parliamentary majority. American presidents control foreign policy and

can order troops overseas, but often have difficulty getting their bud-
gets and proposed legislation passed by Congress. Furthermore, the
American public has often indicated in opinion polls that it continues
to favor a divided government and a weak state. When samples of the
population have been asked by pollsters whether they prefer the presi-
dent and both houses of Congress to be controlled by one party or
divided between two, majorities usually have chosen the latter
response.*' They also invariably indicate a preference for small govern-
mental units to large ones.
The ultimate source of authority in the American system can be
found in the preamble of the Constitution, which starts with “We, the
People of the United States.” America became more electorally democ-
ratic earlier than other countries. Its less privileged strata received the
ballot without the kind of class struggle that was required in Britain,
Prussia, Sweden, and most countries in Europe. The greater strength
of populism in the United States is reflected in the extent to which the
public has insisted on the right to elect officials or to change them with
the fortunes of elections. Almost all the major figures in law enforce-
ment on the state and local government level, including judges and the
heads of the prosecutors’ offices and police forces, are chosen by the
voters or appointed by elected officials. In parliamentary countries,
legal and police authorities tend to have life tenure and are not directly
involved in politics. Judges are appointed for life. They are not fired
when a new party comes to power, and since they are usually prohib-
ited from political activity, they are not under pressure to handle cases
in a way that might facilitate their reelection or attainment of higher
electoral office.
In the United States, not only are more legal offices open to election
but elections are held more frequently than in any other modern soci-
ety. As of 1992, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were
511,039 popularly elected officials in the United States, or about one
for every 363 members of the voting-age population. Most of them,
491,669, held local positions, with 18,828 state officeholders, about
half of whom were administrative officials and judges.** This should
mean that, including primaries and counting all offices, well over one
million contests occur in every four-year cycle, since many are elected
to one- or two-year terms. American states and local governments sub-
mit many proposed laws, bond issues, and constitutional amendments
to popular votes; other democratic polities rarely or never do. As indi-
cated earlier, in many states, the citizenry may propose legislation
 44 American Exceptionalism

through initiative petition, a right frequently used; it hardly exists else-

where. Austin Ranney, the foremost expert on the subject, has noted
the effect of all this on him as a California voter:

On November 8, I, like every Berkeley voter, was called upon to vote on

twenty-nine state propositions (we had already voted on twelve proposi-
tions in June), five Alameda County propositions, and eight city proposi-
tions. But that was not all: I was also asked to make choices for president,
U.S. senator, U.S. representative, state senator, state representative, and a
number of county and city offices. In the manner of political scientists of
my generation, I made a simple count and found that I had a grand total of
sixty-one decisions to make!*?

The same differentiating factors are seemingly reflected in varying

administrative practices at the governmental level. The dividing line
between political appointees and permanent civil servants is drawn
higher in most other democratic countries than in the United States.
Newly elected presidents, even when they are of the same party as the
person they succeeded, as with George Bush, are responsible for thou-
sands of new appointments. Comparing the consequences of the
divided authority in a presidential system with the more commonly
used unified parliamentary government points up the way in which
values and institutions interact to produce distinct political cultures.
The divided government also results in numerous and powerful spe-
cial interest and lobbying organizations, as well as in a greater number
of social movements. The fact that congressional candidates are
largely on their own, that their parties have little to do with nominat-
ing or electing them, and that they must raise campaign resources per-
sonally, leaves them dependent on and vulnerable to influence from
those who can produce money and campaigners for them. Their leg-
islative behavior reflects these needs and the characteristics of their
districts, more than their party’s or president’s dictates. This results in
American politics appearing more materialistic, more oriented toward
special interests, and more personal, than elsewhere. In a discussion
of the American polity, Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson
point out that “our government [in the United States] is permeated
with politics. This is because our constitutional structure and our tra-
ditions afford individuals manifold opportunities not only to bring
their special interests to the attention of public officials but also—and
this is the important thing—to compel officials to bargain and to make
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 45

compromises. ... [T]here is virtually no sphere of ‘administration’

apart from politics.”** Such a comment underlines the effects of the
populist sentiments and structures that pervade the American polity.
The strong egalitarian emphasis in the United States which presses for
expression in the vox populi makes Americans more derisive and criti-
cal of their politicians and government bureaucrats.
The civil service, which is dependent on Congress, particularly its
committees, for funding and legislative support, behaves differently
from the bureaucracy in parliamentary unified systems. In the latter,
civil servants must conform to the will of superiors, including ulti-
mately the political head of their department. Parliamentarians cannot
affect their activity. In the United States, however, congressional com-
mittees, particularly their chairs and ranking members, have as much
or more to say about the perquisites of a department or subunit than
political superiors, and legislators are likely to remain around much
longer than the latter. Hence, American civil servants will cooperate
with congresspeople and their staffs in ways that rarely happen else-
where. (The 1994 election results may put these generalizations in
doubt, at least for two years.) .
It may be argued that part of the responsibility for the lower turnout
in American elections (only 55% voted in the 1992 presidential con-
test, while far fewer take part in primaries and lower-level elections,
including those for Congress) should be attributed to populism.** The
prolonged, multi-year campaigns, the frequency with which Americans
are called to the polls (only Switzerland, which has comparably low
participation, is as high), and the mud-slinging, character-assassination
tactics inherent in contests which necessarily focus on individuals
rather than the weak parties, all appear to discourage participation. The
decline of the power of the organized parties, of the “machines” men-
tioned above, to nominate candidates and to mobilize people to vote
has meant that fewer people take part.** Populism clearly does not
explain all of the phenomenon. Since individual votes rarely, if ever,
determine the outcome of an election, taking time to cast a ballot is not
rational behavior, particularly in the United States where it takes more
time to first register and then vote than in most other countries. Also,
unlike America, these countries tend to hold their elections on a Sun-
day. Many voters elsewhere take the time to cast a ballot for the same
reason they obey a sign not to walk on the grass, to wait at a red light
even if no car is approaching, or not to break the law in other ways
when there is little or no chance that they will be caught. Voting is
encouraged as an expression of good citizenship.*” Americans, how-
 46 American Exceptionalism

ever, being less conformist and, as we will see later in this chapter, less
law-abiding than citizens of most other developed societies, vote less.
Additionally, many observers properly point to the greater difficulty
Americans face in voting because of eligibility requirements, particu-
larly the need to register to be on the voters’ list.** But sharp reductions
in such requirements since the 1960s, including in some states the
elimination of the registration requirements or permitting citizens to
register on election day, have been accompanied by rates of decline in
voting paralleling the falloffs in less restrictive states, although the
more permissive ones have higher rates of participation than states
with more stringent requirements. Ironically, as the American elec-
torate gains more formal power, the participation gap between the
United States and other democracies grows.
As the United States moves into its third century under the same
constitution, a world record by far, it seemingly has the same divided
form of government and, compared to other Euro-Canadian polities,
value emphases. It is still more classically liberal (libertarian), distrust-
ful of government, and populist. It gives its citizens more power to
influence their governors than other democracies, which rely more
heavily on unified governments fulfilling economic and welfare func-
tions. Viewed cross-nationally, Americans are the most antistatist lib-
eral (Whig) population among the democratic nations. They continue
to stand with Thomas Jefferson in believing that less government is
better. But, of course, in keeping with the complexity of our times, they
now favor a lot more government than he did.

CRIME, LAW, AND DEVIANCE

zz

It may be argued that the fact that the United States “is notorious for
its high crime rates” may also be linked to some of the special traits of
the country as a uniquely liberal, bourgeois, and socially egalitarian
society.” A detailed survey of comparative crime rates by Louise Shel-
ley in developed countries for the period 1945-85 indicates that “rates
for all categories of crime are approximately three times higher [in
America] than in other developed nations, and the differences have
been growing.” The country’s lead is much greater for violent crimes.
As of 1993, the male homicide rate was 12.4 per 100,000, contrasted -
to 1.6 for the European Union, and but 0.9 for Japan.”' The same is
true for imprisonment. By the end of 1993, close to 1 million persons
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 47

were in state and federal penitentiaries. The United States “had an

incarceration rate more than 4 times that of Canada, and more than 5
times that of England and Wales.” Only Russia was higher.*? The ques-
tion is, why?
There is obviously no single answer. Shelley, who has studied the
problem comparatively, mentions a number of possible factors: ten-
sions from “postwar urbanization and population mobility, particularly
as reflected among minorities and lower class persons, the drug prob-
lem, family structure and social values.”>3 While all these factors seem
relevant, the last set, values, has been noted by various sociologists as
particularly important.** Robert Merton has emphasized the pressures
generated by the interplay between America’s basic values and the
facts of social stratification in an industrial society. The stress on
equality and achievement in American society has meant that Ameri-
cans are much more likely to be concerned with the achievement of
approved ends (particularly pecuniary success) than with the use of
appropriate means (the behavior considered appropriate to a given posi-
tion or status). In a country that stresses success above all, people are
led to feel that the most important thing is to win the game, regardless
of the methods employed in doing so. American culture applies the
norms of a completely competitive society to everyone. Winners take
all. As Merton has put it:

What makes American culture relatively distinctive . . . is that it is “a soci-

ety which places a high premium on economic affluence and social ascent
for all its members.” . . . [T]his patterned expectation is regarded as appro-
priate for everyone, irrespective of his initial lot or station in life. . . .
This leads naturally to the subsidiary theme that success or failure are
results wholly of personal qualities, that he who fails has only himself to
blame, for the corollary to the concept of the self-made man is the self-
unmade man. To the extent that this cultural definition is assimilated by
those who have not made their mark, failure represents a double defeat:
the manifest defeat of remaining far behind in the race for success and the
implicit defeat of not having the capacities and moral stamina needed for
success. ... It is in this cultural setting that, in a significant portion of
cases, the threat of defeat motivates men to the use of those tactics,
beyond the law or the mores, which promise “success.”
The moral mandate to achieve success thus exerts pressure to succeed,
by fair means if possible and by foul means if necessary.”

In contrast, in nations descendant from more traditional, ascriptive,

or aristocratic societies there is more emphasis on the belief that one
 48 American Exceptionalism

should behave in a proper, law-abiding manner. In the morality of aris-

tocracy, those who won generations ago, to play the game well is more
important than victory. All privileged strata seek to develop norms
which justify their right to high status and which limit, if not eliminate,
the possibility that they may be supplanted by “new men,” by the
upwardly mobile who succeed by “innovating’—that is, by ignoring the
conventions. To emphasize correct behavior, manners, and so forth is
to reward the characteristics which those born to privilege are most
likely to have. Because of its settler society and revolutionary origins,
America entered the era of a capitalist, industrial, and politically demo-
cratic society without the traditions of an aristocratic or deferential
order. As a result, the norms of aristocracy, though present to a limited
extent among the social elite, have not been able to make much head-
way. Since the emphasis is on success in the United States, those indi-
viduals or groups who feel themselves handicapped and who seek to
resolve their consequent doubts about their personal worth are under
strong pressure to “innovate,” to use whatever means they can find to
gain recognition or money.
This pressure to be creative may be reflected in efforts which estab-
lished groups would not make—for example, the development of new
and risky industries by those of recent immigrant background and/or
low status who are prevented by lack of education, skill, economic
resources, and by social discrimination from advancing up economic
ladders. The pressure to succeed may also lead individuals and groups
to serve social needs through employment outside the law, in occupa-
tions usually described as “rackets.” Organized vice—prostitution,
bootlegging, drug selling, and gambling—has been open to ambitious
individuals from deprived social backgrounds when other fields were
closed. The rackets have attracted members of minority ethnic and
racial groups who are strongly motivated by the American emphasis on
achievement, but who are limited in their access to legitimate means of
succeeding. The comparatively high crime rate in America, both in the
form of lower-class rackets, robbery and theft, and white-collar and
business defalcation, may, therefore, be perceived as a consequence of
the stress laid on success. Daniel Bell has logically suggested that
large-scale crime may be seen as a natural by-product of American cul-
ture:

The desires satisfied in extra-legal fashion were more than a hunger for the
“forbidden fruits” of conventional morality. They also are involved in the
complex and ever shifting structure of group, class, and ethnic stratifica-
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 49

tion, which is the warp and woof of America’s “open” society, such “nor-
mal” goals as independence through a business of one’s own, and such
“moral” aspirations as the desire for social advancement and social prestige.
For crime, in the language of the sociologists, has a “functional” role in the
society, and the urban rackets—the illicit activity organized for continuing
profit, rather than individual illegal acts .. . [are] one of the queer ladders
of social mobility in American life.>”

Another source of the high American crime rate may be found in the
emphasis on the “due process” guarantees for individual rights, deriva-
tive from a Bill of Rights, which has produced legal inhibitions on the
power of the police and prosecutors, including the absence of serious
gun-control measures.** This may be contrasted to the “crime-control”
model, more evident in the Commonwealth, Japan, and Europe, which
focuses on the maintenance of law and order and is less protective of
the rights of the accused and of individuals generally.>? But as Stephen
Cole notes, “the emphasis on individual rights that makes it difficult to
prosecute and punish criminals also gives Americans a degree of civil
liberty not found in most other countries.” Great Britain, which does
not have a constitutionally mandated Bill of Rights, has responded to
an increase in crime through legislation enacted in 1994 which drasti-
cally reduces the legal rights of the accused in ways that would be
impossible in the United States. The new law “provides strong disin-
centives for people questioned by the police to invoke the right to
remain silent. .. . The law also contains new powers for police to stop
and search vehicles and pedestrians. . . . The law increases government
censorship of videos. ... In addition to the new law, the Health
Department has ordered the compilation of registers of mentally ill per-
sons who, in the view of authorities, could perpetrate violence. .
These individuals would be subject to extra scrutiny. . . .”°!
The American emphasis on due process is accompanied by greater
litigiousness, as well as more formal and extensive efforts to enforce
the law. As noted, the United States has many more lawyers per
capita (312 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the latest available
statistics) than other developed countries, including all the other pre-
dominantly English-speaking common-law ones, and tort costs are
much higher (see Table 1-1).
The United States is also “exceptional” with regard to high rates of
divorce and single-parent families. As David Popenoe notes, its “mari-
tal breakup rate is by far the highest among the advanced societies. . . .
The chances of a first marriage ending in divorce in America today are
 50 American Exceptionalism

TABLE 1-1. LITIGIOUSNESS AND TORT COSTS IN SIX COUNTRIES

Lawyers per Tort Costs
100,000 as % of GNP
Lawyers* Population* 1987

United States 780,000 312.0 2.4

Western Germany 115,900 190.1 0.5

England and Wales 68,067 134.0 0.5

Italy 46,401 81.2 0.5

France 27,700 49.1 0.6

Holland 5,124 35.2 —

*For latest available years.

Source: Adapted from “The Rule of Lawyers,” The Economist, Survey, July 18, 1992, pp. 3-4, and
“Order in the Tort,” The Economist, Survey, July 18, 1992, pp. 10-13.

about one in two. While . . . [the] percentage of single-parent families

also ranks highest.”*? In a sophisticated effort to make sense out of
divorce rates cross-nationally, which are difficult to standardize,
William Goode also concludes that the divorce rate in the United
States “is probably higher than that of any other nation. . . ."** He cites
an unpublished study to the effect that “Perhaps two-thirds of all
recent marriages are likely to end up in separation or divorce within
thirty years.”© As in other countries, “the United States has witnessed
a rise in illegitimacy ratios and that in turn has also affected divorce
rates ... [since the] rate of divorce among ... [mothers involved] is
higher. ...”"° Popenoe points out that the statistics are not to be
explained by the presence of a disproportionately black “underclass,”
though blacks have higher divorce and teenage birth rates than whites.
The rate of teenage pregnancy among whites alone is “still ... twice
that of the closest European competitor,” while “divorce in America
today has become almost as common among the higher classes as
among the lower.”°”
In seeking to explain American uniqueness in this area, he draws on
the work of Robert Bellah and his colleagues, who note the importance
of “self-fulfillment” and “expressive individualism” as major parts of the
value system. The lead of the United States in divorce rates, which
goes back to the nineteenth century, presumably reflects in part the
strength of individualism.
Interpreting the higher American teenage pregnancy rate, which
occurs in tandem with a propensity, especially among whites, to marry
to legitimize birth, is more difficult. The author of an extremely thor-
 Ideology, Politics, and Deviance 51

ough comparative analysis of Teenage Pregnancy in Industrialized

Countries seeks to account for these seemingly contradictory results as
stemming from Americans being more intensely religious, individualis-
tic, anti-elitist, and less law- and rule-conforming than the populations
of other countries. The expressive individualism of young Americans
leads them to have intercourse at an early age. Their greater religiosity,
however, undermines their developing as rational an orientation to the
use of birth control as exists among the less religiously committed
Europeans and Canadians. The latter groups are also more disposed to
listen to the advice of authority.” And when pregnancy occurs, the
large majority of teenage white Americans marry; Europeans (particu-
larly in the North) and Canadians are less likely to.

PATRIOTISM AND OPTIMISM

fea)

Regardless of evidence of corruption in high places and higher violent

crime rates, Americans continue to be proud of their nation, to exhibit
a greater sense of patriotism and of belief that their system is superior
to all others. Opinion polls taken in the late 1980s and early 1990s in
most European countries, Japan, and North America, find that Ameri-
cans are invariably more positive—usually much more so—on items
measuring such beliefs than the citizens of the other industrialized
democracies. They continue to believe in America and its superiority as
a social system. As of the mid-1990s, 75 percent of American adults
continue to say they are proud to be Americans. The corresponding
percentages for other countries are: Britain, 54 percent; West Ger-
many, 20 percent; and France, 35 percent.’! The degree of patriotism
is higher still for American youth. An astounding 98 percent of young
Americans have reported being proud of their nationality. The numbers
for youth in the United Kingdom are 58 percent, in Germany 65 per-
cent, and in France 80 percent.’”? When asked to react to the state-
ment, “I want to do something to serve my country,” 81 percent of
young Americans said yes, compared to 18 percent answering no. The
numbers for British youth were 46 percent yes and 42 percent no; for
West Germans, they were 29 percent yes to 40 no; while among
French youth, the replies were 55 percent yes and 34 no.”? In line with
these findings, Americans, prior to the recession of the early nineties,
also show up as among the most optimistic people in Gallup Polls
taken annually in thirty countries between 1976 and 1992 in response
to the question: “So far as you are concerned, do you think [next year]
 52 American Exceptionalism

will be better or worse than [last year]?”’* And while the proportion
voicing optimism declined during the recession of the early nineties, it
was still higher than in other nations.
The next chapter continues this discussion, focusing on the econ-
omy, religion, and welfare policies.
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare

The societal aspects of America’s exceptionalism refer mainly to the

unique class structure and religious system of the country. The first,
the emphasis on egalitarian social relations, the absence of a demand
that those lower in the social order give overt deference to their betters,
and the stress on meritocracy, on equal opportunity for all to rise eco-
nomically and socially, stemmed, as we have seen, from the twin facts
that America was formed as a new settler society and emphasized
equality in formulating its national identity. Tocqueville, who noted
these elements in the 1830s, was, of course, aware of enormous varia-
tions in income, power, and status, and of a strong emphasis on the
attainment of wealth.! But he emphasized that America, unlike
Europe, did not require its lower strata to acknowledge their inferiority,
to bow to their superiors.* In a discussion of social equality, Everett
Carll Ladd stresses that early America consciously eschewed the sym-
bols of aristocracy and social rank. The Constitution itself forbids the
granting of hereditary titles by the government, and in “an enormous
departure from 18th [century] style,” the Congress of 1789 decided
that George Washington and his successors would simply be called
“Mr. President.”
The emphasis on meritocracy was present early in the ideology of
the school system. As noted, the United States has led the world in the
proportion of young people attending different levels of education (ele-
mentary, high school, and college) from early in the history of the
republic. Martin Trow has emphasized that the “great, unique feature
of American higher education is surely its diversity. It is this diversity—
both resulting from and making possible the system’s phenomenal
growth—that has enabled our colleges and universities to appeal to so
many, to serve so many different functions.”* To this should be added
their competitiveness for faculty, students, and resources in ways that
do not exist elsewhere.’
Concern for an open and competitive society was reflected in the

53
 54 American Exceptionalism

emergence of the concept of the common school in the early nine-

teenth century. It must be noted, however, that the efficacy of the
American public school, which seeks to educate all young people in
the same system, is low compared to those countries that seek to edu-
cate only a portion of the whole in academically oriented institutions.
Cross-national achievement tests in mathematics and native language
skills show American schoolchildren lagging behind their peers in
Europe and East Asia. The reasons for this form of “exceptionalism”
are complex, linked among other things to the greater social hetero-
geneity of the American population and the extraordinarily high rates of
childhood poverty and single-parent families among minorities. Samuel
Huntington relates the notable contrast between achievement at the
level of higher education and inadequacy at the lower levels to the
absence of competition in what is “overwhelmingly a public monopoly
and ... inferior as a result” and to the contrasting “intense competi-
tion” among institutions in the former.®
The United States, almost from its start, has had an expanding eco-
nomic system. The nineteenth-century American economy, as com-
pared to the European ones, was characterized by more market free-
dom, more individual landownership, and a higher wage income
structure—all sustained by the national classical liberal ideology. From
the Revolution on, it was the laissez-faire country par excellence.
Unlike the situation in many European countries, in which economic
materialism was viewed by the traditional aristocracy and the church as
conducive to vulgar behavior and immorality, in the United States hard
work and economic ambition were perceived as the proper activity of a
moral person.
Writing in the 1850s, a visiting Swiss theologian, Philip Schaff,
commented that the “acquisition of riches is to them [the Americans]
only a help toward higher spiritual and moral ends.”’ Friedrich Engels
and Max Weber, among many, emphasized that the United States was
the only purely bourgeois country, the only one which was not postfeu-
dal.* As Weber noted, “no medieval antecedents or complicating insti-
tutional heritage [served] to mitigate the impact of the Protestant ethic
on American economic development.”’ Similar observations were made
in the 1920s by the gifted Italian communist theoretician Antonio
Gramsci.'° America was able to avoid the remnants of mercantilism,
statist regulations, church establishment, aristocracy, and the emphasis
on social class that the postfeudal countries inherited. All of these writ-
ers emphasized America’s unique origins and resultant value system as
a major source of its economic and political development. Its secular,
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 55

laissez-faire, liberal orientation was integrally related to various aspects

derived from its special religious tradition; the dominance of the
Protestant sects that Weber emphasized facilitated the rise of capital-
ism.!!
Although many other countries in Europe and East Asia have devel-
oped economically, America is still the world leader in per capita real
income and the creation of new jobs. In the early 1990s, in terms of
purchasing-power parities, the GDP per head for the United States
was U.S.$22,204, while Germany was second among the Group of
Seven major industrialized countries at U.S.$19,500. Canada and
Japan were close behind with per capita GDPs of U.S.$19,178 and
U.S.$19,107, respectively.!2 Reviewing the international evidence,
Sylvia Nasar notes that “the United States remains the richest and the
most productive economy in the world,” although the other industrial-
ized countries have been growing more rapidly. And according to econ-
omists Allen Heston and Robert Summers, “What lets Americans live
better ... than their Japanese [and German] rivals is productivity.
Contrary to the widespread view that the Japanese economy is vastly
more efficient, every comparison shows that output per employee is 40
percent greater in the United States.” Even if the comparisons are lim-
ited to the manufacturing sectors (since America is most efficient in
service industries and agriculture), they note that the country remains
clearly in the lead. “Japanese productivity is about 80 percent that of
America’s, while Germany's hovers at about 75 percent.”!? Economist
Edward N. Wolff has also compiled productivity data for the three
countries and comes to similar conclusions, as Table 2-1 demonstrates.
Stories of America’s post-1970 economic decline have clearly been
exaggerated. They are based on the slowdown in the rapid postwar
growth, which began with the 1973 oil shock, in tandem with major
structural changes. The shift to a postindustrial economy, as Daniel
Bell calls it, or postcapitalist, to use Peter Drucker’s term, emphasizes
the role of knowledge and high technology.'* Capital and machine or
muscle power have become less important. A major outcome of the
transformation has been a decline in factory production and in plant
jobs for the less skilled and less educated. Proportionately, there are
more of such people because of “1) reduced rate of growth in the sup-
ply of college graduates relative to less-educated workers . . . and 2) the
influx of less-educated immigrants.”!> Those who fall into these cate-
gories are in less demand and less well paid. But conversely there is an
increased need for the well-educated and the highly skilled. Hence
jobs for which such highly trained people qualify are more numerous
 56 American Exceptionalism

TABLE 2-1. PRODUCTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES, JAPAN, AND GERMANY

en
Se SS ee
$56.3
United $38.8 $39.9
States Japan Germany

Mining and oil and gas drilling $242.57 $54.7 $26.5

Utilities 204.3/ 182.3 132.8

Transportation and communication 76.74 40.1 44.4

Manufacturing (see breakdown below) 66.9S 52.2 36.2

Finance, insurance and real estate 45.2 57.8 59.2¢

Agriculture, forestry and fisheries 42.7S 9.1 Who

Wholesale-retail sales, hotels, and restaurants 41.27 24.0 26.4

Construction 38.7S 34.1 27.8

Areas in Manufacturing:

Petroleum and coal refining $396.2¢ $321.0 $360.2

Machinery, except electrical 113.5¢ 100.9 34.2
Chemicals, plastics and other synthetics 98.4 122.04 52.4
Cars, planes and other transportation equipment 76.7 90.5/7 36.2
Paper, printing and publishing 71.27 64.2 36.4
Steel, aluminum, copper and other metals 64.6 82.74 33.8
Scientific instruments 60.3% 38.7 31.8
Electric machinery and electronic equipment 59.8 67.47 34.4
Food, beverages, tobacco 59.2¢ 20.7 30.0

Stone, clay and glass products 57.97 44.6 39.0

Textiles 31.1v aa 22.6

/ = most efficient
Source: Edward N. Wolff, Professor of Economics, New York University. Productivity of each country
measured in thousands of dollars worth ofgoods each worker produced. Based on gross domestic prod-
uct and labor numbers from 1988, the most recent year available; calculations are shown in 1991 dol-
lars. Table printed in Sylvia Nasar, “Cars and VCR's Aren't Necessarily the First Domino,” The New
York Times, May 3, 1992, p. E6.

and well rewarded. These trends have produced greater income

inequalities among different levels of the employed.
In all transition periods, from agricultural to urban employment or
from artisan to factory jobs, many workers have been dislocated eco-
nomically, status-wise, and psychologically.'° The recent seemingly
successful effort to make the American economy leaner has also meant
meaner, since many older workers and executives who have been made
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 57

redundant have figuratively and actually been thrown on the scrap

heap. Awareness of this phenomenon has been extrapolated to the dis-
cussion of downward trends in the occupational structure. In fact, the
changes have produced more improvements in occupational status
than declines. And the United States, which has been more flexible
than other developed countries, including Germany and Japan, is com-
ing through the transition in healthier shape.
The story is clear. From 1973 to 1987, 30 million jobs were cre-
ated in the United States, while the Western European countries
experienced a small decline. Japan and Australia also gained jobs over
the period, but not nearly as fast.!” Although the size of the American
advantage fell during most of the 1970s, in part because of the incur-
sion into the labor force of many millions of new and inexperienced
young and women workers, in the 1980s, “U.S. economic perfor-
mance improved markedly compared to that of other countries. ...
During the . . . five years [1983-87] the U.S. and Japanese
economies grew at almost the same rate, with the United States lead-
ing in three of these years. In all five years U.S. growth exceeded that
of the European Community. The biggest economy has been getting
bigger, absolutely and relatively.”!® The decade saw “the creation of
hundreds of thousands of new businesses and 14 million new jobs,
far and away the best performance among the advanced countries.”!°
After the recession of the early 1990s, job growth continued.
Between the beginning of 1992 and late 1994, 5.5 million jobs were
added. In the first seven months of 1994, new hires totaled almost 2
million, with approximately 100,000 of those coming from manufac-
turing industries, again proportionately more than elsewhere.”?
Although some contend that the great majority of these new positions
are low-paying, this argument is challenged by Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics analysis.?! Bureau economists report that most of them are in
higher-paid occupations. Sylvia Nasar reports that in 1994, “72 per-
cent of the 2.5 million new jobs have been for managers, for profes-
sionals. . . And despite its reputation for low wages, the service sec-
tor is adding most of the higher wage jobs.”** And some economists
even read the statistics as demonstrating that “workers as a group are
fully sharing in the economic gains.””? Basically, according to them,
the increased productivity of the nineties is not only going to
investors, stockholders, or other owners, or to foreigners, but to
American workers as well.?* Reporting on various economic studies,
Robert Samuelson emphasizes that productivity gains have helped
produce higher living standards, involving
 58 American Exceptionalism

[MlJore health care: In 1970 there were 14,000 heart bypass operations; by
1991 there were 407,000. More schooling: Sixty-three percent of high
school graduates now go to college, up from half in 1980. Cleaner cars: In
1970 few cars had anti-pollution emissions controls; now all do. More gad-
gets and conveniences (VCRs, cable TV, home computers, car phones):
between 1970 and 1992, the number of homes with cable TV rose from 5
million to 57 million. Bigger homes: The median size of new homes went
from 1,385 square feet in 1970s to 1,905 square feet in 1990.”

The 1994 Statistical Abstract of the United States, produced by the

Census Bureau, also reports that Americans are living longer and
healthier lives in more enduring marriages. Infant mortality has
dropped to from 20 per 1,000 live births in 1970 to 8.9 in 1991. The
average life expectancy has increased from 70.8 years for newborns in
1970 to 75.5 in 1991.76
Although there are different roads to growth, the American empha-
sis on competitive individualism seems to have paid off. Corporate
America, faced with strong foreign competition, has responded by
becoming leaner and meaner, more efficient, much as in the past.
These changes, it must be noted, still leave the United States with a
very large trade deficit.
Other eventually successful industrial nations in Europe and East
Asia, which came out of feudal, monarchical-statist traditions, took
very different paths to economic development. State and economy
have been much more interactive in countries which never rejected
mercantilism, cartels, and guilds. As U.S. Labor Secretary Robert
Reich pointed out while still an academic: “|[G]overnment bureaucra-
cies charged with mobilizing resources and directing trade were firmly
established within Germany, France and Italy by the 1870s, and in
Japan by the 1890s. When markets became unruly, bureaucrats orga-
nized manufacturers into groups that coordinated their investments,
shared financial capital, jointly purchased raw materials, and jointly
marketed their goods and fixed prices.””” The closer links between
business and government in Europe and East Asia as compared to
America have been described as more functional for economic growth
in today’s globalized postindustrial economy than they were in the pri-
marily agrarian and manufacturing economies before World War II.
Some emphasize that the period of exceptional success is over, argu-
ing that as of the eighties and nineties, “American productivity is not -
growing as fast as it used to, and productivity in the United States is
not growing as fast as it is elsewhere, most notably in Japan.””8 The rea-
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 59

sons which have been advanced for these changes are manifold: the
proportionately many more white-collar and executive staff in America
than in Japan and Germany; the declining efficiency of the United
States’ educational system, particularly at the elementary and high
school level (a development which reflects in part the changing demo-
graphic composition of the students); a greater stress on individually
oriented scientific innovation (other than application among engi-
neers); and an emphasis on consumption rather than savings.
While there can be no doubt that the relative, and in some cases the
absolute, advantage of American business has declined since the oil
shocks of the 1970s, the evidence, as noted, indicates that the Ameri-
can economy has been engaged in the late eighties and early nineties in
the structural overhaul demanded by pessimistic critics, resulting in
the rebirth of America’s competitive standing. With the exception of
some consumer electronics sectors, “American industry now is equal to
or better than most of its trading competitors. Our manufacturing com-
panies dominate, not just in mundane fields such as chemicals, wood,
paper, and metals, but also in areas such as aerospace, communica-
tions, computers and semiconductors.” The American trade deficit
has been declining, from $152 billion in 1987 to $75.7 billion in 1993,
as the country’s share of manufactured exports in the world market has
been increasing.*° Almost unnoticed by the media, “hundreds of Amer-
ican companies took drastic measures in the eighties, from slashing
payrolls to dropping products on which the profit margin is low and
automating simple, formerly labor-intensive tasks.” A number of major
American firms have been outspending the Japanese “on research and
development as well as on plant and equipment and . . [are bringing]
new products to market faster than . . . [their] Asian counterparts.” As
a result of becoming leaner, which necessarily has meant sharply
reducing the workforce in the manufacturing sector, “we regained the
title of largest exporter.”*! Not surprisingly, in the fall of 1994, the
World Economic Forum, located in Switzerland, which is the major
analyst of comparative economic data, concluded that the United
States has surpassed its rivals and clearly has “the world’s most com-
petitive economy.”*?
With U.S. unit labor costs considerably below those of its trading
competitors, including Japan and especially Germany, America is well
positioned to penetrate new international markets and to fend off com-
petition in the coming years. As of mid-year 1994, The Economist
reports, “American businesses now view Japanese competitors with
growing confidence,” while Japanese firms have turned “to America for
 60 American Exceptionalism

lessons. They are looking at corporate downsizing, merit pay schemes,

discount retailing and other ideas that might be worth importing.”*?

SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS SECTARIANISM

a

The strong ideological and achievement orientations in the American

experience have been strengthened by its special religious character,
one which was discussed in Burke’s speech referred to earlier.** He
called the sectarian Americans the Protestants of Protestantism, the
Dissenters of Dissent, which predisposed them to moralism and indi-
vidualism.3> Max Weber identified sectarian beliefs as the most con-
ducive to the kind of rational, competitive, individualistic behavior
which encouraged entrepreneurial success.** He noted that John Wes-
ley, who founded the Methodists, the sect which became the largest
single denomination in the United States, far exceeding its success in
its birthplace, Britain, explicitly exhorted “all Christians to gain all they
can, and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich.”*’ The epit-
ome of bourgeois values was to be found not in the Catholic and
Protestant churches, but in the Protestant sects.
In his classic work on the subject, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism (1920), Weber noted that the Puritans brought the values
conducive to capitalism with them and, therefore, that “the spirit of
capitalism . . . was present before the capitalistic order.”** His principal
examples of a secularized capitalist spirit were drawn from the writings
of an American, Benjamin Franklin.3? Weber quoted extensively from
Franklin’s works as prototypical of the values that are most functional
for the emergence of an industrialized system. Although the impact of
these values on economic behavior has clearly changed over the cen-
turies, it is noteworthy that recent comparative studies of work behav-
ior indicate that Americans are more inclined to be workaholics than
other industrialized populations. In the mid-nineties, the workweek has
been going up in America, while it continues to fall in Europe and
Japan. According to The Economist, the “average full-time American
worker now toils for even more hours a year than his Japanese counter-
part.”*° Linda Bell and Richard Freeman report that the typical Ameri-
can works much longer than the average German, takes shorter vaca-
tions and, offered the option, Americans choose to work even longer
hours than Europeans, especially Germans.*!
The American religious ethic is not only functional for a bourgeois
economy but also, as Tocqueville noted, for a liberal polity. He pointed
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 61

out that “[pluritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but corre-
sponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and repub-
lican theories.”*? Since most of the Protestant sects are congregational,
not hierarchical, they have fostered egalitarian, individualistic, and
populist values which are anti-elitist. Hence, the political ethos and the
religious ethos have reinforced each other.*3
As noted above, widespread public education in America made pos-
sible extensive social mobility into elite occupations as well as the
impressive economic development that Weber sought to explain. The
origins of this “education ethic” can be traced back, in part, to the
strong religious beliefs of the Puritans, who regarded knowledge as a
key weapon against the temptation of sin:

It being one chiefe project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keepe men from
the knowledge of the scriptures, as in former times, keeping them in an
unknowne tongue, so in these latter times, by perswading them from the
use of tongues, so that at least, the true sence and meaning of the originall
might bee clouded with false glosses of saint seeming deceivers; and that
learning may not bee buried in the grave of our forefathers, in church and
commonwealth, the Lord assisting our indeavors. . . .“4

The emphasis on voluntary associations in America which so

impressed Tocqueville, Weber, Gramsci, and other foreign observers as
one of the distinctive American traits is linked to the uniquely Ameri-
can system of “voluntary religion.” The United States is the first coun-
try in which religious groups became voluntary associations. American
ministers and laymen consciously recognized that they had to foster a
variety of such groups both to maintain support for the church and to
fulfill community needs. Tocqueville concluded that voluntarism is a
large part of the answer to the puzzling strength of organized religion, a
phenomenon that impressed most nineteenth-century observers and
continues to show up at the end of the twentieth century in cross-
national opinion polls taken by Gallup and others. These polls indicate
Americans
are the most churchgoing in Protestantism and the most
fundamentalist in Christendom.** One comparative survey shows 94
percent of Americans expressing faith in God, as compared with 70
percent of Britons and 67 percent of West Germans.* In addition, 86
percent of Americans surveyed believe in heaven; 43 percent say they
attend church services weekly. The corresponding numbers for British
respondents are 54 percent accepting the existence of heaven and only
14 percent indicating they attend church weekly. For West Germans,
 62 American Exceptionalism

the numbers are also distinctly lower than for Americans, at 43 percent
and 21 percent, respectively.” A remarkable 69 percent of Americans
state they believe the Devil exists, as compared to one third of the
British, one fifth of the French, 18 percent of the West Germans, 12
percent of the Swedes, and 43 percent of the Canadians.** Compared
to Western Europe as a whole, Americans place a higher importance
on the role of religion in their lives. Close to four fifths of Americans
surveyed report that religion is very or quite important in their lives,
while only 45 percent of Europeans (Germans, French, Britons, Ital-
ians, Austrians, and Dutch) on average give similar answers.*? And it
should be noted that the historical evidence indicates that religious
affiliation and belief in America are much higher in the twentieth cen-
tury than in the nineteenth, and have not decreased in the post-World
War II era.*°
Such quantitative data indicate the continued validity of Toc-
queville’s statement: “There is no country in the world where the
Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than
in America.”*! In so doing, the United States contradicts a statistically
based generalization “that economic development goes hand in hand
with a decline in religious sentiment,” or the agreement among sociolo-
gists and Marxists that religion declines as a society modernizes.** As
Kenneth Wald, reiterating an earlier analysis by Walter Dean Burn-
ham, notes:

The United States, however, is a conspicuous exception to the generaliza-

tion. This country, with by far the highest score on the index of economic
development, was also the most “religious” of countries as shown by the
answers its citizens gave to the interviewers. The magnitude of American
“exceptionalism” can best be gauged by comparing the proportion of Ameri-
cans who actually assigned great importance to religious belief—51 per-
cent—with the proportion that should have done so on the basis of the pat-
tern in other countries—a mere 5 percent.

The differences between European and American political orienta-

tions may be related in part to variations in religious traditions and
church organizations. As emphasized earlier, European churches have
been state-financed and have called on their parishioners to support
the political system. They retain structures and values formed and
institutionalized in medieval agrarian societies. They are hierarchical
and have fostered the responsibility of the community for the welfare
of its members. Thus, as with the aristocracy and gentry, the European
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 63

churches, particularly the Roman Catholic, have disliked the logic of

bourgeois society. Additionally, popular support for and allegiance to
these institutions have declined, in part, because of their adherence to
unpopular secular values: “Outside the United States, the historic asso-
ciation of churches with non-democratic forces, especially the aristoc-
racy, meant that proponents of a newer, freer, more egalitarian and
democratic order often had good reason to consider religious institu-
tions—and by an understandable if invalid extrapolation, religious
belief—to be their enemies.”*4
The emphasis on Americanism as a political ideology has led to a
utopian orientation among American liberals and conservatives. Both
seek to extend the “good society.” But the religious traditions of Protes-
tant “dissent” have called on Americans to be moralistic, to follow their
conscience with an unequivocal emphasis not to be found in countries
whose predominant denominations have evolved from state churches.
The dissenters are “the original source both of the close intermingling
of religion and politics that [has] characterized subsequent American
history and of the moral passion that has powered the engines of politi-
cal change in America.” As Robert Bellah documented: “The millen-
nialism of the American Protestant tradition again and again spawned
movements for social change and social reform.”**
Americans are utopian moralists who press hard to institutionalize
virtue, to destroy evil people, and eliminate wicked institutions and
practices. A majority even tell pollsters that God is the moral guiding
force of American democracy. They tend to view social and political
dramas as morality plays, as battles between God and the Devil, so that
compromise is virtually unthinkable. To this day, Americans, in har-
mony with their sectarian roots, have a stronger sense of moral abso-
lutism than Europeans and even Canadians. Thus, when asked in the
1990 World Values Survey to choose between two statements inquir-
ing whether “There are absolutely clear guidelines about what is good
and evil. These apply to everyone, whatever the circumstances,” or,
“There can never be absolutely clear guidelines about what is good and
evil. What is good and evil depends entirely upon the circumstances of
our time,” most Europeans, Canadians, and Japanese even more so,
chose the second response, while Americans were more likely to
respond that there are “absolute guidelines.””” The percentages by
country are listed in Table 2-2.
A sense of moral absolutism is, of course, part of what some people
see as problematic about American foreign policy.” As Samuel Hunt-
ington has noted, Americans give to their nation and its creed “many of
 64 American Exceptionalism

TABLE 2-2. ATTITUDES TOWARD ABSOLUTE VS.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL MORALITY (PERCENT)

Absolute Neither Circumstantial

United States 50 5) 45

Britain 36 2 (on ite)

France 24 7 68

West Germany 26 11 64

Italy 42 6 52
Sweden 19 5 76

Canada 30.5 8 62

Source: Adapted from Ronald Inglehart, 1990 World Values Survey (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research, 1990).

the attributes and functions of a church. . . .”°? These are reflected, as

Bellah points out, in the American “civic religion,” which has provided
“a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including
the political sphere.” The United States is seen as the new Israel.
“Europe is Egypt; America the promised land. God has led his people
to establish a new sort of social order that shall be a light unto all
nations.”®° Everett Ladd adds: “To understand the American ideology,
we need to see individualism not as a dimension of individual character
but rather as a moral standard by which social institutions and prac-
tices are judged,”*!
The moralistic tendency generalizes beyond its sectarian origins. A
distinguished French Dominican student of American religion, R. L.
Bruckberger (who visited the United States in the 1950s and, deciding
to stay, wound up as a professor at Notre Dame), criticized his fellow
Catholics in The Image of America for having absorbed the American
Protestant view of religion and morality. He expressed concern that
American Catholics had become much more like American Baptists
and Presbyterians than European or Latin American Catholics.
According to him, his American co-religionists did not sound like
Catholics when they spoke out on moralistic issues.
The very emphasis in the Protestant sectarian tradition on the reli-
gious chosenness of the United States has meant that if the country is
perceived as slipping away “from the controlling obligations of the
covenant,” it is on the road to Hell.® The need to assuage a sense of -
personal responsibility for such failings has made Americans particu-
larly inclined to support movements for the elimination of evil by illegal
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 65

and even violent means if necessary. A key element in the conflicts

that culminated in the Civil War was the tendency of both sides to
view the other as essentially sinful, as an agent of the Devil. Linked to
Protestant sectarianism, conscientious objection to military service was
until recently largely an American phenomenon. The resisters to the
Vietnam War reenacted a two-century “Protestant” sense of personal
responsibility that led the intensely committed to follow their con-
sciences. In other Christian countries, denominations which have been
state churches have called for and legitimated obedience to state
authority. The American sectarians, however, have taken it as a matter
of course that individuals should obey their consciences, not the state.
Conscientious objection has existed in Britain, but there it stems from
the 20 percent of the population who are dissenters, and consequently
has been a less significant phenomenon.
An attempt to compare the extent of anti-war activity throughout
American history by Sol Tax of the University of Chicago concluded
that, as of 1968, the Vietnam War rated as our fourth “least popular”
conflict with a foreign enemy. Large numbers of Americans refused
to support the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, World
War I, and the Korean War.® Conversely, those who favor American
wars have seen them as moralistic crusades—to eliminate monarchical
rule (the War of 1812), to defeat the Catholic forces of superstition
(the Mexican War), to eliminate slavery (the Civil War), to end colo-
nialism in the Americas (the Spanish-American War), to make the
world safe for democracy (World War I), and to resist totalitarian
expansionism (World War II and Korea).
Moralism is not only expressed in anti-war activity. Support for war
is also moral, as too is patriotic behavior. Here again, America has been
different from most other countries. The United States has insisted on
the “unconditional surrender” of the enemy in various wars. The reason
for this demand has been, in large part, that America, as a principled
nation, must go to war for moral reasons. We set moral goals, such as
“to make the world safe for democracy,” as reasons to go to war. We
have always fought the “evil empire.” Ronald Reagan was as American
as apple pie when he spoke of the evil empire as the enemy. But, if we
fight the evil empire, if we fight Satan, then he must not be allowed to
survive.
America’s initial reaction to the expansion of communism was often
one that implied no compromise. After each major communist tri-
umph—Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam—the United
States went through a period of refusing to “recognize” the unbearable,
 66 American Exceptionalism

hopefully temporary, victory of evil. This behavior contrasts with that of

Anglican conservatives such as Churchill, or Catholic rightists like de
Gaulle and Franco, whose opposition to communism did not require
“non-recognition.” Franco’s Spain dealt with Castro soon after he took
power. Canada, under Conservative Party leadership, traded with
Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua, and opposed American policy in Cen-
tral America. Americans have been unique in their emphasis on non-
recognition of evil foreign regimes. The principle is related to the insis-
tence that wars must end with the unconditional surrender of the
Satanic enemy. Unlike church countries, the United States rarely sees
itself merely defending national interests. Foreign conflicts invariably
involve a battle of good versus evil. George Kennan, among others, has
written perceptively of the consequences of this “utopian” approach to
foreign affairs.°°
The United States does not ally itself with Satan. If circumstances
oblige it to cooperate with evil regimes, they are converted into agents
of virtue. Church countries can take the opposite tack. When the Ger-
mans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Churchill went on the radio to
welcome the Soviets as allies, and said that he was prepared to make a
treaty with Satan if necessary to defeat the Nazis. The United States,
however, converted Stalin into a benign, pipe-smoking “Uncle Joe.”
The Soviet Union was treated as a free, almost capitalist country.
Eddie Rickenbacker, a right-wing conservative, described the country
as operating on capitalist principles and presented Stalin in positive
terms. Americans feel the need to turn the bad guys on their side into
good guys.
This emphasis on moralism helps to explain American reactions to
the Vietnam War. That conflict was not fought as an ideological cru-
sade. For a curious reason, it was not defined by the government as a
war against evil and Satan. President Lyndon Johnson feared that
whipping up moralistic sentiment against the Communists in Vietnam
would result in a new wave of McCarthyism. Ironically, until 1967 he
feared an attack from forces on his right and deprecated the impor-
tance of the anti-war movement on his left. Johnson consciously
attempted to restrain anti-communist moralism. The Korean War had
produced McCarthyism, whose duration was co-terminous with the
war, 1950 to 1954. Johnson did not want a renewal of the phenome-
non. Hence, the struggle was not sold as an anti-communist crusade.
The anti-war movement, therefore, had q near monopoly on morality,
and ultimately was able to bring the president down and end the con-
flict.
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 67

The Gulf War of 1991 constitutes another example of the interac-

tion of American moralism and military conflict. President George
Bush followed the historic pattern of defining the enemy, Saddam
Hussein, as the incarnation of absolute evil, frequently describing him
as another Hitler. This stress should have resulted in an insistence on
unconditional surrender. But for various reasons, including presumably
recommendations from most area experts that the breakdown of Iraq’s
authority could lead to takeovers by, and conflict among, its neighbors
Syria, Turkey, and Iran, the United States ended the war with Hussein
still in power. One result of the failure to carry through was consider-
able postwar disillusionment among Americans over the outcome.
Bush, like Johnson, failed to appreciate the logic of American moral-
ism. And Clinton paid the price: lack of support for American moralis-
tic efforts in Somalia and Haiti.
Moralistic and movement politics have remained important in the
last decades of the twentieth century. Both conservatives and liberals
see their domestic opponents as advocates of immoral policies. The
issue which most arouses passions is abortion, which the left defines as
women’s right to control their bodies and personal future, and the right
sees as the right of the fetus, perceived as an individual, to be born, to
live. Abortion is legal in many Catholic countries in Europe, where the
fact that the Church opposes it does not lead parishioners to take the
kind of extreme actions their American co-religionists engage in, who,
as Father Bruckberger notes, have assimilated to Protestant moralistic
styles.

PHILANTHROPY
[aa]

Some of the same factors which have affected or been influenced by

religion appear linked to the fact that the “expansion of philanthropy
... has gone further . . . in the United States, than in any other part of
the world.”®’ The greater commitment to philanthropic activities in the
United States has been related historically to the rejection of a power-
ful central state and of a church establishment. As an English visitor to
the United States in the 1830s put it: “The separation of Church and
State, and other causes, have given rise to a new species of social orga-
nization, before unknown in history. . . .”°2 Many communal functions
which had been handled in Europe by the state or by state-financed
churches were dealt with in nineteenth-century America by voluntary
associations. The lack of commitment by the state to supporting com-
 68 American Exceptionalism

munal institutions on the scale fostered by monarchical and aristo-

cratic noblesse oblige in Europe has meant that certain institutions have
been weaker here. This is most evident in the area of high culture,
where opera companies, symphonies, and museums have received
much less government backing and, as a result, are in worse financial
shape. Conversely, however, a variety of other private institutions, such
as colleges and universities and hospitals, have been widely diffused in
this country and are supported by the most extensive pattern of volun-
tary contributions in the world.”
The considerable sums, as well as time, that are contributed to phil-
anthropic works, reaching heights undreamt of elsewhere, are also a
consequence of the interrelationship betweeen voluntary religion and
secular achievements. The emphasis on voluntarism in both areas, reli-
gious and secular, has clearly been mutually reinforcing. People have
been expected to be righteous, hardworking, and ambitious. Righteous-
ness is to be rewarded both in the present and the hereafter, and the
successful have an obligation to engage in good works and to share the
bounty they have attained. A detailed study by Merle Curti of the his-
tory of American giving for overseas purposes stresses the role that “the
doctrine of stewardship” played, the belief “that whatever of worldly
means one has belongs to God, that the holder is only God’s steward
and obligated to give to the poor, the distressed, and the needy. From
many diaries, letters and other evidence it is clear that this factor was a
dominant one in a great deal of giving.””°
Scholarly students of the history of philanthropy in the United
States emphasize that the underlying support for private philanthropy
has been sustained by American “individualistic philosophy and suspi-
cion of government control.””! Some indication of the strength of these
values may be seen in the rejection by the American Red Cross, in
1931, of a proposed federal appropriation of $25 million for the relief
of drought victims. The chairman of the Red Cross central committee
told Congress, “All we pray for is that you let us alone and let us do the
job.”” In spite of the growth of the welfare and planning state since the
1930s, these values are not dead, even on the left of American life. In
1971, the National Taxpayers Union, a group whose board included
three major New Left figures, Noam Chomsky, Marc Raskin (head of
the radical think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies), and Karl Hess
(former editor of the left-wing magazine Ramparts), together with a
number of conservative free enterprise thinkers, advocated sharp cuts
in the welfare responsibilities of government. To deal with the problem
of “needy recipients such as welfare people,” the group proposed “a sys-
tem of tax credits for any individual or group that provides private sup-
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 69

port for welfare recipients.” It would allow contributions to be

deducted as an outright cut from taxes, rather than, as now, from gross
income.” The fact that such a proposal could have been made in the
1970s by an organization whose leaders included some of the leading
left-wing radicals in America attests to the continued vitality of the
American individualist emphasis.
The Protestant ethic and the liberal emphasis on individualism and
achievement combined in America, as noted earlier, to provide the val-
ues that appear most conducive for a democratic polity resting on inde-
pendent secondary powers separate from the central state and, prior to
the emergence of East Asian economic giants in Confucian-based soci-
eties, for economic development. The two sets of factors also helped
foster the emergence of an elite which took its communal responsibili-
ties seriously. As early as 1807, members of the Boston elite, in found-
ing the Boston Athenaeum, stated in the founding document that, in
their city, “the class of persons enjoying easy circumstances, and pos-
sessing surplus wealth, is comparatively numerous. As we are not
called upon for large contributions to national purposes, we shall do
well to take advantage of the exception, by taxing ourselves for those
institutions, which will be attended with lasting and extensive benefit,
amidst all changes of our public fortunes and political affairs.””4
Martin Green, who has called attention to this remarkable state-
ment, notes that “Boston merchants, and to some extent the bankers
and industrialists who succeeded them, had the idea that commerce
should go hand in hand with philanthropy, and even culture, and
should give way to them as soon as the individual had secured himself
an adequate sum.” In the nineteenth century, the Boston elite
demonstrated the vitality of this sense of responsibility by their support
for libraries, the symphony, the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the
Lowell Institute, Harvard University, and the beginnings of that com-
plex of hospitals which remains at the pinnacle of medical care in
America today. The altruistic sentiments voiced by the founders of the
Athenaeum were, of course, not the only reasons motivating major con-
tributions by the wealthy. In a fund-raising letter for Harvard in 1886,
Henry Lee Higginson, a leading Boston Brahmin, stated, “educate, and
save ourselves and our families and our money from mobs.””® James
Buchanan Duke, the founder of the Duke Endowment, explained his
concern for the expansion of health facilities in a newspaper interview
in the 1920s, saying, “People ought to be healthy. If they ain’t healthy
they can’t work, and if they don’t work they ain't healthy. And if they
can’t work there ain't no profit in them.””’
But though the philanthropy of the American Protestant wealthy
 70 American Exceptionalism

had clear elements of self-interest, it is also true that they exhibited

levels of generosity that were unmatched by the rich in other nations.
John D. Rockefeller, who gave away more in his lifetime than any other
individual, was frequently attacked, and with good reason, for making
his contributions for public relations and political purposes, for seeking
to clean the image of “tainted money.” Yet it must also be noted that,
from his days as a teenager on, he would give away a tenth of his earn-
ings to charity. He was a devout Baptist who, in the words of one stu-
dent of philanthropy, “apparently felt there was some divine coopera-
tion in the construction of Standard Oil Company.”

“God gave me my money,” he told an interviewer in 1915. After financing

establishment of the University of Chicago; Rockefeller told a campus
meeting: “The good Lord gave me the money, and how could I withhold it
from Chicago?” In his later years, Rockefeller mused, his wealth was an
“accident of history,” possible only because of the peculiar circumstances
of oil and the nineteenth century, and that he was only its trustee.”

The continued linkage of voluntary religion to charitable giving on a

mass level may be seen in the fact that 60 percent of all individual
American giving went to religious institutions in 1991.” Of household
contributions to one or more organizations, 51 percent gave to religious
charities, while health (33%), human services (28%), youth develop-
ment (22%), and education (21%) followed far behind on the list.%°
One study found that “the ratio of gifts to religious organizations to dis-
cretionary receipts was remarkably constant over all the income
levels,”®!
The Great Depression of the 1930s, of course, brought about a fun-
damental change in the role of philanthropy. The state increasingly
took over responsibility for welfare functions, for hospitals, for higher
education, and many other activities. Private contributions have con-
tinued to increase in absolute size, particularly since World War II, but
they have become a smaller proportion of the whole, particularly in
non-religious spheres. The sources of private philanthropy have also
changed, to some extent. Corporate gifts have come to be recognized
as excellent forms of public relations. While most of the contributions
of small donors go to religious-related causes, “[e]ducation, mainly col-
leges and universities, is getting the largest share of corporation giving,
followed closely by health and welfare agencies.”** One student of phil-
anthropy, Aileen Ross, contends that \ ;

the rise in the contributions of corporations has enabled them to take over
the control of raising and allotting money to many philanthropic agencies.
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 71

Management can determine the amount that will be given, and since the
same men are often found on the boards of a number of the larger corpora-
tions, they have come to form an “inner circle” which can control both the
gifts that are given and the selection of the top executives in the philan-
thropic agencies and in the more important and prestigious fund-raising
campaigns, such as those for hospitals and universities.®?

It is still true, however, that 90 percent of all giving continues to

come from individuals. Seventy-two percent of American households
gave charitable contributions in 1991, donating an average of $899 per
household.™ Total giving in that year stood at $122.6 billion—an
amount which, in real dollars, was three times greater than the 1955
total. The historic cultural sources of support for philanthropy and vol-
untary associational activity in America still have vitality. Americans
view charitable giving as a responsibility to the need in their commu-
nity and to local social institutions. Accordingly, “[m]ore than 96 cents
of every dollar given, whether by foundations, corporations or factory
workers, stays in the community it came from. .. .”* Hospitals, how-
ever, find religious-linked contributions are less important than in ear-
lier eras, as relatively few medical institutions are seen to serve denom-
inational purposes. But even though the American state now provides
more fully for many activities once almost totally dependent on private
support, its population, as the most anti-statist people in the developed
world, continues to be the most generous on a personal basis.

THE WELFARE STATE

Ls)

Given this emphasis on the generosity of Americans, it is worth reiter-

ating in David Popenoe’s words that “the United States lags well
behind most other advanced societies in the creation of welfare state
programs. ... [I]t is the only major industrialized nation, for example,
that has no general allowance program for families with children and
lacks a national insurance plan covering ... medical expenses.”** In
fact, the United States has lagged behind the industrialized nations of
Europe where many social programs are concerned. Robert T. Kudrle
and Theodore R. Marmor compared the United States to five Euro-
pean countries (Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Italy)
and found that it was consistently late in the introduction of social pro-
grams. Industrial accident insurance was introduced in Europe during
the late 1880s, but was not established in the United States until
1930. Pension and unemployment insurance, both instituted in 1935
 72 American Exceptionalism

1905,
in the United States, were introduced as early as 1889 and
respectively, in the European countries, and were generally in place by
the end of the 1910s. To date, the United States lacks three of the six
programs that the authors compare.*”
Further detailed documentation of the lesser provisions in the
United States, as compared to other developed nations, for dependent
populations, particularly children and the elderly, may be found in a
comprehensive work on The Vulnerable.* In discussing “various expla-
nations . . . for this American exceptionalism,” including economic and
political structural factors, Stephanie Gould and John Palmer conclude
that only two, “heterogeneity of population and distinctiveness of pub-
lic philosophy—seem to have explanatory power.” The first, they con-
tend, makes for greater variations among subgroups in earning capaci-
ties and hence more income inequality. The second refers to “the
peculiarities of the American outlook on public affairs, our extreme
emphasis on individualism, our mistrust of central authority, our strong
preference for public policies that promote equality of opportunity over
those that promote equality of outcome.”*®? These conclusions are rein-
forced by a variety of comparative opinion data. The World Values Sur-
veys conducted in 1980 and 1990 found that when asked to choose
between the importance of “equality of income or the freedom to live
and develop without hindrance,” Americans are more disposed to the
latter, by 71 percent compared to an average of 59 percent in Europe
in 1990.% Similarly, in line with their lesser support for equal eco-
nomic treatment, when polled, Americans, as distinct from Europeans,
show greater respect or concern for private industry and the well-to-do
as opposed to the poor.
The American commitment to equality of opportunity implies that
achievement should reflect ability, justifies higher differentials in
reward and rejects taxing the successful to upgrade the less advantaged.
Europeans reared in postfeudal societies which assumed hereditary dis-
advantage and noblesse oblige find the idea that those with higher
incomes should pay larger proportions of taxes much more acceptable
than do Americans. As of the early nineties, overwhelming majorities,
87 percent of West Germans and 86 percent of Italians believe in levy-
ing higher taxes on the rich to produce greater income equality, as com-
pared to a smaller majority, only 74 percent, of Americans.?! A more
striking pattern is reflected by replies to another question indicating
that a policy that reduces income discrepancies is supported by 38 per-
cent of Americans, while favorable opinion to such action ranges from
65 percent (Great Britain) to 80 percent (Italy) in European nations.”
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 73

Austria is in the middle at 70 percent. Proportionately fewer Americans

(56%) agree that “income differences are too large,” as compared with
Europeans (66-86%). A review of American public opinion data over
fifty years reports: “Surveys since the 1930s have shown that the explicit
idea of income redistributing elicits very limited enthusiasm among the
American public. . . . Redistributive fervor was not much apparent even
in [the] depression era. Most Americans are content with the distribu-
tional effects of private markets.”** Citizens of the United States have a
greater tendency than others to justify income differences as judged by
cross-national reactions to the statement that “[L]arge income differ-
ences are needed for the country’s prosperity.”
The United States is an outlier (exceptional) in practice as well as
belief. Its taxes amount to a much lower proportion of GDP compared
to European Community countries and Japan. While America col-
lected 31 percent of its GDP in tax revenues in 1991, other countries
such as Sweden (52%), Holland (48%), Belgium (40%), France (40%),
and the United Kingdom (36%) were taxed at higher levels.*° And eco-
nomic inequality as measured by the ratio of income of the richest 20
percent of households to the poorest 20 percent is greater in America
(11 times) than in all the other developed OECD countries, with Japan
at the other extreme with a ratio of 4. Other more egalitarian countries
are Sweden, Belgium, and Holland, with ratios of 4.5 to 5.5. Britain,
Canada, France, and Italy fall in between, at 6 and 7.” A 1995 New
York Times review of research in this area reiterated that wealth is more
concentrated in the United States than in other industrial democra-
cies. Measuring concentration of wealth on a rising scale of zero to
one, the U.S., at 0.34, outranks Italy (0.31); Canada (0.29), Germany
(0.25), France (0.25), and Finland (0.21). The top-earning 20 percent
of Americans control 80 percent of the national wealth, while the low-
est-earning 20 percent earn only 5 percent of all income. It cites the
findings of economics professor Edward N. Wolff that “We are the
most unequal industrialized country in terms of wealth.”
Poverty estimates from the Luxembourg Income Studies, which use
the economic distance approach, measuring poverty as “a fraction of
the median equivalent disposable income,” also find the United States
has the highest rate, twice the average for all developed countries. Aus-
tralia and Canada follow at one and a half times the average, and Ire-
land, Italy, and Britain, too, remain slightly above the average. France,
Germany, and Sweden rank slightly below the average, and Austria,
Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands have the lowest poverty
rates.°? And Timothy Smeeding, the director of the Project, also notes
 74 American Exceptionalism

that in spite of this, the United States does less “in terms of tax and
transfer policy’ to reduce income differences.'” The gap between the
United States and the rest of the industrialized world in poverty rates
grew during the 1980s and early 1990s. Basically, the other countries
“have well-established government safety nets which more effectively
moderated changes in pre-government poverty in the 1990s, muting
market driven changes in poverty by substantially more than did the
U.S,"101

Opposition to redistributive policies may be linked to the greater

commitment of Americans to merit pay for the most able, to unequal
reward, and, of course, to laissez-faire. Compared with the citizens of
four European nations (Italy, Great Britain, West Germany, and Aus-
tria), those of the United States are more opposed to government
involvement in wage and price controls, in job creation, in reduction of
the workweek, as well as in such non-economic forms of regulation as
restrictions on smoking in public places and the requirement to wear
seat belts (see Table 2-3 below).
Americans are also less likely than Europeans to believe that it
should be the government's responsibility to provide a job for everyone
who wants one, to provide a decent standard of living for the unem-
ployed, and to guarantee a basic income. Table 2-4 illustrates these
discrepancies, controlling by income level.
Cross-national polls continue to reveal that Americans are less favor-
able toward an active role for government in the economy and to large
welfare programs than the citizens of Canada and European countries.
Private ownership of industry is more prevalent and viewed more favor-
ably in the United States.!°? Everett Carll Ladd, who has reviewed
“thousands of the relevant survey measures” from the United States
and many other industrialized democracies, reports: “These data show
the American ideology manifest in the choices of the general public of
today much as the historic literature, drawing on other sources, por-
trayed it,” while “recent comparative data show that ‘American values’
remain distinct.” He sums up his findings in definitive terms:

[T]he survey data show that individualism is more intense, pervasive, and
uncontradicted here than in other industrial democracies. As a result, sup-
port for a private-property-based economy remains strong. Americans
declare themselves prepared to countenance very substantial economic
inequalities, while insisting on the importance of the ideal of equal oppor-
tunity. Government has grown enormously’ over the past 60 years as the
public has turned to it for guarantees and services, but support for limits on
government are still stronger in the U.S. than in most other industrial
 Economy, Religion, and Welfare 75

democracies. American policy on social welfare reflects national insistence

on a large measure of individual, rather than governmental, responsibility.
Americans value individual effort and achievement.!%

CONCLUSION
aa

The United States continues to be exceptional among developed

nations in the low level of support it provides for the poor through wel-
fare, housing, and medical care policies. As a result, though the

TABLE 2-3. ATTITUDES TOWARD VARIOUS FORMS OF

GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY (percent)

AGREE United West Great

GOVERNMENT SHOULD... States Germany Britain Austria Italy

control wages by legislation! 23 28 32 58 72

reduce workweek to create more jobs? 27 5] 49 36 63
control prices? 19 20 48 — 67
provide health care* 40 57 85 — 88
finance job creation projects° 70 73 83 — 84
spend more on old age pensions® 47 53 81 — 80
reduce differences in income
between those with high and low income’ 38 66 65 70 80

AGREE/STRONGLY
AGREE THAT...

wearing seat belts should be required by law® 49 82 80 81 81

smoking in public places should
be prohibited by law’ 46 49 51 58 89

MInternational Social Survey Program of Government Survey, 1985-86. Cited in Clive Bean, “Are
Australian Attitudes to Government Different? A Comparison with Five Other Nations,” in Fran-
cis G. Castles, ed., Australia Compared: People, Policies and Politics (Sydney, Australia: Allen &
Unwin, 1991),p. 84.
*Ibid.
31990 ISSP data from Roger Jowell, et al., International Social Attitudes: The 10th BSA Report
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 85.
‘Ibid.
*International Social Survey Program, 1990.
*Tbid.
Ibid., 1992.
8Karlyn H. Keene and Everett Carll Ladd, “America: A Unique Outlook?” The American Enter-
prise, 1 (March-April 1990), pp. 113~115.
‘Ibid.
 76 American Exceptionalism

TABLE 2-4. GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY IN

DIFFERENT AREAS (PERCENT)
a a ee ee eS Se a a

AGREE AGREE
AGREE STRONGLY/AGREE THE STRONGLY/AGREE THE
STRONGLY/AGREE THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD GOVERNMENT SHOULD
GOVERNMENT SHOULD PROVIDE A DECENT PROVIDE EVERYONE
PROVIDE AJOB FOR ~ STANDARD OF LIVING WITH A GUARANTEED
EVERYONE FOR THE UNEMPLOYED BASIC INCOME
ke RY ye ROOD SiO Iee_ VOMENY Se Rae ee ee
High Low High Low High Low
Income Income Income Income Income Income
SCTE ET SE LT EE ETT DEE LC ELLIE LLL ELL TIE,
Rt A EN SE

United States 32 61 23 Be 12 33

Great Britain 44 73 aii 74 47 71

West Germany 77 84 61 72 45 66
Netherlands 60 82 57 68 39 58
Italy 70 93 55 76 53 80

Source: Adapted from Karlyn H. Keene and Everett Carll Ladd, “America: A Unique Outlook?” The
American Enterprise, 1 (March-April 1990), p. 118.

wealthiest country, it has the highest proportion of people living in

poverty among developed nations, according to the detailed statistical
analyses of the Luxembourg Income Study data, the most comprehen-
sive available. The United States also ranks last among ten countries
(six in Europe, plus Australia, Canada, and Israel) as the most unequal
in comparisons of income distribution.’ At the same time, given the
fact that educational attainment, as reflected in the proportions of the
relevant age groups involved in college and postgraduate study, is more
equitably distributed in the United States than elsewhere, upward
mobility into privileged occupations is also more common here. Thus
America has more equality of opportunity into the elites and less equal-
ity of result than the rest of the developed world. And it may be argued
that the two patterns are related. Given the strength of the aspiration
to rise, it is not surprising that Americans are more disposed to approve
of high salaries and “bonuses” for “stars” in entertainment, athletics,
and the market in general—that is, for achievers at every level. Com-
parative survey research indicates that Americans are more approving
of sizeable income differences than Europeans and Japanese.!”
The next chapter continues the focus on the weakness of statism or
the strength of laissez-faire in America by addressing the question “why
no socialism?” which has engrossed enalysts of American exceptional-
ism for over a century.
Socialism and Unionism in the United
States and Canada!

The United States has stood out among the industrial nations of the
world in frustrating all efforts to create a mass socialist or labor party.
This fact has occasioned a considerable literature seeking to explain
this aspect of American exceptionalism, a term frequently used in
debates on the matter in the Communist International in the 1920s.
In fact, for many the concept has referred primarily to the absence of
strong socialist or class-conscious movements. In 1993, a new book
dealing with unionism and class formation in the nineteenth century
was titled The Making of American Exceptionalism.? Much earlier than
these controversies, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels grappled with the
“exceptional” aspects of American society. In so doing, they presented
a picture of America as a unique society, not very different from the
analyses of Tocqueville and Weber.‘
The weakness of socialism in the United States has been a major
embarrassment throughout the twentieth century to Marxist theory,
which assumes that the cultural superstructure, including political
behavior, is a function of the economic and technological structures.
The class relationships inherent in capitalism as a social system should
have inevitably eventuated in a working class that would come to politi-
cal consciousness and organize in a revolutionary socialist party. Logi-
cally, it followed that the most developed society should have the most
advanced set of class and political relationships.* Since the United
States has been the most advanced industrial economy for well over a
century, its political system, regarded as part of its superstructure,
should be more appropriate to a technologically advanced society than
the systems of less developed societies elsewhere. Until the Russian
Revolution, various major Marxist theorists anticipated that, following
the logic of historical materialism, the United States would be the first
country in which socialists would come to power.° They linked social-
ism and modernism.
Ironically, much of the efforts by Marxists and socialists to account

‘as
 78 American Exceptionalism

for the failure of the prediction stressed that from sociological and
political points of view, the United States was too progressive, too egal-
itarian, too open, and too democratic to generate massive radical or rev-
olutionary movements on a scale comparable to those of Europe.’
These writings tell us much about what these people, in particular the
founders of communist theory, such as Lenin and Gramsci, have seen
as the sources of strength and weakness, of stability and tension in the
United States. A wise sociologist, W. I. Thomas, once said, “If men
define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
Any effort to deal with Werner Sombart’s question of “Why is there
no socialism in the United States?” inherently must be comparative.’
The myriad of writings on the subject has, therefore, contributed much
to our understanding of what is exceptional about this country, as com-
pared to the rest of the industrialized world, primarily Western Europe.
In recent years, interested scholars have taken note of the fact that our
northern neighbor, Canada, has had much stronger socialist and trade
union movements than the United States. Since Canada has been
more similar to its southern neighbor than Europe, expanding the
question to why Canada differs can add much to the comparative
framework. The second section of this chapter, therefore, deals with
Canadian-American differences, stressing particularly the greater
strength of the Canadian labor movement.

MARX AND ENGELS

as)

The observations of Marx and Engels provide an illuminating starting

point for an examination of the failure of the American socialist move-
ment. These two radical thinkers constantly looked for signs of class-
consciousness in the United States. Marx himself was initially confi-
dent that workers everywhere would form class parties because of the
emergence of the American Workingmen’s parties, which secured siz-
able numbers of votes in several eastern cities in the late 1820s and
early 1830s.'° Although the Workingmen’s Party disappeared in the
1830s, Marx and Engels were to emphasize that Americans “have had,
since 1829, their own social democratic school.”!! As noted, many
leading Marxists believed that the working class of the most industrial-
ized country would inevitably develop class-conscious politics and lead
the world on the road to socialism.
‘t
s)
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 79

AMERICA AS A NEw SOciETY

In analyzing the prospects for socialism in America, Marx and Engels
did not limit themselves to economic factors. Like many contemporary
analysts, they considered the various unique sociological aspects of the
United States, as compared to Europe. Namely, as emphasized in
chapter One, America was a new nation and society, which lacked
many of the institutions and traditions of previously feudal systems and
as a result was the most “modern” and purely bourgeois culture. It was
also the most democratic country.
The absence of a feudal past and consequent lack of a rigid status
system in the United States in contrast to most of Europe was seen by
the Marxist fathers, particularly Friedrich Engels, as a source of the
political backwardness of the American working class. Thus, he wrote
in 1890 that Americans “are born conservatives just because America
is so purely bourgeois, so entirely without a feudal past and therefore
proud of its purely bourgeois organization.”!* And he noted in 1892: “It
is ... quite natural, that in such a young country, which has never
known feudalism and has grown up on a bourgeois basis from the first,
bourgeois prejudices should also be so strongly rooted in the working
class.”!3 Not surprisingly, Marx and Engels, in explaining the failures of
the workers’ movement also pointed to other stratification variables,
derived from the country’s higher rates of productivity and social mobil-
ity. Among “the special American conditions” inhibiting the emergence
of a workers’ movement stressed by Engels in 1851 and repeated dur-
ing the next four decades was “the necessarily rapid and rapidly grow-
ing prosperity of the country, which makes bourgeois conditions look
like a beau idéal to them... .”"4

SECTARIANISM
There were, of course, many other factors suggested by the Marxist
fathers as inhibiting the growth of socialism in the United States.” It is
noteworthy, for example, that they were concerned about the propen-
sity of American radicals for political sectarianism, for treating Marx-
ism or other radical doctrines as absolute dogmas to be applied in all
situations. Engels referred to “that sectarian land America,” where
purists could always count on support.'® Marx “confessed to a certain
suspicion of ‘Yankee socialists’ as ‘crotchety and sectarian.’ ""”
Why were the American socialists so sectarian? The sources of polit-
ical dogmatism were linked in Marx’s and Engels’s minds to America’s
 80 American Exceptionalism

religiosity and Protestant sectarianism.'* Marx was particularly

impressed with the role of religion in American life. Following Toc-
queville, he saw its vitality as a consequence of secular political institu-
tions, the absence of an established church, and “endless fragmenta-
tion.” “North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as
Beaumont, Tocqueville and the Englishman Hamilton unanimously
assure us. ... We find that religion not only exists, but displays a fresh
and vigorous vitality. "!”
In a society which has disestablished religion, “banishing it from the
sphere of public law to that of private law,” religion becomes

the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism, of bellum omnium contra
omnes [war of each against all]. It is no longer the essence of community,
but the essence of difference. ... It is ... the abstract avowal of specific
perversity, private whimsy, and arbitrariness. The endless fragmentation of
religion in North America, for example, gives it even externally the form of
a purely individual affair.”°

As a result, religious and political sectarianism are also certain to

abound. And the most successful American radical movement, the
pre-World War I Socialist Party, was more doctrinaire than others
operating in democratic countries. It rejected opportunities to coalesce
with trade unions in a labor party or to work with social democratic
forces in the major parties, insisting on the virtue of a distinct, ideologi-
cally pure, socialist party.’

STRATIFICATION FACTORS
Marx and Engels cited among the “very great and peculiar difficulties
for a continuous development of a workers’ party” in the United States,
the relative affluence of the country. Contrasting the situation in the
two great English-speaking nations, Engels noted, “The native Ameri-
can Workingman’s standard of living is considerably higher than even
that of the British, and that alone suffices to place him in the rear
[politically] for some time to come.”** He also emphasized that in
America, prosperity actually reached the workers, not merely the cof-
fers of the bourgeoisie as in Russia (a class which was also experienc-
ing growth in both countries).?? The historian Harvey Klehr notes that
in Marx’s discussion of the United States economy in Das Kapital, he
“suggests that American wages might always remain higher and satisfy
more needs than those paid in Europe.””*
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 81

Economic and population growth and an open land frontier pro-

duced high rates of social mobility, a factor also stressed by Marx in the
early 1850s. He noted that “though classes, indeed, already exist, they
have not yet become fixed, but continually change and interchange
their elements in a constant state of flux.”?° Similarly, Engels, writing
in the mid-1880s, reported that the ideal of America is a nation “with-
out a permanent and hereditary proletariat.”** As the post-World War
II socialist theoretician Michael Harrington notes, Marx wrote that the
belief of most Americans that their system assured them the opportu-
nity to rise fostered the conviction that they lived in an equalitarian
society. And Harrington, a-close student of Marx’s writings, concludes
that he felt America therefore resembled a socialist society in value and
status relations terms.?”? The argument that the socialist appeal was
weak because the social content of Americanism resembled what
European leftists thought socialism would provide was destined to
reappear again and again through the twentieth century in the writing
of socialists like Leon Samson, Sidney Hook, and Harrington.”®

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
een

More contemporary sociological efforts to account for the political dif-

ferences between the United States and Europe have necessarily
focused on variations stressed by Tocqueville and Marx, the social class
systems as reflected in lesser status differentials, and belief in greater
opportunity to get ahead.

ACHIEVEMENT AND MERITOCRACY

Americans have never accepted the idea of rigid hereditary classes,

except for the black minority, and even not for it in recent decades.
Hard work, ambition, education, and ability have been regarded as
more impertant for succeeding in life than social background. Recent
opinion poll results indicate that almost three quarters of Americans
believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living,
while only two fifths of Europeans display this level of optimism.”
Americans are more disposed than Europeans to think they live in a
meritocracy. They are more likely to feel that ambition is important for
getting ahead in life and are less disposed to believe that “What you
achieve depends largely on your family background.” When asked in
1990 whether hard work or “luck and connections” are more likely to
 82 American Exceptionalism

produce a better life and success, 44 percent of Americans pointed to

the former as opposed to 24 percent of U.K. residents, 22 percent of
the French, 29 percent of the Germans, and 20.5 percent of the
Swedes.*° A slightly different statement posed by the National Opinion
Research Center (NORC) in 1993, “Some people say that people get
ahead by their own hard work; others say that lucky breaks or help
from other people are more important,” found that 65 percent of all
Americans polled replied that “hard work” was most important, 21 per-
cent said both were important, and only 12 percent mentioned luck.
This emphasis on achievement, equality of opportunity, and meri-
tocracy goes far back in the history of the country, underlying the sup-
port for the common school. Horace Mann, one of the most prominent
of the pre-Civil War educational reformers, and his colleagues, wrote
that they did not want European-type secondary-level Gymnasia, lycées,
grammar, and English public (private) schools which educated the
children of the upper 10 percent with a pre-university curriculum,
while the rest went to vocational school or received little education.
They noted that the European systems assumed that those who did not
attend the elite high schools would become workers or peasants. The
American educators advocated that everyone (except blacks) go to good
public high schools, which would be common, that is, class integrated.
The strength of the early commitment to equality of opportunity
may be seen in a proposal by the New York section of the Working-
man’s Party, which was at its height in 1828-32, that the common
(class-integrated) school was not enough, would not produce equal
opportunity, because the children of the poor had to go home to slum
environments and to families who did not appreciate the need for edu-
cation. To foster what we now call meritocracy, they proposed that all
children from the age of six be required to attend state-supported
boarding schools, with a uniform twenty-four hour environment.?! This
was akin to ancient suggestions by Plato and then contemporary ones
by Robert Owen in England. Ironically, Newt Gingrich, speaking for
congressional Republicans, has revived this idea in 1995, although only
for the very poor and culturally isolated.
The continued greater American commitment to meritocracy more
than a century and a half later is reflected in the findings that citizens
in the United States have been more disposed than Europeans to favor
greater expenditures for education. Reviewing polling data over a fifty-
year span, Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro comment that “educa-
tion has long been an area in which most Americans want government —
to spend more money.”? Although, as noted in chapter One, a much
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 83

higher proportion of Americans than Europeans receive higher educa-

tion, many more Americans (44%) than those across the Atlantic
believe opportunities for young people to go to college should be
increased still further (compared with 29% in the U.K., 8.5% in Italy,
9.8% in West Germany, and 5.5% in Austria).33
The American Creed has continued its emphasis on equality of
opportunity, on meritocracy. It assumes that everyone should try to get
ahead and have the opportunity to succeed. Obviously, many Ameri-
cans do not have the possibility to secure a high-status or well-paid
position. All the empirical studies of social mobility, in America as
elsewhere, demonstrate that occupational placement or achievement is
associated with social origins. Still, only 31 percent of Americans
agree/strongly agree that “what you achieve in life depends largely on
your family background,” as contrasted to many more’ in Europe (Great
Britain 53%, Austria 51%, and Italy 63%).*4
Americans are also less likely than Europeans, or more specifically,
the British, to think of their society as divided into two groups, the
“haves” and the “have-nots.” Only one quarter, 26 percent, of Ameri-
cans, compared to three quarters, or 73 percent of the citizens of Great
Britain, agreed in 1988 that their country is so divided. When asked
whether they personally belong to the haves or the have-nots, only 17
percent of Americans answered “have-nots,” while over a third, 37 per-
cent, of the British put themselves in the poorer stratum.*°
Since early in the nineteenth century, as we saw earlier, the Ameri-
can road to success in large measure has been through education.
America has led the world in enrollment in the most important type of
general education which qualifies for occupational achievement, first
in the proportions graduating from public elementary school, then high
school, and more recently in the numbers going to and finishing college
and continuing with postgraduate training. Europeans generally have
been less likely to attend the kinds of schools that lead to university.
Americans, therefore, have spent a larger proportion of their govern-
ment revenues on education in order to admit more individuals into the
race for success. On the other hand, of course, Europeans have pro-
vided proportionally more revenues for welfare, for state measures to
upgrade those at the bottom. That is, their efforts to improve the situa-
tion of the less privileged have given greater emphasis to group bene-
fits, public housing, state employment, government health coverage,
unemployment benefits, family allowances, and old age pensions.
These latter policies have been supported in Europe by both the con-
servative and the left forces to a much greater extent than in the
 84 American Exceptionalism

United States. The welfare state was introduced in Britain and Ger-
many by Disraeli and Bismarck, both conservatives. The organized left
parties and the trade union movements subsequently pressed for a
more elaborate expansion of government measures to improve the posi-
tion of the lower strata. They were less insistent on opening the door to
upward mobility through the expansion of universities. In America,
welfare state measures have grown considerably during the Depression
and postwar eras. The rates of increase, however, have declined in
recent decades, and in any case the amounts spent have always been
less as a proportion of the GNP and government revenues than in
Europe.
Political exceptionalism, the failure of socialist parties in the United
States, has been explained by numerous factors—so many that the out-
come seems overdetermined. The variety of specific explanations fall
into two categories. One involves emphasis on societal variables; the
other focuses on factors internal to the political system. While the two
sets of hypotheses are, of course, not mutually exclusive, some analysts
have placed more of a stress on one dimension than the other. The var-
ious hypotheses, many of which were remarked upon by Marx and
Engels, may be grouped under the following headings.

SOCIETAL FACTORS
1. America as a new society, the absence of a feudal tradition of class
relations to structure politics along class lines.
2. Americanism as surrogate socialism and/or the liberal tradition as
the predominant public philosophy. This approach, elaborated below,
suggests Americans see their society as egalitarian and democratic and
have found no need for drastic changes to attain already existing objec-
tives.
3. The emphases in the value system on individualism and anti-statism
derived from America’s Protestant sectarian past and revolutionary val-
ues, which imply opposition to a strong collectivist or welfare state.
4. The impact of a steady rise in standards of living, particularly for the
working class. The United States has been the wealthiest country in
the developed world, at least since the post—Civil War period. Various
consumer goods have been more widely distributed in America than
elsewhere. As Werner Sombart argued, “all Socialist utopias came to
nothing on roast beef and apple pie.” s)

5. The decline in the relative income position of the poorest fifth of the
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 85

income distribution is, as John Kenneth Galbraith has noted, concen-

trated in marginalized groups, such as female single heads of family,
illegal immigrants, and parts of the minority populations, who tend to
be politically isolated and have low voter turnout.3”
6. Accompanying the growth in productivity and the spread of educa-
tional opportunities have been increased opportunities for upward
mobility. Such opportunities have not declined; the potential for social
and economic advancement in the post-World War II period has prob-
ably been greater than at any other point in American history.
7. Recent research on geographic mobility by historians and social sci-
entists has documented the “remarkable volatility of the American
working class,” and reemphasized the propensity for geographic move-
ment and the lack of stable community roots as factors inhibiting the
formation of class-consciousness.
8. The consequences of being a multi-ethnic and multi-racial immi-
grant society.
8a. The impact of continued immigration in encouraging upward
mobility by native-born whites. Census data indicate that from the
second half of the nineteenth century through to the 1930s, immi-
grants filled the lower-status, less skilled, least well-paid jobs,
enabling the children of immigrants and third- or more generation
native-born to occupy more privileged positions. Since World War
II, blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and new waves of immigrants
from various Third World countries have played the role once held
by European immigrants. Hence, beyond the fact of greater produc-
tivity (i.e., higher standards of living) is the advantage held by native
whites.
8b. Ethnic, religious, and racial differentiation have fragmented the
working class and retarded the growth of class-conscious politics.
8c. The fact that a very large proportion of the working class was
Catholic from the late nineteenth century on, since the Church
worked actively before World War I to resist socialist appeals among
workers and trade unionists.

POLITICAL FACTORS

1. The free “gift of the suffrage” emphasized by Lenin and others. As

Selig Perlman noted, the masses in the United States attained the suf-
frage prior to efforts to organize them into class-conscious parties. In
 86 American Exceptionalism

Europe, for the most part, socialist parties appealed to the workers for
support before the vote was universal. Lenin himself stressed that
socialism grew through the struggle for electoral democracy. In Amer-
ica, the franchise predated the movement.”®
2. The constitutional and electoral system, which results in a two-coali-
tion party system in electing a president, since only one person can
hold executive power. As noted in chapter One, it has been argued by
many that in a two-coalition party system it is almost mandated by the
Constitution that efforts at slowly building up third parties must fail.
The spread of the primary system of nomination has strengthened this
factor. Though no third party has become institutionalized, a number
of independent candidates—Roosevelt in 1912, LaFollette in 1924,
Wallace in 1968, Anderson in 1980, and Perot in 1992—received pro-
portionately many more votes than socialist nominees from 1900 to the
present, thus demonstrating that the electoral system was not responsi-
ble for the weakness of socialism in America.
3. The flexibility of the two-coalition party system to co-opt and/or
respond to manifest evidence of pervasive discontent, often in the form
of mass movements and/or third parties. This flexibility frequently has
involved a major party “stealing the thunder’ of the dissenters by adopt-
ing their policies. The two parties almost invariably respond to the
social movements, thereby reducing social strains and the potential
base for institutionalized radical parties. The primary system encour-
ages groups to act within the two major parties, rather than against
them.
4. Repression. Syndicalist, socialist, and communist movements have
suffered from political repression that broke up the continuity of radi-
cal protest. It should be noted, however, that anti-radical repression
was much greater in many European countries, but did not prevent the
emergence of large leftist parties, some of which, like the German
Social Democrats or the revolutionaries in Czarist Russia, grew greatly
while being outlawed.

COMPARATIVE SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Sa

Most of the twentieth-century efforts to demonstrate the validity of

particular interpretations of the exceptional character of America’s
socialist movement have compared conditions here with those in
Europe. Some of the most influential writings—such as those
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 87

espoused by the Fabian H. G. Wells, Italian Communist leader and

theoretician Antonio Gramsci, American socialist writer Leon Samson,
liberal political theorist Louis Hartz, and the late leader of the
post-World War II American socialist movement Michael Harring-
ton—have emphasized ways in which the special history and resultant
unique social structure of the United States have negated efforts to
foster class-consciousness.*® In one of the earliest comparative efforts
to explain the weakness of socialism and class-consciousness in the
United States, Wells suggested that the absence of socialism and Tory-
ism in the United States reflected the fact that two major European
classes, the subservient land-bound peasants and the aristocracy, were
missing from American society. The absence of the former avoided a
“servile tradition,” as Tocqueville noted, while the absence of the latter
meant that the Tory sense of “state responsibility, which in the old
European theory of society was supposed to give significance to the
whole,” was also missing. Louis Hartz elaborated this thesis in the
1950s.
Antonio Gramsci, perhaps the most important non-Russian theo-
retician of the communist movement, following a logic similar to that
of Wells and Hartz, also emphasized America’s unique origin and
resultant value system as a source of its exceptional political and eco-
nomic systems.*° He stressed that America’s special sociological
background resulted in a general value system, a conception of life
which he called “Americanism.” It is pure rationalism, uninhibited by
the traditional values of rigid social classes derived from feudalism.
Americans, regardless of class, emphasize the virtues of hard work by
all, of the need to exploit nature rather than people.*! The interpreta-
tion proposed by Gramsci that Americanism represents a distinct
ideology, one that is accepted by American workers, has been inde-
pendently elaborated by a number of writers and social scientists in
their efforts to explain the absence or weakness of socialism in
America.
Hermann Keyserling, a conservative German aristocrat; Leon Sam-
son, an American socialist intellectual; Sidney Hook, a socialist
philosopher; Michael Harrington, the founder of the Democratic
Socialists; and American historian Carl Degler, in writings which span
the period from 1929 to the present, have all put forth or accepted the
argument that socialism as a political movement is weak in the United
States because the ideological content of Americanism is highly similar
to socialism and hence Americans believe they already have most of
what it promises.** As Harrington writes:
 88 American Exceptionalism

Americanism, the official ideology of the society, became a kind of “substi-

tutive socialism.” The European ruling classes . . . were open in their con-
tempt for the proletariat. But in the United States equality, and even class-
lessness, the creation of wealth for all and political liberty were extolled in
the public schools. It is, of course, true that this was sincere verbiage
which concealed an ugly reality, but nonetheless it had a profound impact
upon the national consciousness. “The idea that everyone can be a capital-
ist,” Samson wrote in a perceptive insight, “is an American concept of capi-
talism. It is a socialist concept of capitalism.” And that, Marx had under-
stood in 1846, was why socialism would first appear in this country in a
capitalist disguise. What he could not possibly anticipate was that this
dialectical irony would still be in force over one hundred years later. . . .
[T]he country’s image of itself contained so many socialist elements that
one did not have to go to a separate movement opposed to the status quo in
order to give vent to socialist emotions.*

EXCEPTIONALISM IN NORTH AMERICAN

PERSPECTIVE: CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES
ber]

Canada, as noted earlier, offers those seeking to understand American

behavior and values an excellent unit for comparison.** The continent-
spanning neighbors, once part of the same political unit, and formed as
separate nations from the same event, have much in common cultur-
ally and structurally. Yet, they also vary in ways which have produced
different social and political systems, evident in the fact that Canada
resembles the rest of the industrial world in having socialist and trade
union movements which are much stronger than those in the United
States. The vote for Canada’s national social democratic party, the
New Democrats (NDP), has varied considerably since the 1930s,
reaching 20 percent in the 1988 elections, and at times much more in
the opinion polls, sufficient to occasionally place the party in second
place. However, though still a viable electoral party, its support fell to 9
percent in a five-party contest in 1993. More strikingly, as of 1995 the
NDP has been the governing party and/or the official parliamentary
opposition in every province west of Ontario, even though its support
in the opinion polls is down. The 1991 election of social democratic
governments with overwhelming legislative majorities in the Canadian
provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan, following a compara-
ble triumph in Ontario a year earlier, brought 52 percent of the nation’s
population under social democratic rule. Another 25 percent have
been so governed since September 1994 by the separatist Parti Québé-
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 89

cois, a statist party which tried to affiliate to the Socialist International

but was turned down because the NDP objected. The NDP was
reelected in Saskatchewan, but lost power in Ontario in June 1995,
and is currently the official opposition in Alberta and Manitoba."
There has obviously been nothing approaching this record in the
United States. The American Socialist Party's highest national vote was
6 percent in 1912. It secured 2 percent in 1932, in the depth of the
Depression. Between 1936 and 1952, the party's vote fell off to under
1 percent, and it stopped running national candidates. Although the
Socialist Party captured the mayoralty in many cities, particularly
before 1918, it never came close to winning statewide office anywhere.
Currently, the largest socialist group in America, the Democratic
Socialists, has around eight thousand members and does not take part
as a party in elections. The biggest third party in the United States is
the Libertarian, a free market, anti-state group which secures a few
hundred thousand votes, although Ross Perot, running as an indepen-
dent, secured 19 percent in 1992.
The comparative story on organized labor is relatively similar.
Although American unions do have millions of members, they are
among the weakest in the industrialized democracies in terms of union
density, the proportion eligible who belong. As of 1995, roughly 15 to
16 percent of all employed Americans belong to unions, while only 10
percent of those working in the private sector are members.
Different estimates for Canada agree that union density may have
reached a peak of 40 percent in 1983 and has since fallen off to around
38 percent, still more than double the American proportion. And the
record documents that except for the period 1938 to 1958—roughly
the time of CIO organization—the proportion unionized in Canada has
been higher than in the United States. Estimates by Huxley, Kettler
and Struthers, and Bain and Price indicate that Canadian union den-
sity exceeded the American from 1918 to 1938, and again from 1958 to
the present.*° The period from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s was
one of growth by American labor organizations encouraged by New
Deal government support but also, more importantly, by the Depres-
sion-stimulated social movement forces that pressed for working-class
organization.
Starting in 1955, however, American unions began to decline fairly
steadily from around one third of the employed labor force to less than
half that proportion, while the Canadian continued to grow from the
1960s to the 1980s. The differences vary by sector, but in almost all
that may be distinguished—for example, government, manufacturing,
 90 American Exceptionalism

and private service in the large sectors, and various specific industry
groups in the small—a greater segment is organized north of the border
than south of it.*”
Given this background, there are a number of questions to be
addressed: (1) why does Canada have an electorally viable social demo-
cratic party while the United States does not? (2) why is union density
in Canada so much greater than below the border? and (3) why have
union movements been declining earlier and more steadily in the
United States than in Canada, although as of the late 1980s to a slight
extent in the north as well? Though some of these issues have been
treated earlier with regard to the United States, this section addresses
the American and Canadian cases from an explicitly binational com-
parative perspective.
Explanations for the success or failure of socialist parties in North
America vary between dissimilarities in the electoral and government
systems and in certain basic values. Those specific to unions also incor-
porate the possible effects of the different political climates, emphasiz-
ing that the nature and administration of Canadian labor legislation are
more union-friendly than the American. The value differences between
the two countries appear to account for the differing cross-border
employee responses to union appeals, as well as for dissimilarities in
worker and employer behavior, and variations in the way the two politi-
cal systems treat their labor organizations.

SOCIALISM AND STATISM IN NORTH AMERICA

To look first at the sources of the variations in the position of socialism,

many observers of the North American political scene have pointed to
the varying effects on the prospects for third parties in the different
constitutional systems. As I noted earlier, the British political model,
followed in Canada, encompassing the parliamentary single-member
district system, together with the disciplined legislative parties required
to sustain cabinets, is favorable to a multi-party system, whereas the
American division of powers with its presidential system discourages
more than two. In the first, the effective election unit is the con-
stituency. Parties which have no chance to win a national or provincial
plurality can still effectively contest constituencies that are socio-
logically distinct—wheat farmers, coal miners, ethnic groupings, and
so on. Minor ones may be major parties in some local areas. Since
1921, Canada has experienced situations in which economically or cul-
turally distinct sections, provinces, or ethnic groups have found them-
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 91

selves in conflict with their traditional party allegiance, and, not want-
ing to go over to their major party rivals, have supported third parties,
such as Progressives, United Farmers, Labor, Cooperative Common-
wealth Federation, Social Credit, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois,
and Reform. As of 1995, Canada has five significant parties.
The American constitutional or electoral system analysis presented
earlier may account for a predominantly two-party rather than a multi-
party model. But this does not help to explain its character—why social
democratic tendencies have been weaker than other third-party efforts.
During this century three non-socialist third presidential candidates
(Theodore Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette, and Ross Perot) have been
able to secure 17 or more percent of the vote, and a fourth (George
Wallace) received 12 percent. Even John Anderson with his 7 percent
in 1980 was stronger than any socialist nominee. To explain the politi-
cal variations in North America, therefore, requires analyzing trans-
border value differences.*
As many Canadians have tried to remind us, the American Revolu-
tion produced two countries which developed distinct cultures. The
United States is the country of the revolution, Canada of the counter-
revolution.*? The former is the part of British North America that suc-
cessfully seceded, while Canada is the area that remained British. These
diverse outcomes ultimately contributed to, among other things, very
different socialist and trade union movements in the United States and
Canada. The existence of an electorally viable social democratic party in
Canada has been interpreted by various analysts as an outgrowth of the
greater influence of the Tory-statist tradition and the stronger collectiv-
ity orientation north of the border. In Canada, as in most of Europe, a
common history defines the nation, while the United States, as empha-
sized in chapter One, is founded on an ideological creed.
Conservatism in Canada is descended from Toryism and monarchi-
cal statism; in the United States, it is derived from Whiggism, classical
anti-statist liberalism. After the Revolution, about fifty thousand Tory
Americans moved to Canada. Conversely, some Yankee residents of
what was originally northern New England—Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick—migrated to the new nation. The Revolution produced an
interesting transmutation of religion. Congregationalism had been
strong in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, as in the rest of New Eng-
land before the Revolution. After the Treaty of Paris in 1783, many
Congregational ministers moved south.*! Conversely, many Anglican
priests went north. Hence a shift of populations in political and reli-
gious terms occurred within English-speaking North America.
 92 American Exceptionalism

Catholic Quebec, which had become a British province in 1763,

remained with its conquerors in 1776 for practical reasons. Quebec
was controlled by the clergy, since almost all the secular elites returned
to France after the British conquest. The priesthood of the province
understood that they would have much more trouble with the anti-
Papist Puritan Yankees than they would with the British Anglicans.
Other good reasons for staying British soon developed. The French
Revolution was anti-clerical and materialistic. The Francophone clergy,
including émigrés from France, deliberately sought to cut off all con-
tact with the mother country. This made Quebec a counter-revolution-
ary society twice over. Canada thus became a country of two counter-
revolutions: English and French Canada opposed the American
Revolution, and French Canada rejected the French Revolution.”
In Canada, the Tory tradition has meant support for a strong state,
communitarianism, group solidarity, and elitism. Most provinces con-
tinue to finance church-controlled schools. Public ownership, much of
it instituted under Conservative Party administrations, is considerably
more extensive than in the United States. Canadian governments
spend more proportionately on welfare.>* Canadians are more support-
ive of narrowing income differences, while Americans put more
emphasis on equal opportunity or meritocratic competition. Con-
versely, the former, whether as corporations or individuals, donate
much less to charitable causes than Americans.** The Canadian crimi-
nal justice system has resembled those of Europe, stressing crime con-
trol and the rights of the state. The American emphasis, as we have
seen, is on due process and the rights of the accused.
These generalizations are sustained by opinion polls which indicate
that Canadians, at both elite and mass levels, are more supportive than
Americans of state intervention. Summarizing surveys of high-level
civil servants and federal, state, and provincial legislators, Robert
Presthus reported

the sharp difference between the two [national] elites on “economic liberal-
ism,” defined as a preference for “big government. . . .” Only 17 percent of
the American legislative elite ranks high on this disposition, compared with
fully 44 percent of their Canadian peers. ... This direction is the same
among bureaucrats, only 17 percent of whom rank high among the Ameri-
can sample, compared with almost 30 percent among Canadians.**

Reflecting the other side of the Tory-social democratic tradition, a

number of comparative academic surveys indicate that Canadians are
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 93

more deferential than Americans to elites and institutions. Basically,

the American tradition does not encourage obedience to the state and
the law. Canadians, as we saw earlier, accepted the metric system
when their government proclaimed it; Americans simply would not do
so. Similar reactions occurred when the two governments decided to
give up the dollar bill, given inflation, and to use dollar coins instead,
keeping the two-dollar bill the one most in circulation. Today, there is
no one-dollar bill in Canada, only a dollar coin referred to as the
“loony.” The two-dollar bill is the most widely used tender. In the
United States, on the other hand, one can only find dollar coins in Las
Vegas and Atlantic City, while the two-dollar bill is abundant in only
one place, Jefferson’s home, Monticello, because his picture is on it.
Canada’s Tory-statist traditions are reinforced by the country’s reli-
gious history. Canada’s preeminent economic historian Harold Innis
may have said it all when he wrote that a “counter-revolutionary tradi-
tion implies an emphasis on ecclesiasticism.”** The majority of Cana-
dians adhere to the Roman Catholic or Anglican Church, each of
which is hierarchically organized and continued until recently to have
a strong relationship to the state, while the country’s sectarians
largely joined together in the most successful ecumenical effort the
Protestant world has seen, the United Church of Canada, which, like
the Catholic Church, is politically communitarian. American sects,
strikingly different in values and behavior from the American
churches, as noted in chapter Two, not only have remained separate
but are religiously fecund, having spawned more new denominations
than any other nation. In other words, they have remained sectarian,
and have continued to foster individualism and anti-statism. The
American political tradition has been reinforced by the religious com-
mitment of the majority to the “nonconformist,” largely congregation-
ally organized sects, which emphasize a personal and individualistic
relation to God, one not mediated by state-supported, hierarchically
organized churches.
Both Canadian cultures—secular and religious—have furthered a
variant of the Tory paternalistic and statist view of the world. As the
British labor union expert Henry Phelps Brown notes, the country had
“no tradition or doctrine [that] inculcated an abhorrence of collec-
tivism such as prevailed south of the border. A Tory tradition ...
stressed authority and hierarchy, but with these went solidarity and
benevolence, which occupy some common ground with collectivism.”””
Seeking to explain the rise of social democracy in Quebec, Canadian
political scientists William Christian and Colin Campbell suggest that
 94 American Exceptionalism

it reflects the propensity for collectivism inherent in the province's val-

ues. They conclude that “Quebec’s stock of [traditional] political ideas
includes a strong collectivist element. ... Quebec’s collectivist past
provided receptive and fruitful soil for socialist ideas once the invasion
of liberal capitalism had broken the monopoly of the old conservative
ideology.”*® The United States, as we have seen, has remained through
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the extreme example of a clas-
sically liberal society that rejects the assumptions of the alliance of
throne and altar, of ascriptive elitism, of statism, of noblesse oblige, and
of communitarianism.
Canadian scholars have emphasized, in the words of Herschel
Hardin, that “Canada, in its essentials, is a public enterprise country,
always has been, and probably always will be,” while the United States
has a “private enterprise culture.”*? Or as the political scientist J. T.
McLeod notes, “the pervasiveness of state intervention, regulation, and
the frequent appearance of public ownership” characterizes Canada,
where “the State has always dominated and shaped the economy.”
Unlike the United States, Canada “has never experienced a period of
pure unadulterated laissez-faire market capitalism.”®° The period from
1960 to the mid-1980s witnessed a particularly rapid expansion in the
number of crown corporations; fully 70 percent of them were created
in that quarter of a century.’ Canada introduced most major social
programs earlier than the United States. Some in the North cover areas
not dealt with south of the border, such as family allowances and uni-
versal state-provided medical coverage. Except “when a ‘crisis’ more
severely affects the United States than Canada or . . . major constitu-
tional problems prevent an immediate Canadian policy response,” wel-
fare state developments have been earlier in Canada, and are usually
“more advanced in terms of program development, coverage, and bene-
fits, and are financed in a ‘more egalitarian’ fashion.”*? Canadians
receive more than twice the proportion of their income from govern-
ment transfer payments as Americans. Unemployment insurance is
limited to twenty-six weeks in the United States; it can be extended to
forty-two weeks in Canada. In 1994, “Canada will spend $12.6 billion
on unemployment payments alone. The United States, by contrast,
spends about $35 billion for a population 10 times that of Canada.”
In Continental Divide, published in 1990, I presented a myriad of
aggregate and opinion poll data attesting to the varying values and opin-
ions of Americans and Canadians. With respect to the role of the state
in economic and welfare activities, they indicate, as expected, that —
those living in the North are much more favorable to social democratic
or communitarian orientations than their neighbors to the south. A
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 95

more recent comparative North American study reports further con-

gruent findings that “Canadians are more likely than Americans to
favor ‘the right to a publicly funded health care system available to all
regardless of financial situation’ (71 percent of Canadians and 52 per-
cent of Americans) and ‘the right of every individual to be guaranteed a
minimum income’ (62 percent and 51 percent).”6°
Leftist collectivist, communitarian (welfare), and particularistic
movements have emerged in Western society in some part in conjunc-
tion with conservative (Tory) emphases on elitism and statism. There
is, of course, good reason to believe that social democratic movements
are the other side of statist conservatism, that Tories and socialists are
likely to be found in the same polity, while a dominant Lockean liberal
(anti-statist) tradition inhibits the emergence of socialism as a political
force.® Socialism is strong where Tory and monarchical statism have
legitimated strong government, and where elitism has fostered orga-
nized counter reactions by the less privileged strata. A tradition of state
paternalism fostered by national elites has served to legitimate efforts
by the less privileged strata to mobilize resources to improve their posi-
tion through government action. The Canadian socialist labor historian
Gad Horowitz has noted that “socialism has more in common with
toryism than with [classical] liberalism for liberalism is possessive indi-
vidualism, while socialism and toryism are variants of collectivism.”®
The fact that the American national tradition is egalitarian, anti-elitist,
individualistic, and classically liberal, has weakened efforts to mobilize
workers and others on behalf of socialist and collectivist objectives,
including unions. Prior to the Great Depression, the American labor
movement, both in its moderate American Federation of Labor (AFL)
form and radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) guise,
opposed programs to extend the role of the state. The majority of both,
like other American groupings, were suspicious of government, and
therefore also rejected socialism. In a recent work dealing with law and
labor unions in America, William Forbath notes that “the founders of
American labor history, John Commons . . Selig Perlman, and genera-
tions of scholars after them have sought to explain . . . [the] phenome-
non, widely known as American ‘exceptionalism,’ ” labor's “ ‘pragmatic,’
voluntaristic perspective.’®®
Most Canadian and American trade unionists once belonged to the
same international unions, part of the AFL until the CIO split in the
mid-1930s, but the affiliates in the two countries have varied in ways
which have reflected the divergent national traditions.*? The dominant
leaders of American workers, as noted above, were anti-statist until the
New Deal and opposed a separate labor or socialist party. Canadian
 96 American Exceptionalism

union officials, though not formally socialists until the 1930s, repeat-
edly endorsed the principle of independent labor political action from
the turn of the century on, and were much more favorable to state
intervention than their counterparts to the south. As Gad Horowitz
notes, “The TLC [Trades and Labour Congress], though it consisted
almost entirely of Canadian locals of AFL unions, and was greatly
influenced by [Samuel] Gompers, never adopted the Gompers
approach in toto. .. . [Unlike the AFL] the TLC .. . never took a stand
against socialism. Unlike the AFL, it never adopted the phraseology of
laissez-faire and Lockean individualism.””°
During the 1930s, many labor activists took part in the formation of
the country’s first electorally viable social democratic party, the Coop-
erative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The relationship became
stronger over the years. A poll of labor leaders in 1958 revealed that 45
percent of the TLC (AFL) officials surveyed supported the CCF, as
did an overwhelming 93 percent of the Canadian Congress of Labor
(CCL-CIO) executives.”! The two labor federations, the TLC and the
CCL, merged into the Canadian Labour Congress in the mid-1950s
and then went on to join with the CCF to transmute the socialist
movement into the New Democratic Party (NDP) in the early 1960s.
The united Canadian union movement has continued to officially sup-
port the NDP.
Although the Canadian economy has been weaker than the Ameri-
can, the postwar boom, involving extensive growth, an upgrading of the
occupational structure, and higher income and standards of living, also
occurred in Canada. But in spite of such improvements, which of
course did not prevent occasional periods of recession, Canadian
socialism held its own nationally, prior to the 1993 election, generally
obtaining between a fifth and a quarter of the vote in English Canada.
Social democracy gained a new bastion in French Canada with the rise
of the Parti Québécois to major party status in the 1970s, and to gov-
ernment at the start of the eighties and again in 1994. And, as noted,
unlike the situation in the United States, the Canadian labor move-
ment reached new heights in membership in the early 1980s.

Cross-BorDER UNION DENSITIES

The explanations for the cross-border differences in union strength,

like those for socialism, primarily vary between emphasis on the effects
of dissimilarities in values and of political‘structures, in this case labor
representation legislation. The British labor economist Henry Phelps
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 97

Brown, cited earlier, points out that “the strong tradition of Toryism in
Canada laid its stress on solidarity and against individualism and the
fissiparous impact of market forces. Here it found common ground...
with the propensity of the worker to organize for the protection of the
conditions of his working life.””?
The big anomaly in the comparison between the two countries is the
greater growth in union density in the United States from the mid-
1930s to the mid-1950s, which temporarily placed the American labor
movement ahead of the Canadian. The same period also witnessed a
change in the political and ideological behavior of much of organized
labor in the United States. The American movement became involved
in political action, largely in support of the Democratic Party, while the
CIO and sections of the AFL adopted political programs calling for a
high level of state involvement in planning the economy, as well as
sharp increases in welfare and health programs.
These changes reflected the impact of the Great Depression. That
unprecedented event, which undermined traditional American beliefs
among large sectors of the population, led to the acceptance by a
majority of the need for state action to reduce unemployment, to assist
those adversely affected by the economic collapse, and to support trade
unionism. Analyses of public opinion polls and election results noted
that class factors had become highly differentiating variables. Samuel
Lubell, who conducted in-depth interviews with many voters in the
1930s and early 1940s, concluded that the electoral support for Roo-
sevelt and New Deal programs constituted “a class-conscious vote for
the first time in American history. ... The New Deal appears to have
accomplished what the Socialists, the IWW and the Communists
never could approach. It has drawn a class line across the face of
American politics.””
This Depression-inspired development seemingly declined with the
postwar prosperity that effectively lasted through to the beginning of
the 1990s, though with some significant recessionary and inflationary
periods. The Roosevelt New Deal electoral impact has ended; the cor-
relations between class position and party voting have declined. From
1952 to 1988, Republicans won seven of the ten presidential elections,
although the Democrats, who are more effective at local appeals to
national interests and values, controlled the Congress much more
often than not. Bill Clinton, the most centrist Democratic nominee
since 1968, was elected in 1992, albeit with 43 percent of the vote.
The third candidate, Ross Perot, appealed strongly to fiscal conserva-
tives, and most of his fifth of the vote went over to the Republicans in
 98 American Exceptionalism

1994, giving them a strong congressional majority pledged to oppose

statism and extensive welfare benefits. What the prolonged postwar
prosperity did, in my judgment, was to refurbish the classic American
laissez-faire, anti-statist, market-oriented, meritocratic, individualistic
values; in short, the Whig tradition.
Considerable opinion poll data show Americans have strengthened
their belief in opportunity for the individual.”* They also strongly
oppose government restrictions on becoming rich. When the Roper
Organization repeated a question in 1992 which they had asked in
1939: “Do you think there should be a law limiting the amount of
money any individual is allowed to earn in a year?” it found a large
falloff, from 24 to 9 in the percentage favoring limits. The drop was
even greater among those at the lowest income level, from 32 to 9.
Similarly, when asked by the National Opinion Research Center to
place themselves in a “social class’—middle, lower, working, or
upper—the percent replying “working class” declined steadily from 60
in 1949 to 47 in 1972, changing little from then on. It was 45 percent
in 1993. Conversely, those identifying themselves as “middle class”
rose from one third of the population at the end of the 1940s to 45 per-
cent in the nineties. And in tandem with such changes the majority
turned against unions. The approval rating of unions in the United
States in the Gallup Poll went down steadily from the mid-1950s to the
1980s, and this decline closely paralleled the falloff in union density.
The bimodal correlation is high, around .75.”
Prosperity, however, was not associated with a decline in social
democratic electoral strength or trade union membership in Canada, or
in support for welfare state values, although the electoral strength of
the NDP dropped considerably in the 1993 parliamentary election,
which occurred during the country’s worst postwar recession. The
party, ironically, seemed to suffer from being in office provincially.
Canadians turned overwhelmingly against the two parties, the Conser-
vatives who then held federal power and the NDP, which governed
three provinces, with a majority of the population. Unlike the situation
in the United States, there has not been a postwar revival of the values
of classical liberalism, since these have never been the national tradi-
tion. Canada’s five significant political parties remain committed in
varying degrees to an activist government, to communitarianism. The
two conservative parties, the Progressive Conservatives, who headed
the federal government from 1984 to 1993, and the new Reform Party,
which replaced the Progressive Conservatives as the dominant force on
the right in the 1993 elections, are both “social conservatives,” with the
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 99

Conservative Party reflecting “humanitarian” concerns much more

than Reform. In the 1988 election, Tory Prime Minister Brian Mul-
roney called the welfare state part of Canada’s “sacred heritage.””* His
successor as prime minister and party leader in 1993, Kim Campbell,
acknowledged in a private discussion that Canada has a “social democ-
ratic culture.” During the 1993 election, Preston Manning, the leader
of the Reformers, praised Canada’s socialists, the New Democratic
Party, saying at a campaign rally that “thanks largely to the NDP, the
Canadian Parliament now has a social conscience that permeates every
party. That's why medicare [Canada’s government health plan], pen-
sions and unemployment insurance are safe. . . .”””
The divergence in the trajectories of union density in the two coun-
tries reflects the undermining of the social democratic elements
unleashed by the Great Depression in the South, and their continua-
tion in the North. Labor law expert Paul Weiler concludes that “projec-
tions from current trends estimate that U.S. union density will drop
below 10% by the year 2000, and will not ‘stabilize’ until it reaches a
point somewhere under 5% by the year 2020.”’8 Labor economist Leo
Troy notes that the current density level in the private sector, “just
under 13%[,] is about equal to unions’ share of private nonfarm
employment in 1929.” Extrapolating trends, he anticipates that it “will
slip to about 7% by the onset of the new century.””? If union density in
the United States is declining to pre-1930s levels, or possibly lower,
the reversal appears partly related to the steady decay over the postwar
era of the liberal or social democratic values which emerged in the
1930s.
This is not to deny that changes in the structure of the labor force
have contributed to the weakening of unions, particularly in the private
sector. Classic centers of union strength like mining, steel, printing,
and shipbuilding—the goods production industries—have declined,
while the much less unionized service sectors have increased. During
the last decade, the proportion employed in union-favorable public
employment positions has remained steady in Canada and declined
somewhat in the United States. But these changes only explain a little
of the variation between the two countries. All the recent comparative
analyses agree that a small part of the gap results from “the greater
extent of public employment in Canada.”® While government employ-
ees in both countries are much more unionized than those in the pri-
vate sector, those in Canada are better organized than those in the
United States—66 percent of the publicly employed labor force in the
former, 42 percent in the latter. But Noah Meltz points out that as of
 100 American Exceptionalism

1990, private-sector workers also are significantly more organized in

the North than in the South, 21 percent to 12 percent.®
The differences are clearly not a function of structural variations in
the two economies. As the Canadian political scientist John Richards
concludes in a detailed comparative statistical analysis, “structural dif-
ferences between Canada and the United States do explain a little of
the union density gap—but not much.”* His results reiterate the find-
ings of W. Craig Riddell, who also reports that “the ‘structuralist
hypothesis’ explains very little of the Canada-U.S. unionization differ-
ential, about 15 percent to be precise.”*? And in an even broader com-
parative study, the Dutch trade union authority Jelle Visser notes that
“sizeable differences in the level of union organization across advanced
capitalist democracies” occur “not only between the extremes ... but
also within the same region.” Between “the United States and Canada
. the differences in levels of unionization are much larger than war-
ranted by differences in economic development, industrialization,
social structure or public spending.”** Analyzing cross-border changes
in union density, Meltz finds that “the long term trends . . . [reveal a]
virtually identical relationship between the rates of private service sec-
tor union density to that in all other sectors in both Canada and the
United States... around a mean of 21 percent. . . .” He concludes that
the “stability of the relationship and its similarity in both countries . .
suggests that the factors governing the overall relationship of union
density [among industries] between Canada and the United States
apply equally” to the private and public sectors.® This finding lends
substantial weight to results reported earlier that the elements that dif-
ferentiate and affect variations in union density between the two coun-
tries are not primarily structural, whether political or economic, that a
large part of the answer lies in more sociological factors such as those I
have stressed here.*
The thesis that the variations in union density reflect cross-national
differences in values that result in a greater demand for unionization
north of the border has been countered by comparative evidence on
social attitudes. When asked directly in recent years about feelings
toward trade unions, “more Canadians than Americans view unions as
too powerful; more Canadians than Americans perceive labor as the
greatest threat; fewer Canadians than Americans have confidence in
labor as an institution; more Canadians than Americans blame unions
for inflation”; and Americans are more likely to express approval of
unions than Gaadiene 8” These findings appear to contradict the the-
sis that Canadian values are more supportive of trade unionism and
 _ Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 101

class organization than American. The conundrum, however, may

result from the different national contexts within which the citizens of
the two countries respond to specific issues, as compared to values.
These attitudes (much like the even greater anti-union polling
responses in Australia and Great Britain, whose labor organizations and
Labor parties are more important and stronger than those in Canada)
may be a reaction to the fact that Canadian unionism does have more
power, is indeed stronger than its southern compeer.®* They may also
reflect antagonism by Canadians to the high strike rates in their coun-
try, which have been much greater during the 1970s and 1980s than
those recorded south of the border.®°
Some indication of continued cross-national differences in relevant
values, as distinct from attitudes, is suggested by the variations in
response to a question posed in the 1980 and 1990 World Values Sur-
veys (see chapter Four, p. 145, for the wording). When asked to give
priority to freedom or equality of position, Americans were the least
likely of the citizens of seventeen developed countries to choose equal-
ity. Less than a quarter, 24 percent, did so in 1990. The corresponding
figure for Canada was 34 percent, for fourteen European nations, 37
percent, and for Japan, 38 percent. The numbers were almost identical
ten years earlier.
Beyond the supportive evidence from public opinion data are differ-
ences in behavior. Unions generally favor strict seniority and job secu-
rity or tenure. And Canada and other more group-oriented or particu-
laristic nations give more emphasis to seniority and job security in their
public employment practices than the United States. Thus, America
follows meritocratic up-or-out policies at different age levels in the mil-
itary and foreign services, Canada does not. Canadian universities, like
their British and Japanese counterparts, award life tenure more quickly
and readily than American ones. These differences support the
assumption that values congruent with trade union principles are
stronger outside of the United States.
The greater expressed hostility to unions north of the border may
also derive from the closer link between the Canadian labor movement
and a political party, the NDP, which never secured more than 20 per-
cent of the vote in a national election. The American trade unions, on
the other hand, are less directly affiliated with a party, but are identi-
fied with the Democrats, who, until 1994, led the Republicans in party
identifications, congressional elections, and control of most state gov-
ernments for most of the post-World War II era, usually by a consider-
able margin. These national differences in popular support for the
 102 American Exceptionalism

union-supported parties may affect the cross-border variations in the

popularity of unions. Opponents of the NDP may carry their rejection
of the party over to their feelings about the political and power position
of unions, at the same time that most “Canadians perceive unions as
fulfilling a legitimate role within society.’’® A survey of attitudes to
unions north of the border taken in 1989 reported that “Canadians do
not endorse labour’s financial support for the New Democratic Party:
seven in ten respondents to the 1989 poll felt that labour unions
should not be involved in this activity, similar to the level of opposition
toward this practice recorded two years ago.””!
One may argue, as I have done in previous writings, that values are
deep sets of feelings, much more stable than attitudes, superordinate
sentiments, and are reflected in cross-national differences over beliefs
about class relationships, equality and inequality, the role of the state,
individualism, communitarianism, and the like. Henry Phelps Brown
argues that Canada’s Tory statist and particularistic history helped to
generate social democratic institutions and communitarian values in
the second half of the twentieth century, which facilitated the growth
of unions. Conversely, the individualistic competitive values of the
United States were refurbished in the postwar prosperity, thus revers-
ing the Depression-spawned increase in collectivity orientations and
reducing the constituency for trade unions.
Values and attitudes apart, many analysts attribute the much larger
membership of Canadian unions to differences in the governmental
environment, the fact that unions north of the border have experienced
greater legal protections as compared to those operative in the United
States.” They contend that the divergence in the trends of union den-
sity in the two countries results in large part from the fact that federal
and provincial union representation legislation in Canada has encour-
aged labor organization. They emphasize that in contrast to Canada,
“the American legal scheme allows rather than encourages [collective]
bargaining, and that it also allows comparatively free play to the very
considerable forces opposed to it.”?
Reflecting populist traditions, American labor groups are seemingly
handicapped by the need to win representation elections, often held
months after the unions have submitted the requisite number of autho-
rization cards, or petitions, signed by at least 30 percent of the employ-
ees. In 1992, unions were winning only half of all such contests, down,
it should be noted, from three fifths in 1965, two thirds in 1955, and
three quarters immediately after World War II. In most of Canada, on
the other hand, unions are certified after demonstrating that they have
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 103

enrolled a majority, 50 to 60 percent depending on jurisdiction, as

dues-paying members. Where representation elections are required, as
in Nova Scotia, they are almost invariably held within two weeks.
Hence, Canadian employers have little or no opportunity to try to
change their employees’ pre-filing decision to join a union, while Amer-
ican companies can and often do conduct lengthy anti-union cam-
paigns prior to the election.
This argument is sustained by a number of American studies of the
effect of employer opposition to unions in certification elections, which
indicate that such activities play a major role in preventing union victo-
ries. Reviewing the literature, Richard Freeman and James Medoff
conclude that “opposition, broadly defined, is a major cause of the slow
strangulation of private sector unionism.””? Canadian employers are
less disposed to engage in unfair labor practices than Americans.”
American companies, however, have had less need in recent decades
to deter pro-union votes because the number of representation elec-
tions called by unions has dropped precipitously, from 7,773 in 1970 to
2,993 in' 1992.77
Although the main focus of the discussion on the effects of the legal
procedures affecting certification has been on variations in North
America, it should not be forgotten that European trade unions, most
of which are invariably more successful than North American ones in
recruiting members, operate without the sanction of certification by a
government agency. As labor law expert Derek Bok emphasizes:

What is distinctive about our [North American] law is the active part it
plays in regulating the process by which the union achieves recognition
from the employer. In other countries ... the laws create no formal
machinery [certifying unions] . . . no provision has been made for represen-
tation elections, nor does the law require the selection of a union to serve
as exclusive bargaining agent for any given group of employees.”®

The British experience, typical of that in Europe, assumes “that

trade unions must be allowed to operate informally, in a legal vacuum.
... The unions of manual workers had very generally gained recogni-
tion by their ability to strike in the works of employers who refused
it. . .”8° And except for the British, European labor organizations also
secure and hold members without contractual provisions that require
workers to join or remain in labor organizations, a common practice in
North America. As Everett Kassalow pointed out, “formal arrange-
ments, through collective bargaining (or other) arrangements to make
 104 American Exceptionalism

union membership a condition of employment, are largely absent in

continental Western Europe. Indeed, under a number of continental
West European national constitutions, or in separate labor statutes,
such compulsion is illegal.” Paul Weiler, who has emphasized the
importance of the legal framework in facilitating unionization, has also
questioned the extent to which legal changes can affect the situation:
“One should be wary of any claim that a mere variation in legal proce-
dure could actually influence larger trends in union organization.”!°'
The stress on the explanatory power of values is congruent with the
results of a National Bureau of Economic Research statistical analysis
of survey and aggregate structural data for the United States and
Canada by Henry Farber and Alan Krueger, which finds that “virtually
all the decline in union membership in the United States between
1977 and 1991 seems to be due to decline in demand for union repre-
sentation. There is no evidence that any significant part of the decline
in unionization is due to increased employer resistance. . . . Addition-
ally, very little . . can be accounted for by structural shifts in the com-
position of the labor force.”'”
The thesis that dissimilarities in public policy, or, as some argue, in
employer behavior, are largely responsible for the cross-border varia-
tions in union density is also challenged by the finding that the minor-
ity of employed persons who tell pollsters they would vote for a union
in a representation election is lower in the United States than in
Canada, and may be declining further; 39 percent so indicated in a
University of Michigan Survey Research Center study taken in 1977,
down to 33 and 34 percent in polls taken by the Harris Organization in
1984 and 29 percent in a National Opinion Research Center (NORC)
survey in 1991.!°? A Washington Post/ABC News Poll conducted in
1986, using a different sample, provided an even lower estimate: 24
percent. These findings coincide with the results of union representa-
tion elections. Not surprisingly, the proportion of American non-
union workers who believe “that unions improve the wages and work-
ing conditions of workers . . . fell significantly from 1977 to 1984.”
Survey evidence indicates that “workers who are satisfied with their
jobs are significantly less likely to demand union representation.”!®
Nearly three fourths of Americans surveyed by Harris Polls in Decem-
ber 1993 thought wages and working conditions had been improved as
a result of union effort, but only 34 percent of all adults and 44 percent
of adults from union households would rate overall union performance
positively. Such unwillingness by non-mémbers to support unions in
the respondents’ workplace and the decline of non-unionists’ confi-
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 105

dence in the efficacy of unions is presumably not affected by how labor

legislation is written or enforced, or the ways American employers take
advantage of these policies to defeat unions in representation elections.
Rather, as noted, they may reflect to some degree the refurbishment of
free market, individualistic values over the postwar decades in the
United States.
Employed Canadian seemingly feel differently. The most recent
Canadian polls on the subject show a higher percentage of non-union-
ists in Canada expressing preference for joining unions than are willing
to vote for union representation in the United States. A national Cana-
dian survey conducted by Angus Reid Associates in 1989 found in
response to the question, “Would you prefer to belong to a labour
union or would you rather not?” that 39 percent of non-union workers
said they would, compared to 29 percent among equivalent Americans
polled by NORC in 1991.!° Thus, independent of government or
employer reaction to union-organizing campaigns in any given com-
pany, these polls and the research of Farber and Krueger find that the
demand for unionization is greater among Canadian non-union workers
than among Americans, even though a much larger proportion of Cana-
dians are already in unions.!
In any case, the fact that the legal environment is more union
friendly while business is less aggressively anti-labor in Canada than in
the United States only raises the conundrum one step further to the
question why Canadian authorities, who have included many business-
related Conservative and Social Credit governments, are seemingly
more supportive or permissive with respect to unions than American
ones. British Columbia, which before the election of an NDP govern-
ment in 1991 had been governed for all but three of the previous
thirty-eight years by what was arguably the most ideologically right-
wing, laissez-faire, and anti-union-oriented government in North Amer-
ica, that of the Social Credit Party, is second only to Newfoundland
among Canada’s ten provinces in union density.'® Clearly, as John
Calvert emphasizes, varying labor laws “do not fall from the sky; they
reflect the prevailing norms and mores of the wider society.”!° Or, as
Bowden notes, “it can be plausibly argued that Canadian-American dif-
ferences in labor law reflect differences in underlying values.”!!° The
same may be said about cross-border variations in corporate behavior.
Comparative studies of the opinions of federal and provincial-state leg-
islators and high-level civil servants in both countries taken in the
1970s and 1980s, mentioned earlier, point up the cross-border differ-
ences between political elites. These indicate that the Canadians have
 106 American Exceptionalism

been more supportive of statist-welfare (Tory-social democratic) poli-

cies than Americans, and that Canadian Conservatives have been more
liberal on such issues than American Democrats.'!! These differences
in the orientation of political elites, which show up with respect to
income-redistribution policies, are probably also reflected in attitudes
to labor union rights.
These variations tie in with the behavior of the business sector. The
Dutch student of comparative labor movements Jelle Visser reports
that “in no other advanced capitalist democracy has capital gone so far
in rejecting trade unions and collective worker representation” as in the
United States.!!2 An American analyst of corporate behavior, David
Moberg, agrees, saying that “in no other advanced industrial country
... have corporate executives been as hostile to unions as in the
United States.” He goes on to comment that the “roots of this ‘Ameri-
can exceptionalism’ on the part of management run deep, forming the
complement to ... the much more analyzed ‘exceptionalism’ of Ameri-
can working-class consciousness.” Moberg links both exception-
alisms—business as well as labor—to America’s traditions and social
structure, which have “contributed to the creation of an individualistic
culture.”!3
The greater strength of the Canadian unions is tied to a more union-
friendly legal environment, more cooperative politicians, less hostile
employers, but more important than these, to the greater propensity of
workers to join than in the United States. As Brown notes, in Canada,
“the atmosphere of social solidarity coming down from its conservative
tradition might have been expected to let the trade unionist breathe
more freely than he could south of the border.”!"* All of these factors
reflecting different political cultures and national values are interre-
lated. They may help to account for the results of one cross-national
comparison of the attitudes among non-unionists toward joining trade
unions: “[T]here is at least one striking difference between the two
countries. Specifically, there appears to be a higher level of latent
unionism in Canada as measured by willingness of non-unionists to
take out union membership.”!
There is an additional important hypothesis which should be pre-
sented, that the greater retention of movement ideology, reflected in
the socialist political orientation of many Canadian unionists, has had
some effect in motivating Canadian union leaders to try harder, to see
organizing workers more in cause terms than their American compeers
do. Impressionistic evidence to this effect is based on very limited —
unrepresentative cross-border contacts, although a somewhat similar
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 107

argument has been made by Donald Swartz, who points out that since
the 1970s, Canadian unions have been more militant, less inclined to
make concessions, than those in the United States.!!* His thesis is sus-
tained by the cross-border variation in strike rates. Swartz emphasizes
that a major reason for Canadian unions splitting away “from their
American parents” in recent years is the “divergence over fundamental
trade union principles.” The refusal of the Canadian branch of the
United Auto Workers, in 1984, to accept profit sharing in lieu of the
traditional increase in base wage rates was responsible for the seces-
sion of the Canadian branch from the International and the creation in
1985 of the Canadian Auto Workers.!!” Swartz believes it is the greater
capacity for struggle in the North, compared to a willingness to com-
promise in the South, that “underlies the expansion of the Canadian
labour movement over the past two decades” and the decline in the
American.!!8
In examining the American experience, it is noteworthy that the
decline began at the time of the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955.
Dual unionism has always been anathema to American unionism, and
the assumption at the time was that unification would strengthen the
movement. It did not. It may be argued that the merger reduced an
important competitive element which had motivated union officials in
their organizing drives to beat out their rivals.'!!? Some more recent
American data which fit the assumption is the strength of teacher
unionism, the National Education Association and the American Fed-
eration of Teachers, which together comprise close to 3 million mem-
bers, and which have grown greatly during the period in which private-
sector unionism has declined. These two groups are known for their
zealous attempts to beat each other in organizing new areas.'”°
This explanation would seem to be confounded by the Canadian
record, since the federations also merged north of the border. There is,
however, more dual competitive unionism in Canada, national versus
international unions, and competitive Quebec organizations.’*) Yet
these aspects should not be exaggerated.
All these observations may be linked to the comments by Charles
McDonald, assistant to the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and
socialist journalist John Judis, who in seeking to account for union
membership decline in the United States, give serious emphasis to
“organizing neglect” by union leaders.'?? A 1994 New Republic article
by Judis reports on “a recent meeting of 150 local union leaders in
Chicago .. . [when in response to the query] how many had partici-
pated in an organizing drive, not one hand went up.”!” Neglect of a dif-
 108 American Exceptionalism

ferent sort characterizes American union leaders’ efforts in unfair labor

practice cases. Filing such cases with the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB) constitutes an important and resource-intensive
recourse for grieved workers. Canadian unions are more willing than
American ones to provide legal and financial support for workers
engaged in pressing unfair labor practice cases. Peter Bruce notes that
in America, “while union organizers often accompany workers and play
a semiactive role in section 8(a)3 hearings, the unions generally do not
commit their lawyers to prosecuting. Instead, they view this as the
NLRB’s responsibility.”!”4

CONCLUSION
ee

In conclusion, it may be reiterated that American political exceptional-

ism, the absence of a socialist party, is related to trade union excep-
tionalism, the weakest union movement in the democratic developed
world in terms of density. Canadian social democracy and unions, how-
ever, though much stronger and more militant than the American, have
not done as well as their brethren in the developed Commonwealth or
most of Europe. An interpretation of this difference is contained in
Louis Hartz’s suggestion that Canada is more like the United States
than the industrialized countries across the oceans, that it is not as
Tory, not as class-conscious, and more classically liberal than these
other nations. In other words, as compared to Australia, Britain, and
Europe, Canada is more Whig, less welfare-oriented, and less class-
conscious; as contrasted to the United States, it is more group-ori-
ented, more statist, and more communitarian. Robertson Davies, one
of Canada’s greatest novelists and a Tory, even argues that in spite of
Canadians exhibiting a greater “decorum in the discharge of social and
political affairs [than Americans] . . . beneath all of this we are a people
firmly set in the socialist pattern.”!** The American social structure and
values foster the free market and competitive individualism, an orienta-
tion which is not congruent with class-consciousness, support for
socialist or social democratic parties, or a strong trade union move-
ment.
The evidence drawn from political history, from studies of voting
behavior, and from patterns of trade union membership, all indicates
that the underprivileged and the working class in the United States are
less class-conscious and less organized than in Europe, differences
which, though having their ups and downs, have remained during this
 Socialism and Unionism in the United States and Canada 109

century.!*° This reflects (as noted) a different type of social class struc-
ture. The absence of a European aristocratic or feudal past, a relatively
egalitarian-status structure, an achievement-oriented value system,
comparative affluence, and a history of political democracy prior to
industrialization have all operated to produce a system which remains
unreceptive to proposals for class-conscious leftism.!?” The special
political, sociological, and economic conditions derived from America’s
history remain decisive. As the political scientist Walter Dean Burn-
ham emphasizes,

No feudalism, no socialism: with these four words one can summarize the
basic sociocultural realities that underlie American electoral politics in the
industrial era. ... There may well be much to support a theory of “Ameri-
can exceptionalism,” a theory that emphasizes the uniqueness of the histor-
ical and cultural factors that have gone into the making of the United
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 | CHAPTER 4
Two Americas, Two Value Systems:
Blacks and Whites!

The situation of African Americans has been qualitatively different

from that of any other racial or ethnic minority in the United States.
African Americans did not come willingly to this country seeking
reprieve from poverty or discrimination; they were, rather, forced into
the status of an underclass facing racism from the start. Being defined
either de jure or de facto as a caste for most of their history, blacks, like
European workers, are much more likely than whites to respond to
group-related, rather than individually oriented values. They are thus
the great exception to the American Creed, to American ideological
exceptionalism.

TWO PEOPLES, TWO STRATIFICATION SYSTEMS

ea

From its inception, the United States has been composed of two peo-
ples differentiated by skin color whose values and outlook stem from
radically different experiences. The dominant or majority position, as
set forth in the American Creed and described by many foreign socio-
logical observers of the country, emphasizes social egalitarianism,
respect across class lines, and meritocracy, equality of opportunity. The
minority situation, identified with the position of black Americans, has
clearly been for most of American history a system of explicit hierar-
chy, of caste, of inequality related to hereditary origins. Curiously,
many of the classic writings about the United States in the nineteenth
century (even those written by people who were strongly abolitionist),
which stressed its exceptional character as an egalitarian society, either
ignored the position of blacks or cited it as a major exception that
would invariably change as blacks were freed and were incorporated
into the larger system.
A stress on achievement, on moving up in the class system, linked
 114 American Exceptionalism

with the widespread belief in individualism and equality of opportu-

nity, has been greater in white America than elsewhere. On the public
policy level, this can be seen most clearly in the early extension of pub-
lic education to all, as well as the decision to try to give everyone a
common (equal) education. Of course this goal did not include blacks,
most of whom were slaves at the time.
The strength of this early American commitment to competitive
achievement may be seen in the many writings which consciously
rejected the European class-differentiated education system. To foster
equality of opportunity, the educational reformers, as noted earlier,
held up to scorn European academic high schools, the Gymnasia in
Germany, the lycées in France, the public and grammar schools in Eng-
land, which only served at most the top 10 percent of the population.
American educators and politicians rejected this elitist model as foster-
ing a rigid class society. Rather, they pressed for education in a com-
mon school. These trans-Atlantic variations continued long into the
twentieth century, as many European countries maintained academi-
cally high-standard schools attended by a small privileged minority,
who were destined for university.
The vitality of the early stress on meritocratic values is attested to by
one of the most remarkable and curious developments in American
history, the emergence in the late 1820s of the first political groups in
the world to be known as Workingmen’s parties, mentioned briefly in
chapter Three. In New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities,
these parties received between 10 and 15 percent of the vote in local
state elections. The Workingmen were not socialists; they believed in
private property, and they wanted people to strive to get ahead and
become rich precisely because they favored a more open, more com-
petitive society. The New York party, as we have seen, rejected as inad-
equate the idea of common schools, proposing instead the creation of
state-financed boarding schools. Attending the same school for five or
six hours a day would not change the basic environment of children of
diverse social origins. The only way to create the proverbial level play-
ing field, the Workingmen reasoned, was by raising the young of all
classes in a common atmosphere. They clearly linked class-based cul-
tural advantage to the perpetuation of inequality.
Not surprisingly, the Workingmen did not gain power. They were,
however, able to elect members to legislatures and city councils. The
fact that a party with this radical plank could get 10 to 15 percent of
the vote in New York City indicates that during the first half century of
the republic, at the time of slavery, there was a strong commitment to
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 115

the value of equality of opportunity for whites which was associated

with a belief in a competitive market economy.’
It cannot be stressed enough that much in contemporary attitudes
and behavior may be explained by the cultural emphasis on achieve-
ment. Most Americans believe that hard work, rather than “lucky
breaks or help from other people,” is what enables people to move up.
As noted, surveys taken by NORC from 1983 through 1992 found that
around two thirds of respondents consistently agreed that “people get
ahead by hard work.” Much larger percentages said “ambition” is essen-
tial or very important (88%) “for getting ahead in life” than felt the
same way about “coming from a wealthy family” (20%), or having well-
educated parents (39%). According to a 1991 ABC poll, close to three
quarters of American parents think their offspring will do better than
they. As sociologist Robert K. Merton has noted, Americans have
believed that everyone (which meant only white males until recently)
should try to be a success, regardless of background.’ Opinion poll data
indicate that this value remains powerful, and that most white people
now feel it applies to blacks and women as well. While understandably
ambivalent about the promise of America, a majority of blacks also are
committed to the belief that hard work and educational attainment will
enable them to get ahead. A 1991 Gallup Poll found that “69 percent
of whites and 68 percent of blacks say that African-Americans should
focus most of their energy on improving [their] education.”
The strength of the achievement norm is related to another value—
universalism—that should be discussed in this context. Contrary to
particularism or special treatment, universalism refers to the belief that
everyone should be treated similarly without reference to traits stem-
ming from birth, class, religion, ethnicity, gender, or color.
The treatment of blacks has been the foremost deviation from the
American Creed throughout the history of the republic. If we count
American history as starting around 1600, blacks have been here
almost from the beginning. However, they spent their first two and a
half centuries as slaves. For a hundred years after 1865 they largely
served asa lower-caste group working under explicit or implicit Jim
Crow policies, with little opportunity to gain educational or financial
resources. Caste systems, whether slavery or segregation, were much
more explicitly hierarchical and hereditary than European feudalism.
Blacks have only been given a claim to political equality and economic
opportunity since the 1960s.
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were concerned about
the way the treatment of blacks would impact on the future of Amer-
 116 American Exceptionalism

ica. Reacting to slavery, Jefferson wrote in 1781 that “I tremble for my

country when I reflect that God is just.”* Anticipating in 1791 the pos-
sibility that the country might break up because it could not resolve the
problem, George Washington told a friend that if this happened, “he
had made up his mind to move and be of the northern.”® Jefferson, the
author of the Declaration of Independence, felt—correctly as it turned
out—that its proclamation that “all men are created equal” would
undermine slavery, and that the idea of equality would have a continu-
ing effect on American politics.
In 1944, following the logic of Jefferson’s observation, Gunnar
Myrdal noted in An American Dilemma that white Americans, includ-
ing most southerners, believe they believe in the Creed even though
their racist practices violate it. From this assumption he concluded that
if blacks would organize to vigorously defend their rights and assert
that they were mistreated, the whites would give in. Once they were
forced to recognize that blacks were not treated equally, they would
have to change their behavior if they wanted to maintain their belief in
the Creed.’ The political successes of the civil rights movement in the
1960s showed Myrdal to be right.
The white American value system has emphasized the individual.®
Citizens have been expected to demand and protect their rights on a
personal basis. As we have seen, the exceptional emphasis on law in
the United States as compared with Europe, derivative from the Con-
stitution and the Bill of Rights, has stressed individual rights against
the state and other powers. The experience of black Americans, how-
ever, has focused on group characteristics, on defining and treating
people not according to their personal merits but according to their
ancestry, their race, and their ethnic group. Postfeudal Europe was also
organized in particularistic terms, that is, according to class back-
ground. However, Europe was less stringently stratified than the post-
slavery system in the United States. Thus pre-World War II America
differed from Europe in two ways: (1) for its large white majority, it was
much more egalitarian, individualistic, and populist; (2) for its black
minority, it was much more hierarchical and particularistic, group-
defined, less free, and undemocratic.

THE EUROPEAN COMPARISON

as

Stressing group characteristics encourages‘group solutions. In postfeu-

dal Europe, the emphasis on the importance of one’s station promoted
 _ Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 117

class-consciousness among the lower strata and, to some extent, a Tory

sense of noblesse oblige among the privileged. To reiterate a point made
earlier, upper-class conservative leaders, such as Disraeli in Great
Britain and Bismarck in Germany, favored government efforts to
improve the lot of the less affluent without necessarily changing their
position in the social order, beliefs which encouraged the rise of a
lower-class-based social democratic left. Americans, by contrast, have
always put more emphasis on expanding individual opportunity
through education. Comparative public opinion research documents
that they are more likely than others to approve of greater expenditures
for education than for increased welfare services. Comprehensive
analyses of attitudes toward public policies over the past twenty
years—mainly in the OECD countries—report that “the United States
is consistently at the bottom in its support for different kinds of social
welfare benefits.” The one issue “on which Americans fare much bet-
ter—and often the best—compared with other nations . . . [is] educa-
tional opportunity, assistance and spending.” And as Robert Shapiro
and John Young note, these attitudes stem from “Americans’ views and
values concerning individualism and the equality of opportunity, as
opposed to equality of outcomes for individuals.”
For much of this past century America has spent proportionately
much more public money on education than Europe, while Europe has
devoted more resources to welfare. The recent record bears out this
generalization, which is discussed further in chapter Eight. As of 1981,
about one fifth, 20.8 percent, of the American GDP was devoted to
social expenditures, including education, as compared with over one
quarter, 25.6 percent, as an average for all OECD countries. America
spent 26.4 percent of its total social expenditures on education, com-
pared with an OECD average of 22.7 percent.'® Statistical reports for
the mid-1980s reiterated this conclusion. In 1991, American educa-
tional expenditures amounted to 14.7 percent of all public spending;
the average figure for the OECD countries for the same year was 11.8
percent.!! The differences are even more striking when percentages of
age cohorts who have been exposed to post-secondary education are
compared.’
From early in the nineteenth century, the United States has led the
world in the proportion of its population completing elementary and
high school education. And while America also predominated in the
ratio of those attending college and university, the numbers and pro-
portions increased dramatically after World War II. In contrast to
America, most European countries have devoted a much larger share of
 118 American Exceptionalism

their GDP and public funds to improving the living conditions of their
working classes. Since the 1930s, the European Social Democrats have
had frequent opportunities to hold office and have been able to follow
through on improving the situation of the working class by emphasizing
group improvement policies. But, until brought to a realization of the
contrast with the United States, they preserved the elite high schools
and failed to focus on the expansion of university education. The pat-
tern may be illustrated by developments in the prototypical social
democratic polity, Sweden. In office from 1933 until 1991 (except for
six years) and again from 1994 on, the Social Democrats in their origi-
nal hold on office greatly expanded the welfare state, but failed to rec-
ognize that their policies would have little influence on the achieve-
ment orientations of working-class youth, particularly on the
proportions attending university or entering the professions. The situa-
tion in Sweden did not change until the American school desegregation
decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, was
announced by the Supreme Court in 1954. Up to that point, Sweden,
like most other European countries, had a class-segregated high school
educational system, with a privileged minority who attended the Gym-
nasia leading them to university-level education, while the majority
went to vocational schools that excluded the possibility of higher edu-
cation. The Swedes, the British, and others began to integrate their
high school systems in reaction to developments in the United States.
They adopted policies designed to facilitate individual mobility by
increasing the proportion of children from poorer families going to uni-
versity. The ratios, however, are still much lower than in America.

GROUP-ORIENTED SOLUTIONS IN THE

UNITED STATES
bass |

In the United States, the caste-like conditions facing blacks became

politically salient from the 1950s on and resulted, as in Europe, in
efforts to find solutions at the group level. These have been character-
ized as “affirmative action.” Originally used to describe early 1960s leg-
islation, the term has had two meanings. The first, which emerged in
the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, involved attempts to incorporate
blacks into the meritocratic race for success. Perhaps the best state-
ment presenting the logic of this policy was included in Lyndon John-
son’s Howard University speech on Juné 4, 1965. He said that we want _
all Americans to engage in the race, but some are not able to do so
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 119

because they arrive at the starting line with shackles on their legs. He
called for policies to remove these chains so that they could compete
equally. Soon thereafter, he issued an executive order requiring all gov-
ernment contractors to “take affirmative action that applicants are
employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without
regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Subsequent initia-
tives became the War on Poverty, including greater spending for edu-
cation through programs such as Head Start, Aid to Families with
Dependent Children, and other programs to strengthen the lower
class, disproportionately comprised of black families. The programs
were intended to increase opportunities for the poorest blacks and
whites to enable them to enter integrated and better-financed schools,
where they would acquire the skills needed to succeed.
These policies were reinforced by strong Fair Employment and Fair
Housing legislation designed to eliminate discrimination and the
effects of prejudice against blacks in the workplace, and the educa-
tional and housing markets, and eventually with respect to such caste-
like barriers in social relationships as club memberships. The programs
were based on the assumption that equal education and the full exten-
sion of political citizenship to blacks, which came with Voting Rights
Acts and judicial decisions, meant that blacks, like whites, could press
for their legal rights as individuals in the courts and administrative tri-
bunals.”?
The concern that these policies, particularly those designed to
reduce discrimination, were not working as quickly as was hoped, and
the fact that racial barriers still operated in different arenas, led to the
second meaning of “affirmative action.” It emphasizes equality of result
for groups rather than equality of opportunity for individuals, and
assumes that the best way to improve the situation of blacks is through
quotas or special preferences for jobs and educational opportunities.
Affirmative action quotas were first introduced in 1969 by the Nixon
administration by administrative fiat. Assuming that society imposed
disadvantages on blacks—educational, motivational, and social—vari-
ous Nixon appointees concluded that these could only be countered by
giving blacks special advantages as a group.
The implementation of these policies did not primarily derive from
specific demands made by blacks or the American left. Rather, they
seemed to represent an innovative effort by segments of the white elite,
initially the Republicans among them, to meet the civil rights move-
ment’s drive for equality.'* George Shultz, Nixon's first Secretary of
Labor, and Leonard Garment, the president's counsel, concluded in
 120 American Exceptionalism

1969 that redress to courts and administrative agencies for anti-dis-

crimination judgments would take too long and would not do much to
open the discriminatory parts of the labor market to blacks. With the
help of Labor Solicitor Lawrence Silberman, who wrote an extensive
brief that racial job targets were legal exercises of presidential powers
under the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, Shultz issued an
administrative order which provided for hiring quotas for black appren-
tices, ironworkers, plumbers and pipefitters, electrical and other work-
ers in the Philadelphia construction industry, an area in which employ-
ers and unions were cooperating to keep blacks out. The policy was
soon extended to other cities.!° Similar programs were pressed with
regard to faculty and students in higher education by other Nixon
officeholders, with the approval of the president.'¢ In explaining the
origins of the policy, Silberman, subsequently a Reagan senior judicial
appointee, wrote that he and his colleagues had been disturbed by the
ambiguity concerning the order issued in the Johnson administration
requiring “ ‘affirmative action’ by government contractors to redress
past employment discrimination. Appalled [and] ... uncomfortable
with the image the party of Abraham Lincoln had developed, and most
of all because the GOP was anxious to expand employment opportuni-
ties for blacks, we launched what I have come to see [by 1977] as a
fundamentally unsound policy.”!”
Ironically, strong efforts were made to stop these policies by a John-
son appointee, Comptroller of the United States Elmer Staats, as well
as by the trade union leadership, black civil rights leaders, and most
congressional Democrats. They argued that the anti-discrimination
clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VII, explicitly outlawed affir-
mative discrimination. Staats quoted Hubert Humphrey’s pledge that
nothing in the Act “will give any power to the [Equal Employment
Opportunity] Commission or to any court to require hiring, firing, or
promotion of employees in order to meet a racial ‘quota’ or to achieve a
racial balance,” and noted that its liberal Senate floor managers agreed
that there would be no “consideration of color ... [in] the decision to
hire or promote.”'® Not surprisingly, the AFL-CIO strongly opposed a
quota policy, reflecting the views of “rank-and-file white workers who
feared that such moves as the Philadelphia Plan would cost them jobs,
and who saw themselves paying for social changes at the cost of per-
sonal and family security.”'? Unexpectedly, black civil rights leaders
and Democratic congresspersons also rejected the quota plan as pitting
black workers against white workers. \
Congress defeated a rider to an appropriations bill which would have
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 121

explicitly banned quotas. Republicans voted against the rider by 124 to

41, while Democrats supported it by 115 to 84. President Nixon and
Attorney General John Mitchell actively campaigned to achieve this
result.*° Nixon proclaimed: “The Democrats are token oriented—we
are job oriented.”?! On the day Congress voted, December 23, 1969,
the president issued a statement emphasizing that this would be “an
historic and critical civil rights vote,” and threatened to veto the appro-
priation measure if it included a section outlawing quotas.” George
Shultz, speaking for the Nixon administration, attacked the civil rights
leaders for their unwillingness to help the struggle for quotas.” They,
in turn, criticized the president in partisan terms.

Clarence Mitchell, Washington lobbyist and director of the National Asso-

ciation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said . . . that it
was a “calculated attempt coming right from the President’s desk to break
up the coalition between Negroes and labor unions. Most of the social
progress in this country has resulted from this alliance.”

“Nixon's people are forcing employers to lay off workers and then telling
them to put in a certain quota of blacks into these vacancies. It is a strategy
designed to increase friction between labor and Negroes,” said black Rep.
Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Calif.) in November 1970.4

George Bush, then a Republican congressman from Texas, backed

the quota system, while liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough, who rep-
resented that state in the Senate, fought it. When Bush ran for the
Senate in 1970, he stressed his vote for a fair housing bill and his sup-
port of racial quotas in employment.”
The Nixon and subsequent administrations applied the principle of
“communal rights” to other minorities, as well as to women. This effort,
designed to guarantee equal results to groups, persisted through liberal
and conservative administrations, even though opinion polls have
repeatedly reported that overwhelming majorities of whites—both men
and women—and often more than 50 percent of blacks, said that the
principle of equal opportunity should apply to individuals only, that
special preferences or quota guarantees should not be accorded to
members of groups underrepresented in privileged jobs or educational
categories. By 1972, Nixon had publicly dropped his approval of quotas
and preferences, though his administration continued to enforce them.
Ronald Reagan, of course, later emphasized meritocracy, but it should
be noted that as recently as 1985, a majority of Republicans in the
 122 American Exceptionalism

Senate, led by Bob Dole, wrote an open letter to President Reagan

insisting on the continuation of preferences. By 1995, most of them
had seemingly reversed their position. Yet segments of American
elites—including conservative jurists, such as Nixon appointee
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, who faced bitter opposi-
tion from archliberal Justice William O. Douglas, and most Republican
members of the Court, felt that the individualistic emphasis in the
national creed should be amended to provide remedies for African
Americans.2° This concern has been extended to other groups who are
perceived to lack equal rights because of ascriptive or biological traits:
Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians (though the success of some of
them has undermined their place), women, and the disabled.

THE CASE FOR SPECIAL PREFERENCES

bes]

During the 1960s various analysts, most notably the black scholar
Harold Cruse, argued that equality of opportunity and formal integra-
tion were not enough for blacks. Given their history of oppression and
continued discrimination, blacks required recognition as a unique
national minority and group rights above and beyond those sought by
other minorities and the non-black poor. Cruse compared the black
situation to that of the Jews, and argued that although Jews had faced
great discrimination, all they needed was an end to discrimination and
the application of meritocratic policies to themselves. Hence, he
argued, this was what Jews demanded and ultimately obtained. Jewish
organizations, however, have made individual rights and meritocracy
into a fetish; they continue to emphasize the need to apply the Ameri-
can Creed to all immigrants, women, and minorities. But blacks,
Cruse argued, must demand and obtain group rights because they are
handicapped in open competition with whites by the continued
effects of the institutionalized racism which has marked American
history.”
African Americans are the minority group in the United States. They
are better able than members of any other ethnic, religious, gender, or
class category, except for Native Americans, to justify a claim for pref-
erential treatment. Beyond the general emphasis on group-oriented
policies is a demand for reparations. The argument is simple: white
America profited greatly from the 250 years in which blacks were held
as slaves and for most of the next 100 ‘years during the Jim Crow
period, when they continued to work in lower economic and caste posi-
 _ Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 123

tions as maids, unskilled workers in the cities, and stoop laborers in the
fields. Parallels are offered to the acknowledgment by Congress of the
obligation to recompense Japanese Americans for being incarcerated
during World War II and by the German government to pay repara-
tions to Jews and Israel.
In the past, the special advantages given to war veterans probably
have constituted the most important qualification to the emphasis on
meritocracy. Veterans have been given special preference when apply-
ing for civil service jobs. Even if a veteran is clearly not equal to a non-
veteran in test scores, experience, or skill, he or she may get the job.
Veterans also have been given advantages with respect to higher educa-
tion opportunities and obtaining home mortgages. These policies are
designed to make up for the disadvantages imposed on them by their
service in the military.?8
Particularistic values operate to handicap the socially depressed in
all societies. People everywhere tend to hire and to give special prefer-
ence to those with whom they have ties, relatives and members of the
same ethnic, religious, communal, or cultural groups they themselves
belong to. To a large extent, blacks have not fitted into privileged net-
works.
Most institutions do not publicly acknowledge such special prefer-
ences. Universities, though meritocratic and universalistic in their
explicit values, have had admission policies which provide for particu-
laristic advantages. Many, if not most, of the private universities,
including distinguished ones like Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford, have
given preference (all other things being equal or, sometimes, even not
close to equal) to the children of alumni, faculty, and to athletes.’
Universities also award special scholarships and fellowships which are
limited to applicants from particular regional, gender, ethnic, or reli-
gious backgrounds. Some, but not all, of these are now illegal.
In 1963, I noted: “Perhaps the most important fact to recognize
about the current situation of the American Negro is that equality is not
enough to assure his movement into the larger society.”*° And it is impor-
tant to remember that women and most other minorities have required
genuine equality of opportunity, not special help; this has certainly
been true for the Jews, as well as most Asian and European immigrant
groups. The Jews, the “Confucian” Asians, and the East Indians have
done better on average than old-stock white Americans. In any case,
immigrants generally have no claim on American society for preference
or special advantage. Whatever handicaps some have as a result of
inadequate education, lack of skills, or lack of socialization to the ways
 124 American Exceptionalism

of the cities are clearly not the fault of American society. Immigrants,
including Hispanics and West Indians, are doing better economically
after fifteen years in the country than persons born in the United
States with the same social characteristics.?! Although many of them
were not born here, roughly 40 percent of Mexican Americans are in
white-collar or higher employment positions today.*”
Lawrence Fuchs has argued that the evaluation of proposals for
preferential treatment in the occupational system should be linked to
the “problem of standards,” that is, the difference between jobs which
require competence and those which demand special ability and train-
ing. While it is possible to recognize higher levels of performance in
almost all occupations, in many, if not most, competence is what
employers require. Seniority rights in business, government, and edu-
cation, and legislation outlawing compulsory retirement ages are justi-
fied by assumptions about generalized competence, not superior
achievement, as sufficient qualification for employment. Hence the
contention that giving preference to blacks or other historically under-
privileged groups is particularly relevant to competence jobs, assuming
that other conditions are equal or close to equal. But it is argued that
positions for which high achievement levels are necessary, such as
scholarship, the arts, medicine, sports, airline pilots, and managers,
should not be subject to quotas and special preference policies. A
study determining the reasons for “the high rate of attrition of African-
Americans training to be pilots and navigators in the armed services
concluded that ... those who graduate from college with less than a
strong proficiency in verbal and quantitative skills would probably have
difficulty keeping up with the rigorous curriculum and rapid pace of
flight training ‘whether they are blacks or whites.’” Fuchs concludes
that affirmative action programs, whether for Navy flyers or ballet
dancers, are “necessarily limited to special recruitment and training
efforts.” However, he argues, efforts to increase the number of minority
workers among the less skilled such as “firefighters, machinists, com-
puter operators, and candidates for dental school” can include numeri-
cal goals, while permitting “race to be counted as one of many factors
in attempting to meet them, along with insisting on basic qualifica-
tions.”
Whatever the merits of the distinction between competence and
achievement in occupations, those in the less privileged positions—
whether firefighters, police officers, dental technicians, or assembly-
line workers—do not accept inherently disparaging estimates of their
worth and skills. Poll after poll finds that white workers see no reason
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 125

for meritocratic standards and universalistic rules not applying to

them. Conversely, it is the elite highly educated whites, whose posi-
tions and skill capital give them much more economic and status
security than their lower-status racial counterparts, who are more dis-
posed to favor or at least more willing to accept special preferences for
minorities.

AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION

bos)

Mass opinion remains invariably opposed to preferential treatment for

deprived groups. Whites are fairly consistently and overwhelmingly in
opposition; they favor meritocracy and individual competition. Blacks,
however, vary in their reaction when queried in national polls. They are
invariably more supportive of group rights, quotas, or special prefer-
ences than whites, but they differ in their response pattern depending
on how the question is posed. More often than not, however, a majority
or plurality supports meritocratic principles, though usually by a much
smaller percentage than whites. African Americans are pulled to favor
group rights, but as Americans they still respond favorably to the indi-
vidualistic ethos. The Gallup Poll has dealt with these issues over time
more frequently than any other survey organization. It repeated the
same question six times between 1977 and 1991:

Some people say that to make up for past discrimination, women and
minorities should be given preferential treatment in getting jobs and places
in college. Others say that ability as determined by test scores, should be
the main consideration. Which point of view comes close to how you feel
on the subject?

In each survey, only 10 or 11 percent of respondents said the

minorities should be given preferential treatment, while 81, 83, or 84
percent replied that ability should be the determining factor. When the
1989 answers were differentiated by the respondents’ race, blacks were
somewhat more supportive of preferential treatments than whites (14%
to 7%), while a majority of the African Americans (56%) favored “abil-
ity, as determined in test scores.” Women, it should be noted,
responded in an identical way to men; 10 percent supported preferen-
tial treatment, and 85 percent ability.** Princeton Survey Research
Associates, working for the Times-Mirror Center, presented the issue
somewhat differently eight times between 1987 and 1994: “We should
 126 American Exceptionalism

make every effort to improve the position of blacks and other minori-
ties even if it means giving them preferential treatment.” This formula-
tion was supported more strongly than the more complex one cited ear-
lier. In 1987, 24 percent of respondents agreed, rising to 34 percent in
1992, then falling to 29 in 1994. Blacks were more positive than whites
by 62 to 25 percent in 1994. As with the other Gallup questions, there
was little difference between the gender groups. The great majority of
white women opposed preferences in each poll. While over four fifths
of identified Republicans are against preferences, so are two thirds of
the Democrats. A relatively high proportion of those who identify
themselves as “strong liberals,” 43 percent, “endorse preferential treat-
ment,” but they constitute only 10 percent of the total sample.** The
same question was also put by the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll
eight times between May 1987 and September 1994, with comparable
results. Favorable responses appear to have moved up somewhat dur-
ing the 1990s, reaching a high point of 34 percent in 1993, but drop-
ping off to 29 percent in September 1994. The gap between blacks and
whites grew considerably.
Preferential treatment does somewhat better when it is justified as
making up for specific past discrimination, when ability is not posed as
an alternative, and when it is limited to blacks and applies only to insti-
tutions that have actually discriminated. The New York Times/CBS
national poll has asked repeatedly since 1985: “Do you believe that
where there has been job discrimination against blacks in the past,
preference in hiring or promotion should be given to blacks today?” In
1985, 42 percent answered yes, 46 percent no. Most recently, in 1993
and February 1995, support sentiment had dropped to 33 percent,
while 55 percent rejected justified preferences.
The opposition to preferences does not mean that whites think
blacks have attained equality or that the government should not outlaw
discrimination. In February 1993, Gallup found that 72 percent of all
whites said society does not treat people of all races equally. In August
1994, the same organization found that 44 percent of whites agreed
that “in the past few years there hasn't been much real improvement in
the position of blacks in this country,” down 10 percentage points from
1992. And the June 1993 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported
that 63 percent of their sample agreed that “Racial discrimination still
exists and the government should pass laws to eliminate it.” The major-
ity of both whites and blacks will support a policy described as “affir-
mative action” if the question does not mention quotas, as the ABC
News/Wall Street Journal poll found in July 1990. Two thirds of whites
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 127

(66%) and 84 percent of blacks responded favorably to the question:

“All in all, do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs in busi-
ness for blacks, provided there are no rigid quotas?” The Harris Organi-
zation reported somewhat similar results to a comparable query
repeated a number of times during the 1980s, as did CNN/Gallup in
January 1992 and September 1994, asking about “strengthening affir-
mative action laws for women, blacks and minorities” (49% in favor,
43% opposed in 1994).

PREFERENCES AND THE AMERICAN CREED

Lo]

It is interesting to note that two other beneficiaries of affirmative action

preferences, white women and Latinos, are less supportive of quotas as
a remedy for past discrimination than blacks, women much less so.
Most of the evidence for Latinos comes from surveys of Californians.
These find a range of responses during the 1980s supporting special
treatment or preference for minorities and women running between 55
and 67 percent among blacks and 37 and 45 percent among Latinos,
with Asians at 15 to 20 percent favorable.?” In 1995, The Field Poll
queried Californians on how they would vote on the “California Civil
Rights Initiative,” a measure which respondents were told would “pro-
hibit state and local governments from granting preferential treatment
to any individual or group or using race, sex, color, ethnicity, or
national origin as a criterion for hiring, promoting, granting admissions
to college, or selecting public contractors.” The overwhelming majority,
60 percent, said they would vote yes, while 35 percent replied no.
“White men and white women responded almost identically, 65-65
percent, yes. Blacks and Hispanics also were very similar, 42 and 49
percent yes.” When asked specifically about job preferences for His-
panics, the Latinos divided evenly, 46 percent for and 43 percent
against.*®
Latinos, like most Asians, seemingly see themselves as immigrants
and accept the society's emphasis on opportunity for them as individu-
als, not as members of oppressed groups. This orientation helps explain
the attitudes of Latinos toward learning and speaking English. Two-
fifths, “41 percent, of California Hispanics voted in support of a suc-
cessful 1986 ballot initiative amending the state’s constitution to desig-
nate English the state’s official language; and . . . in an opinion survey
two years later, 58 percent favored ‘making English the official lan-
guage of California.’”?? Upon reviewing a variety of studies, Peter
 128 American Exceptionalism

Skerry finds that “when Mexican Americans are faced with a choice
between English and Spanish, or when that choice is somehow con-
strained, most seem to opt for English.””
Many of the inconsistencies in American racial attitudes point to a
deep contradiction between two values that are at the core of the
American Creed: individualism and egalitarianism. Americans believe
strongly in both. One consequence of this dualism is that political
debate often takes the form of one consensual value opposing the
other. Liberals and conservatives typically do not take “alternative”
positions on issues of equality and freedom. Instead, each side appeals
to one or the other core value. Liberals stress the primacy of egalitari-
anism and the social injustice that flows through unfettered individual-
ism. Conservatives enshrine individual freedom and the social need for
mobility and achievement as values “endangered” by the collectivism
inherent in liberal nostrums. Both sides treat as their natural con-
stituency the entire American public. In this sense, liberals and conser-
vatives are less opponents than they are competitors, like two depart-
ment stores on the same block trying to draw the same customers by
offering different versions of what everyone wants.
Much of the progress in the early years of the civil rights movement
was made by breaking down the “compartmentalization” of the Ameri-
can mind and forcing the public to see that the country’s attitudes and
institutions fell outrageously short of our egalitarian ideals. It is the
egalitarian element in the American Creed that helped to create the
consensus behind the civil rights revolution of the past thirty years. But
the more recent focus of the civil rights movement, with its emphasis
on substantive equality and preferential treatment, has forced the
country up against the individualistic, achievement-oriented element
in the Creed.
The poll data reveal a “positive” pro-civil rights agreement when only
egalitarian questions are at stake, but a “negative” anti-civil rights con-
sensus when an issue also infringes on basic notions of individualism.
Thus, on the central issues involving racial discrimination and Jim
Crow practices, American public opinion is powerfully against discrim-
ination. Expressed attitudes on these issues have been consistently
“liberal,” and even the white South has joined the national consensus.
The general agreement dissolves, however, when compulsory integra-
tion and quotas are involved. Many whites deeply resent such efforts,
not because they oppose racial equality, but because they feel these
measures violate their individual freedom Liberals are quick to point
out the inegalitarian consequences of de facto segregation, but the data
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 129

show that most whites favor individual freedom over compulsory social
egalitarianism in racial matters. .
Most whites, and many blacks, continue to feel that it is better for
disadvantaged groups to work out their problems through individual
improvement and mobility than to press collective demands for all
members of the group. Most Americans approve of concrete federal
programs to help the disadvantaged and combat racial discrimination.
Given a choice, however, between government intervention to solve
social problems and “leaving people on their own” to work out their
problems for themselves, the public always chooses the latter option.”!
Affirmative action policies have forced a sharp confrontation
between egalitarian and individualistic values. Most Americans oppose
the notion of special treatment for blacks, even when it does not refer
to quotas or preferences, since such treatment also violates the notion
of equality across racial lines. Thus in an October 1989 ABC
News/Washington Post poll, 64 percent of whites and 44 percent of
blacks disagreed with the statement: “Because of past discrimination,
blacks who need it should get some help from the federal government
that white people in similar economic circumstances don’t get.”
There has been a vast improvement in white American attitudes
toward blacks, women, and other minorities since the 1950s.* Today,
their claims to full equality are widely accepted.*? There can be no
doubt that a large majority of white Americans have come to believe
that discrimination is wrong and that government should guarantee
the application of the competitive merit or achievement principle to
all, blacks and whites. More surprisingly, perhaps, the 1991 Gallup/
Newsweek poll reports that “72 percent of blacks and 52 percent of
whites said that they would prefer to live in a neighborhood that
was racially ‘half and half—more on both sides than felt that way
three years ago.” Over two thirds of whites and four fifths of blacks
claim to “know many members of another race well,” and almost half of
the former (47%) and 63 percent of the latter say they “socialize regu-
larly with members of another race.” A 1994 NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll finds that four fifths of blacks and seven tenths of whites
say they “have a close friend whose race is different.” And over four
fifths of blacks and three fifths of whites answer “very often’ in reply to
the query, “How often do you come into contact with people of other
races and ethnic groups ... 2?” Gallup indicates that almost no whites
(6%) report that they would feel “uncomfortable working with mem-
bers of another race” or “for a boss of another race.”** The NBC
News/Wall Street Journal poll reported in 1994 that 65 percent of
 130 American Exceptionalism

whites, up from 61 in 1992, 45 in 1988, and 43 in 1987, agreed that

“it's all right for blacks and whites to date each other.” Agreement by
blacks was even higher, 88 percent in 1994, up from 72 percent in
1987.
Americans make a critical distinction between compensatory action
and preferential treatment. Compensatory action involves measures to
help disadvantaged groups catch up to the standards of competition set
by the larger society. Preferential treatment involves suspending those
standards to admit or hire members of disadvantaged groups who are
unable to meet the same standards as white males. Relatively few
object to compensation for past deprivations in the form of special
training programs such as Head Start, financial aid, and community
development funds. Such programs meet with approval from the popu-
lation because they are consistent with the notion that race and sex
have in the past been “imperfections” in the market of free competi-
tion, that is, unjustifiable grounds for denying equality of opportunity
to certain categories of individuals.”
To return to the image of the shackled runner, Americans are willing
to do more than remove the chains. They will go along with special
training programs and financial assistance for previously shackled run-
ners, enabling them to catch up with those who have forged ahead
because of unfair advantages. But most Americans draw the line at pre-
determining the results of the race.
Policies favoring quotas and numerical goals for integration produce
a creedal response since they contradict traditional conceptions of the
meaning of equality of opportunity. Americans will accept the argu-
ment that race and sex, like poverty generally, are disadvantages
deserving of assistance, just as the majority of Americans approved of
the New Deal as a justifiable intervention in the free market. They will
accept remedial policies up to the point where it is felt that mobility
resources have been roughly equalized and the initial terms of competi-
tion are once again fair. But the data show that every attempt to intro-
duce any form of absolute preference meets with stiff and determined
resistance from the vast majority of Americans, including women and,
to a somewhat lesser extent, racial minorities.
In some measure, the distinction between “compensatory action”
and “preferential treatment” parallels the distinction drawn between
“equality of opportunity’ and “equality of results.” Compensatory
action is probably seen as a way to enhance equality of opportunity. _
Because blacks have been discriminated against in the past, it is fair to
give them special consideration so that they will get a better break in
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 131

the future. Preferential treatment, on the other hand, probably sounds

to most whites like an effort to force equality of results by predetermin-
ing the outcome of the competitive process.
The strongest support for preferential treatment seems to come from
the liberal intelligentsia, the 5 to 6 percent of the population who have
gone to graduate school, plus those who have studied liberal arts in col-
lege. It is also strong among the political elite, particularly Democrats,
but many Republicans as well. Prior to the 1994 elections, the Democ-
rats in Congress increasingly supported these policies, changes which
may flow from the fact that the proportion of Democratic members
who can be classified as liberal on the basis of their voting record has
increased steadily since the 1960s.‘ Although recent court decisions
have gone against the enforcement of quota policies, universities con-
tinue to press for numerical goals or special preferences. In so doing,
they attest to the documented greater strength of political liberalism
within them than in other institutions. And not surprisingly, the most
extensive application of numerical targets in higher education can be
found in the humanities and “soft” social sciences, the most left-dis-
posed fields in academe.

BLACK PROGRESS—A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE

ia

Government policies in the context of the largely positive economic sit-

uation since World War II have resulted in considerable improvements
for blacks. Though they remain behind whites with regard to income
and levels of employment, as a group they are much better off than
they were before the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the adop-
tion of various remedial programs, including affirmative action. Writing
in 1994, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., head of Harvard’s African American
Studies Department, notes that “never before have so many blacks
done so well.”*? Economist Peter Drucker sums up the post-World
War II changes: “In the fifty years since the Second World War the
economic position of African Americans in America has improved
faster than that of any other group in American social history—or in
the social history of any country. Three fifths of America’s blacks rose
into middle-class incomes; before the Second World War the figure
was one twentieth.”
Awareness of such gains is not widespread, however. This is partly
because the leadership of blacks, women, and Hispanics generally do
not admit to significant progress. Opinion polls taken in the mid-1980s
 132 American Exceptionalism

indicate that three fifths of the black leaders told pollsters that the situ-
ation of blacks was “going backward,” while two thirds of a national
black sample said they were “making progress.””? In early July 1990, an
NBG News/Wall Street Journal poll reported that 60 percent of all
blacks said that, compared to ten-years ago, blacks in America were
“better off,” while 29 percent reported they were “worse off.” Not sur-
prisingly, the 1991-92 recession led to more pessimistic views among
whites and blacks. Thus, the percentage of the latter polled by
Newsweek/Gallup who felt that “the quality of life for blacks [has] got-
ten worse .. . over the last 10 years” increased from 36 percent in June
1991 to 51 percent in March 1992.°° But a March 1993 Roper survey
found a considerable increase among African Americans and whites in
their positive evaluations of “Conditions for black people today with
regards to housing, education, job opportunities, social acceptance by
whites, etc. as compared to 10 years ago.” Over half, 53 percent of
black and 66 percent of white respondents, said conditions are “good”
or “excellent” today, as compared to 13 and 21 percent giving the same
responses about ten years ago. Only 6 percent of whites and 13 percent
of blacks said conditions are “poor” as of 1993, while 35 percent of the
former and 45 percent of the latter felt that way about the situation a
decade earlier. Both groups were much more optimistic about the way
things will be ten years from now. And in the same month, the New
York Times/CBS News Poll reported that 62 percent of blacks and 64
percent of whites agreed that “there has been significant progress
toward Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality.”
The refusal of some black leaders to admit improvement is under-
standable. The heads of groups seeking more from society and from the
state justify their demands by referring to the way in which existing
institutions and policies work against them. The worse things appear,
and the greater the discrepancy seems between themselves and others,
the more they can demand. Yet the repeated emphasis on how little
progress has been made serves to sustain the argument that purposeful
social action designed to benefit blacks simply does not work, that
there are factors inherent in the black situation which prevent them
from getting ahead. Not only most whites, but many blacks have
absorbed such negative self-images. Americans believe that what deter-
mines success or failure is hard work, regardless of whether a person is
black or white. Hence if blacks fail, it follows that it is largely their own
fault. Reacting to the dilemma, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes: “We
need something we do not yet have: a way of speaking about black
poverty that does not falsify the reality of black achievement; a way of
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 1 33

speaking about black advancement that does not distort the enduring
realities of black poverty.”>!
The data are consistent in this area) NORC found that during
1985-89, 62 percent of whites and 36 percent of blacks agreed that
the reason blacks on average have worse jobs, incomes, and housing
than white people is that “most blacks just don’t have the motivation or
will power to pull themselves out of poverty.” An ABC News/Washing-
ton Post poll taken in October 1989 found that 60 percent of whites
and 60 percent of blacks agreed with the statement: “If blacks would
try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.” The same survey
found 52 percent of blacks and 56 percent of whites accepting the
view that “discrimination has unfairly held down blacks, but many of
the problems blacks in this country have today are brought on by
blacks themselves.” A Gallup Poll conducted in December 1989
reported similar results in response to the question: “Who do you think
is more to blame for the present conditions in which blacks find them-
selves—white people or blacks themselves?” A small majority (55%)
held blacks responsible, while only 18 percent said whites, and the
same percentage, 18, “feel that whites and blacks are equally to blame
for their current situation. ... However, even among blacks it is more
common to blame blacks themselves (34 percent) than it is to blame
whites (22 percent).”? In July 1993, Gallup posed the issue differently:
“On average, blacks have worse jobs, income and housing than white
people. Do you think this is mostly due to discrimination against
blacks, or is it mostly due to something else?” Almost three quarters,
73 percent, of white respondents replied “mostly something else,” but
half, 49 percent, of the blacks chose the same response; only 44 per-
cent said their deprived situation was “mostly due to discrimination.”
Such beliefs have negative consequences. First, they reinforce racist
attitudes and stereotypes. Whites increasingly seem to believe that
they, or their officials, have done a great deal for blacks, but since the
situation does not appear to be improving there must be something
wrong with them. In early January 1991, NORC released the results of
a survey taken in 1990. It indicated that most whites believe blacks to
be less intelligent, lazier, more violence-prone, and more inclined to
prefer to stay on welfare than whites and four other ethnic groups
listed.
The same set of beliefs also undermines black morale and ambition.
Reports of little improvement, even of retrogression, tell blacks they
cannot succeed. Black youth are told that the society is against them
and that there is therefore no point of trying to work hard or study.
 134 American Exceptionalism

Large numbers of blacks develop or retain the same invidious stereo-

types about themselves as many whites do. These feed into feelings of
self-hatred.
The damage is compounded by the news media’s relentless focus on
the social pathologies of the ghettos, which creates the impression that
most blacks live wretched existences. Stories pour out emphasizing the
disproportionate presence of blacks in urban crime and among the
homeless, as well as the considerable percentage they form of the
imprisoned, their high infant mortality, adult illness and early death
rates, and so forth. Yet social scientists estimate that the underclass,
both black and white, is small. William Julius Wilson, the social scien-
tist most responsible for the focus on the urban underclass, now identi-
fies the ghetto poor, a term he prefers, as those living in “areas of
extreme poverty, that is, those in which 40 percent of the people are
poor.”>3 He estimates these comprise a sixth of the blacks, who are
“truly disadvantaged, a sort of destitute population.”** The Urban Insti-
tute reaches a lower figure, noting that “if one uses multiple criteria
such as being persistently poor, living in a poor neighborhood, and
being engaged in dysfunctional behavior . . . most of the available esti-
mates suggest the underclass [black and white] is small—probably in
the neighborhood of 2 or 3 million people in 1980.”*° About two thirds
of them are black, a fifth are Hispanic.** Paul Peterson also concludes
that metropolitan census tracts marked by deep poverty contained “lit-
tle more than one percent of the U.S. population in 1980.” Still the
number living in such underclass areas is growing, even if the total
remains small.*8
The media-driven impressions that most blacks are in the underclass
are clearly wrong, a fact acknowledged by Richard Harwood, the
ombudsman at The Washington Post. Recognizing that most blacks are
in “middle- and upper-income classes ... [or] are part of the broad
working class where children, because of increasing white-collar job
opportunities, are headed for middle class lives,” Harwood believes
that media bias, including that of his own influential paper, strongly
contributes to the negative picture of black America. “There is another
factor . . . our traditions of muckraking journalism, which are especially
strong at The Post. It looks at society from the bottom up in the hope of
reforming and changing it. . . Of necessity, misery and failure are its
preoccupations. ... [Rleportorial imbalance ... creates demeaning
stereotypes of blacks as a race.”*?
To borrow Ralph Ellison’s phrase, the “invisible man” of the 1990s is
the successful black working- and middle-class suburbanite, not inter-
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 135

acting with ghetto blacks and largely ignored by whites.® Ironically, as

Richard P. Nathan writes, the identification of the black situation with
the ghetto poor stems from the fact that “members of racial minority
groups who are educated, talented, and motivated can assimilate in
ways that a generation ago would have been thought inconceivable.”
Few note the blacks who “make it.”*! Yet the record is clear. “The black
suburban population grew by 70 percent during the 1970’s, fed primar-
ily by an exodus from central cities. This trend has continued into the
1980's as the number of black suburbanites swelled from 5.4 million to
8.2 million. Between 1986 and 1990, 73 percent of black population
growth occurred in the suburbs.”
Seeking a better quality of life, blacks and other minorities have
moved to the suburbs as a reflection of their new middle-class status.
“Minority suburbanization took off in the 1980s,” University of Michi-
gan demographer William H. Frey notes, “both as the black middle
class came into its own and as more assimilated Latinos and Asians
translated their moves up the socioeconomic ladder into a suburban
lifestyle.”*? However, there are significant differences in migration rates
between these minority groups. While the black suburban population
grew by 34.4 percent from 1980 to 1990, Hispanics and Asians regis-
tered gains of 69.3 and 125.9 percent, respectively. These patterns
continue to provide evidence for the long-term immigrant success story
in the American experience, indicating that the divide between what |
call the two Americas is largely limited to whites and blacks, not whites
and people of color.
It is important to recognize that the situation of a major portion of
black America was improving during the sixties and seventies. While
there is a great deal of debate about the definition of poverty, census
data indicate that the percentage of blacks living in poverty declined
from 55 percent in 1959 to 33.5 percent in 1970. The rate has fluctu-
ated somewhat since then, depending on the state of the economy. It
moved up in the early 1980s, then fell during the Reagan prosperity,
down to 30.7 percent in 1989. It then increased during the recession of
the early 1990s to 33.1 percent in 1993, still much lower than during
the pre—civil rights era.
The stability in the poverty rate figures conceals significant changes
within the African American population, which has produced a sizably
better-educated and more affluent sector. The proportion of blacks
ages 25 and over who are high school graduates increased from 51 per-
cent in 1980 to 73 percent in 1994. During that same period, the white
cohort reached 82 percent.® According to the Census, “The annual
 136 American Exceptionalism

dropout rate for Blacks declined from 11 percent in 1970 to 5 percent

in 1993. In 1993, there was no statistical difference in the annual high
school dropout rate of Blacks and Whites.”*°
Economists James P. Smith and Finis R. Welch, analyzing changes
in the situation of blacks since World War II, concluded in 1986 that
“the real story of the last forty years has been the emergence of the
black middle class,” which “as a group ... outnumbers the black
poor.” These blacks are married or in stable long-term relationships.
The income of married blacks is 77 percent of that of comparable
whites, which is again a considerable increase from well below 60 per-
cent two decades ago.
These drastic social and economic changes have led to growing dif-
ferentiation within the black community. As a National Academy of
Sciences panel, writing in the late eighties, noted:

Conditions within the black community began to diverge sharply in the

1970s. This divergence can be seen very clearly in the experience of young
men. By the early 1980s, black men aged 25-34 with at least some college,
earned 80-85 percent as much as their white counterparts. They also
achieved some gains in private-sector white-collar positions. In terms of
education, these black men represented the top one-third of their age
group. At the other end of the group were the one-quarter of black men
aged 25-34 who had not finished high school and who could not compete
in the stagnant 1970s economy. An increasing number dropped out of the
labor force altogether. . . .°°

The two largest groups in the black class structure, the authors say,
are now “a lower class dominated by female-headed families and a mid-
dle class largely composed of families headed by a husband and wife.”®
The problem is that most black adults live in stable family and eco-
nomic situations while most black children do not. They are the off-
spring of the large number of black women who are single mothers nei-
ther living with nor supported by a male head of household. Recent
statistics indicate that well over half of all black births are out of wed-
lock. The proportion of black children born in female-headed house-
holds was 23 percent in 1960, 28 percent in 1969, 45 percent in 1980,
and 62 percent at the start of the nineties.” The increase in the rate is,
in large part, a function of married blacks having fewer children.’! Mid-
dle-class married black fertility is now below the point necessary for the .
maintenance of the population.”* Incomes for the black female-headed
households are well under those of married blacks. “The poverty rate for
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 137

two-parent black families with children was 12.5 percent in 1988, for
single-parent families with children, the poverty rate was 56.3 per-
cent.’” Victor Fuchs’s analysis of the relationship of gender to poverty
demonstrates that the large proportion of women in single-parent situa-
tions accounts for much of the continued disproportionate presence of
poverty among blacks.” Yet as Margaret Simms, the director of
Research Programs for the (African-American) Joint Center for Political
and Economic Studies, notes, Census Bureau data indicate that “con-
trary to the image of a population locked into welfare dependency, more
than three-fourths of single black mothers held jobs.””°
It is important to recognize that the magnitude of black illegitimacy
is grossly exaggerated. The increase in the rate is more a function of a
decline in legitimate births than of an increase in out-of-wedlock preg-
nancies.’° Christopher Jencks calculates that if married black women
had borne as many babies in 1987 as they did in 1960, “the proportion
of black babies born out of wedlock would have risen only from 23 per-
cent in 1960 to 29 percent by 1987.”””? And a 1994 Census Bureau
Report on Characteristics of the Black Population indicates that “the
rate of babies being born to unwed black teenagers—about 80 per
1,000 unmarried teenagers—remained virtually the same from 1970
through 1990,” while that for unmarried whites increased.”
Whatever the causes of childhood poverty, affirmative action is no
remedy for this group. Preference policies or quotas are not much help
to an illegitimate black ghetto youth who grows up in poverty and
receives an inferior education. “Black [young] men with less than a
high school degree consistently earned the smallest proportion of their
white counterparts’ income.””? Many do not have marketable skills
which would enable them to be considered for well-rewarded posi-
tions. In any case, the federally enforced contract compliance program
has “raised demand for black males more in highly skilled white-collar
and craft jobs than in the blue-collar operative, laborer, and service
occupations.” Litigation efforts using the anti-discrimination section of
the Civil Rights Act (Title VII) have led to considerable gains in white-
collar positions, especially in professional and managerial
employment.*? Jonathan Leonard notes: “The percentage of black men
in the professional and managerial occupations rose from 4 percent in
1949 to 13 percent in 1990.”! But as William Julius Wilson has
emphasized, “affirmative action programs are not designed to deal with
the unique problems of the black poor—problems which have devas-
tatingly affected the makeup of underclass families.’ The policies are
much more likely to benefit
 138 American Exceptionalism

minority individuals from the most advantaged families . . . [who are] most
qualified for preferred positions—such as higher-paying jobs, college
admissions, promotions and so forth. Accordingly, if policies of preferential
treatment for such positions are conceived not in terms of the actual disad-
vantages suffered by individuals but rather in terms of race or ethnic group
membership, then these policies will further enhance the opportunities of
the more advantaged without addressing the problems of the truly disad-
vantaged.®

Comparisons of the relationship between educational and economic

attainments within each racial group indicate that the advantage of col-
lege attendance is much greater among blacks. And a study of educa-
tion, occupational mobility, and earnings from 1974 and 1981 of young
males (ages 18-35) also found that “black college graduates obtain
more prestigious posts than their white counterparts,” a result attrib-
uted by the researchers to “employer sensitivity to affirmative action
requirements,” as well as to the “concentration of educated blacks in
the public sector.”** O'Hare et al. report that the median income of
families headed by young black college graduates is on average almost
as high as for comparably educated whites, $54,400 compared to
$58,800. “Average incomes for white families headed by single women
who are college graduates are no higher than for black families.”®
Defining “affluence” as an income of $50,000 or more, the “number of
affluent black families increased from 266,000 in 1967 to just over a
million in 1989. ...” These rates of change, however, declined during
the recessions of the early eighties and nineties and the halts in the
growth of government employment.®* College-educated black women
continue to do well, but equally trained males with degrees do not.
The implication that there is relatively little reverse discrimination
for lower-skill positions is sustained by the result of an Urban Institute
study which sent equally qualified whites and blacks to apply for gen-
eral labor, service, retail, and clerical positions in Chicago and Wash-
ington, D.C., in 1990. It reported that whites were treated better in job
interviews in 20 percent of the cases, compared to 7 percent for blacks,
and were more likely to be hired. One finding of this research is heart-
ening; there was no discrimination in three quarters of the interview
situations. But blacks are still much more likely to suffer from racism
in working-class job markets than whites are to experience reverse dis-
crimination.®’
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 139

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS
ea

As the United States approaches the twenty-first century, the debate

over affirmative action continues. This phenomenon should not be sur-
prising since the issues involve efforts to maintain or change some of
the core values of the nation—individual versus group rights—and
affect feelings about opportunity and security for both races.
Prior to the 1992 and 1994 elections, the arguments surrounding
quotas or preferences were increasingly seen as strengthening the
Republicans, who vigorously emphasized meritocratic standards.°%
Their earlier support for quotas had been forgotten. Most Democrats
were uneasy as to how to deal with the issue. They were faced with a
dilemma: how to respond to pressure from civil rights groups and the
intelligentsia on the one hand, and on the other, how to deal with the
fear that a continuing identification with quotas would alienate the
party's traditional base of white working-class support. In this connec-
tion it is interesting to recall that in 1965, in private White House dis-
cussions about civil rights programs, Lyndon Johnson said: “We have to
press for them as a matter of right, but we also have to recognize that
by doing so we will destroy the Democratic party.” He anticipated that
significant sections of the white South and the white working-class in
the North would defect on racial issues.®? The record indicates that
this happened, particularly in presidential elections from 1968 to 1988
and in the 1994 congressional contests. A New York Times/CBS News
poll conducted in mid-year 1991 found that 56 percent of Americans
said the Democratic Party “cares more about the needs and problems
of blacks,” while only 15 percent replied that the Republicans do.
When asked the same question about “the needs and problems of
whites,” 45 percent answered the Republicans care more, only 19 per-
cent said the Democrats do, and 14 percent said both parties care.
How salient is white concern over affirmative action? We know that
in 1990 Jesse Helms won in North Carolina while using this issue, and
ex-Klansman David Duke emphasized it in Louisiana and received a
majority of white votes. Pete Wilson focused on Dianne Feinstein’s
earlier espousal of quotas in government employment and beat her for
governor of California in 1990. The polling evidence suggests that the
debate hurt the Democrats. Many less affluent whites responded to
the argument that the number of jobs available for them declined as a
result of preference for blacks.% Two studies undertaken in 1985 and
 140 American Exceptionalism

1987 by Stanley Greenberg, then of the Analysis Group and subse-

quently Clinton’s pollster, commissioned by the Michigan Democratic
Party to investigate white male blue-collar defections from the party,
found that negative reactions to affirmative action had played a major
role there. A summary of the reports notes:

Much to the surprise and dismay of both Greenberg and his sponsors,
white fury over affirmative action emerged as a top voter concern in Green-
berg’s 1985 report and in a second report in 1987. Quotas and minority
preferences were a primary source of anti-government, anti-Democrat
anger among white blue-collar voters. Democratic campaign themes such
as “fairness,” “equity,” and “justice” had been perceived—not without justi-
fication—as code words for quotas. Therefore, white voters had become in
Greenberg’s terms, “de-aligned” from the Democratic Party.”!

A Democratic pollster’s study of voters in Louisiana found that racial

issues played an important role in the election there. Geoff Garin
writes that the response to one statement distinguished Duke voters
more than anything else: “Qualified whites lose out on jobs and promo-
tion because blacks get special preference due to affirmative action hir-
ing goals.” A majority of Duke supporters, 52 percent, said this hap-
pens “a lot,” as compared to 25 percent who felt this way among those
who backed his opponent.** National polls indicate the same concern.
Two surveys, one conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute
for Social Research in 1986 and the other by NORC in 1990, found
large majorities of whites replying that it is “very likely” (28% in both)
or “somewhat likely” (48 and 42%) “that a white person won't get a job
or promotion while an equally or less qualified black person gets one
instead.” The 1986 study indicated that two fifths of the whites
believed that they personally or someone in their family would experi-
ence job discrimination. In June 1991, the New York Times/CBS News
poll asked a national cross section: “When preference in hiring or pro-
motion is given to blacks, do you think in the long run this helps
whites, hurts whites, or doesn’t affect whites much one way or the
other?” A plurality, 47 percent, replied it does not affect whites, but
two fifths said it does hurt them. A March 1995 Washington Post/ABC
News poll found that 51 percent of all Americans (57% of white males)
think that “affirmative action programs giving preference to women,
blacks and other minorities result in less opportunity for white men.”
Thirteen percent of whites reported having been denied a job or pro-
motion for racial reasons. A report of an earlier 1991 poll sponsored by
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 141

the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights also stated “that many

white voters believe there is pervasive reverse discrimination in the
work place and that civil rights leaders are more interested in special
preferences than in equal opportunity.” The Civil Rights Act of 1991,
which passed in slightly modified form and was signed by President
Bush after much publicized misgivings, was, according to its propo-
nents, designed to facilitate lawsuits for remedial action by individuals
claiming discrimination.
In 1992, Bill Clinton, running as a New Democrat and advised by
Greenberg, rejected and even criticized the special preference or quota
policies identified with his predecessors. In office, however, he seem-
ingly returned to and extended them, by stressing racial, ethnic, and
gender “diversity” in his political appointments.*? Polls continued to
reveal popular disdain for quotas, now presented by President Clinton
as “diversity,” attitudes which appeared to have contributed to the pres-
ident’s low approval ratings in 1994, particularly among men, and to
the severe electoral defeats experienced by the Democrats in the mid-
term congressional elections. Republicans moved to a substantial
majority position in both houses after four decades in the minority.
In interpreting the election, Thomas Edsall of The Washington Post
emphasized the role which considerations of reverse discrimination
played in determining the outcome. Many white males reacted to a
belief that as a group they were suffering from reverse discrimination.
He called attention to the votes of “White men who feel devalued and
displaced everywhere from the service sector to the ranks of middle
management, who see the rights revolution on behalf of women and
blacks moving beyond a level playing field to a system of exclusionary
favoritism and who see a future (and present) of sharply declining
wages and status. White men voted Republican by a margin of 63 to 37
percent.””4
Edsall’s analysis is congruent with a variety of recent poll data which
indicate that white men are particularly concerned about and opposed
to special preferences for “qualified blacks” to remedy “past discrimina-
tion.” Thus, Gallup found in March 1993 that only 15 percent of white
males favored such policies; 83 percent were opposed, as contrasted to
24 percent supportive and 72 percent against among “others,” i.e.,
women and minorities. The same survey inquired whether “white
males are paying a fair penalty or an unfair penalty for advantages they
had in the past—or don’t you think white males are paying a penalty?”
Almost half of the white males thought they were paying an “unfair
penalty,” while 29 percent replied “no penalty.” Only 9 percent said
 142 American Exceptionalism

they were paying a fair penalty. And a January 1995 poll taken by
Time/CNN found that 77 percent of a national sample thought that
affirmative action “sometimes or frequently discriminates against
whites. Even among black respondents, 66% answered the same
way.””> In April, two-thirds of those interviewed by the New York
Times/CBS Survey agreed preference “results in discrimination against
whites.”
These findings do not imply increased attitudinal backing for dis-
crimination. Rather, as Edsall notes, Americans continue to show
“strong support for basic equalitarian principles, including equality of
opportunity and the obligation of employers to’ give everyone a fair
chance.” There is “strong opposition to discrimination practices based
on race, gender, age or disability.” However, as the Leadership Confer-
ence on Civil Rights survey indicated in 1991, “civil rights laws are
seen by a substantial number of voters as creating unfair advantages,
setting up rank or class privilege in the labor market.””® Commenting
on the same study, a black Washington Post columnist, William Rasp-
berry, emphasized:

White Americans ... do not see themselves as racists, or as opponents of

equal opportunity and fundamental fairness. What they oppose are efforts
to provide preferential benefits for minorities. . . .

They aren't buying. How could we [blacks] expect them to buy a product
we have spent 400 years trying to have recalled: race-based advantages
enshrined into law??”

Two surveys conducted by Gallup for CNN and USA Today, one at
the start of the Clinton administration in February 1993 and the sec-
ond in December 1994, provide further evidence that concerns with
minority preference contributed to the Democratic debacle. Gallup
inquired: “How often does it happen these days that a less qualified
black person gets a job or promotion, only because of affirmative
action?” White males were more disposed to reply “very often” than the
sample as a whole or white women. The percentage of the entire sam-
ple who so answered increased over the twenty-two months of the
Clinton administration, from 26 to 34 percent, while white men went
up from 29 to 38 percent. The change was comparable to the shift in
their vote from 1992 to 1994.
These findings are reinforced by chahges reported by the Los Ange-
les Times and Newsweek polls. In a September 1991 survey by the for-
mer, 24 percent of the national sample and 32 percent of the white
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 143

male respondents agreed that “affirmative action programs designed to

help minorities get better jobs and education go too far these days.”
(Thirty-seven percent of the total and 16 percent of the white men said
they “don’t go far enough.”) Three and a half years later, in January
1995, 39 percent of all those interviewed and fully half, 49 percent, of
the white males thought affirmative action goes too far, an over-50 per-
cent jump among the latter. Newsweek inquired in 1987 and 1995,
“Have we gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country?” Perhaps
because the sympathetic phrase “designed to help minorities” was not
in the question, more whites agreed than in the L.A. Times poll, 54
percent in 1995, up from 42 percent in 1987.
There is also evidence to suggest that there is widespread belief that
African Americans no longer need affirmative action policies. A March
1995 Newsweek poll found that 46 percent of the sample believe that
“blacks’ status in the workplace would stay about the same without
affirmative action.” Thirty percent thought it would get worse, and 19
percent believed it would improve.

CONCLUSION
aa

Special racial, ethnic, and gender-based preferences have introduced a

new approach to promoting equality in American life. The old
approach, initially implied in the Declaration of Independence, empha-
sized equality for individuals, equality of opportunity. The new one
focuses on equality for groups, equality of result. It is the collision of
these two views on equality that has underscored the growing public
controversy over affirmative action and quotas, and that is symbolic, in
some ways, of the larger friction between the black situation and the
American Creed. In order to understand how these perspectives fit into
the American debate, this chapter has examined their origins in the
diverse historical experiences of whites and blacks. It was the poten-
tially complementary egalitarian and individualistic elements in the
American Creed that created the consensus behind the civil rights rev-
olution which began in the 1960s. But the more recent focus of the
civil rights movement, with its emphasis on substantive equality and
preferential treatment, explicitly conflicts with the individualistic,
achievement-oriented element in the Creed.
It is important to recognize that white opposition to various forms of
special governmental assistance for blacks and other minorities is in
part a function of a general antagonism to statism and a preference for
personal freedom in the American value system. The American Creed,
 144 American Exceptionalism

as we have seen, subsumes classical liberalism, which strongly distrusts

the state and emphasizes competitive meritocracy.”
Public opinion research indicates that the vast majority of Ameri-
cans, including most blacks, believe that this is still a land of opportu-
nity. They not only believe in meritocracy; they think that it exists. As
of 1987, according to NORG, 72 percent of Americans said that they
have a good chance of improving their standard of living, many more
proportionately than Italians (45%), Germans (40%), British (37%), or
Dutch (26%).%° Although more Americans go to college than people in
any other country, close to two thirds of Americans (65%) say that the
opportunity to go to college should be increased. This figure is higher
than among the British (55%), the Germans (31%), or other Europeans
and Japanese. These views tie in with the greater propensity of Ameri-
cans than Europeans to believe that “ambition is [essential or very
important] for getting ahead in life.”!°° When asked, however, how gov-
ernment should provide financial assistance to college students, more
Americans than Europeans respond through loans (by 57 to 31%), and
more Europeans favor government grants (by 51 to 31%).'°!
The findings of comparative survey research completed in the early
1980s and repeated in 1990 in the World Values Surveys, discussed
briefly in chapter Three, imply that the contemporary opposition to
preferential treatment for blacks or other underprivileged minorities is
not primarily a result of racial prejudice. The results point to varying
attitudes about equality of result in the United States, Canada, and
eleven West European countries. Interviewees in each country were
told:

I'd like to relate an incident to you and ask your opinion of it. There are two
secretaries, of the same age, doing practically the same job. One of the sec-
retaries finds out that the other earns 20 dollars [100 marks, Kroner, etc.] a
week more than she does. She complains to her boss. He says, quite
rightly, that the other secretary is quicker, more efficient and more reliable
at her job. In your opinion, is it fair or not fair that one secretary is paid
more than the other?

The question is clearly and intentionally biased in favor of obtaining

the reply that the more productive secretary should be paid more, and
large majorities in North America and Europe answered this way.
However, twice the proportion of Europeans (39% in 1981, 27% in
1990), as of Americans (18% in 1980, 15% in 1990), said that it is
unfair to pay more to the more efficient and more reliable person.
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 145

Americans are clearly more likely to believe in distinguishing by merit.

Canadians fall between the two; 25 percent in 1980 and 18 percent in
1990, said it was unfair.!°?
The same studies found comparable cross-national difference with
respect to statements which emphasize personal liberty and individual
initiative versus a reduction of class differences. Respondents were
asked:

Which of these two statements come closest to your own opinion? I find
that both freedom and equality are important. But if Iwere to make up my
mind for one or the other, I would consider personal freedom more impor-
tant, that is, everyone can live in freedom and develop without hindrance.

Certainly both freedom and equality are important. But if I were to make
up my mind for one of the two, I would consider equality more important,
that is, that nobody is underprivileged and that social class differences are
not so strong.

Most people in the United States, 74 percent in 1981 and 71 in

1990, favored personal liberty over class equality (23 and 24%, respec-
tively). In fourteen European countries surveyed by the World Values
Survey in those two years, 56 and 58 percent favored freedom and 37
percent equality. Independent of race or ethnicity considerations, citi-
zens of the United States are significantly less favorable to equality of
income or class position than Europeans, or it may be noted Canadi-
ans, although the difference with the latter is somewhat smaller (65 to
32% and 61 to 34%).
Although Americans are less willing than Europeans to use govern-
ment as an instrument of income distribution, their egalitarian values
lead them to approve of programs providing more opportunities for
blacks. They favor more expenditures on education, special schools,
and other intensive programs such as Head Start. But opinion surveys
taken in various developed countries indicate that Americans are much
less prone than Europeans and Canadians to endorse measures to help
the underprivileged generally. Thus, as noted in chapter Two, in 1987,
only a fifth (21%) of Americans agreed that “the government should
provide everyone with a guaranteed basic income,” as compared with
50 percent or more in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the
Netherlands. Comparable cross-national differences were reported
with respect to statements dealing with the government's responsibility
to “provide a job for everyone who wants one,” and a “decent standard
 146 American Exceptionalism

of living for the unemployed,” and to reduce sharp income differ-

ences.! In 1991, the Times-Mirror Survey, conducted by the Gallup
Poll, asked respondents in thirteen countries to react to the statement:
“It is the responsibility of the state (or government in the U.S.) to take
care of very poor people who can't take care of themselves.” Over 60
percent of those polled in Britain, France, Italy, and Spain agreed, as
did 50 percent of all Germans, as compared to but 23 percent of Amer-
icans.!° Various questions that have been put to national samples of
Americans in the eighties and early nineties concerning the responsi-
bility of government to provide jobs and economic opportunity or “help
people when they are in trouble” have found majorities opposed to gov-
ernment action.!®
The interpretation that American opposition to governmental
enforcement of group rights for blacks is more a reflection of general
principle than of racism is reinforced by the findings of a study of atti-
tudes toward government efforts to assure free residential choice.’
Comparing attitudes toward enforcing rights of blacks, Japanese Ameri-
cans, Jews, and Christians “to live wherever they can afford to,” Howard
Schuman and Lawrence Bobo found little difference in reactions to the
various ethnic and religious groups. Those “who oppose enforcement of
housing rights [do so] regardless of the racial or religious group affected,
so that the principle of government enforcement in this area seems to
be critical rather than opposition to any particular group.”!”
The recurrent conflict between different versions of equality,
between emphasis on the individual and on the group, will continue in
all free societies. The countries which have most thoroughly enshrined
group quotas into their basic law—India, Pakistan, and Canada—are
strongly organized on group lines, the first two caste, the third, separate
linguistic cultures.!°° Affirmative action quotas in India for the sched-
uled (untouchable) castes go back to the 1920s. They were introduced
in a few provinces in colonial India, and have been enlarged and
expanded considerably by independent India and Pakistan. The Cana-
dian Constitution has always contained provisions to protect linguistic
and religious minorities, and has been somewhat more limited in pro-
tection of individual rights than ours. The Charter of Rights and Free-
doms, which was added to the Constitution in 1982, specifically autho-
rizes programs and activities directed to “the amelioration of conditions
of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disad-
vantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion,
sex, age or mental or physical disability."!°° Canada and its provinces
have explicitly defined more than thirty such groups as worthy of spe-
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 147

cial treatment, behavior which conforms to its founding decision to

emphasize the protection of groups rather than individuals.
The same logic has been used by various analysts to account for the
absence of significant socialist movements and the low level of class
politics in the United States and the converse patterns in Europe. As
we saw in the previous chapter, the evidence and arguments suggest
that the European developments reflect the influence of postfeudal
relationships which explicitly structured the social hierarchy according
to fixed social classes, requiring the lower-statused to show deference
to their class superiors. Consequently, the emerging working class
there reacted to the political world in class terms. Conversely, white
America—the purest bourgeois and classically liberal society in the
world—has treated class as an economic construct. Social classes have
been of limited visibility compared with the situation in Europe.
Hence, class-conscious politics and socialist demands for equality of
results have been limited in scope.
The failures of different varieties of socialism and the greater accep-
tance of the market as the dynamic force underlying economic growth
have led to a revival of market liberalism in Europe, emphasizing com-
petitive meritocracy and individualism. Conversely, the increased
awareness and better organization of the blacks in America have given
more support here to group-linked efforts to reduce inequality.
The black situation in America is analytically comparable to that of
the European underprivileged strata. The post caste situation has, in
fact, been even more explicit in limiting the economic and social oppor-
tunities of the socially oppressed than the postfeudal ones. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that American blacks are more group-conscious than
European workers, or that many support a version of the old socialist
emphasis on equality of results. Ninety percent of American blacks vote
Democratic, much more than any other ethnic group or trade union
members. At least three of the Democratic black members of Congress
are openly socialist, a phenomenon found for only one white.
Poll data support these generalizations. Blacks are much more dis-
posed than whites to favor state intervention rather than to emphasize
individual initiative as the way to improve their situation. The National
Election Studies conducted every two years have posed the choice
between government help to minorities and individual initiative in the
following terms:

Some people feel that the government in Washington should make every
possible effort to improve the social and economic position of blacks and
 148 American Exceptionalism

other minority groups. Suppose these people are at one end of the scale, at
point 1, Others feel that the government should not make any special effort
to help minorities because they should help themselves. Suppose these
people are at the other end, at point 7. And, of course, some other people
have opinions somewhere in between. Where do you place yourself on this
scale?!!°

The survey has found repeated and consistent differences of 35 to

50 percent between black and white respondents. The majority of
African Americans say the government should “make every possible
effort” to improve the “position of blacks and other minority groups.”
The most popular position among whites is that minorities “should help
themselves.”!!! Most blacks, in effect, favor a socialist group solution,
most whites a laissez-faire, individualist one.
Civil rights leaders, liberals, and Democrats are faced with the nega-
tive reactions by most whites to their identification with quotas, special
preferences, and reverse discrimination. Opinion polls indicate that
not all blacks are favorable to these policy alternatives, a reaction that
goes back more than a century. During the Reconstruction period, in
1871, the celebrated black abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick
Douglass ridiculed the idea of racial quotas suggested by African-
American Union Army officer Martin Delany as “absurd as a matter of
practice,” noting that it implied blacks “should constitute one-eighth of
the poets, statesmen, scholars, authors and philosophers.” Douglass
emphasized that “natural equality is a very different thing from practi-
cal equality; and ... though men may be potentially equal, circum-
stances may for a time cause the most striking inequalities.”!!2 On
another occasion, in opposing “special efforts” for black freedmen,
Douglass argued that they “might ‘serve to keep up very prejudices,
which it is so desirable to banish’ by promoting an image of blacks as
privileged wards of the state.”!!? One hundred years later, at the start of
the 1970s, black leaders like Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP feared
and opposed quotas because they anticipated these would lead to the
loss of white working-class support for civil rights.
Shelby Steele, a contemporary black writer once active in Jesse Jack-
son's Rainbow Coalition, has concluded that “affirmative action has
shown itself to be more bad than good and that blacks . . . now stand to
lose more from it than they gain.”!!* Like Douglass, he rejects the idea
of leaping “over the hard business of developing a formerly oppressed _
people to the point where they can achieve proportionate representa-
tion on their own. .. .” He sees affirmative action quotas as undermin-
 Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites 149

ing black morale, contributing to “an enlargement of self-doubt,” for

racial preferences imply that successful blacks have not earned their
positions, that they are inferior to whites at their achievement level.!!5
The American left from Jefferson to Humphrey stood for making
equality of opportunity a reality. By a supreme irony, the man most
hated by contemporary Democrats, Richard Nixon, created a situation
which has placed them on the wrong side of the issue from national
values and electoral standpoints. The leadership of some of the party's
strongest bases of support, blacks and other minorities, feminists, liber-
als, and the intelligentsia, all strongly endorse numerical preferences,
targets, and quotas. But a considerable majority of Americans, includ-
ing most Democrats, oppose them.
To rebuild the national consensus on civil rights and racial justice,
affirmative action should be refocused, not discarded. It is clear, for
example, that quotas or special preferences will not help the poorly
educated and unskilled to secure good jobs. As the American economy
undergoes a major structural transformation in eliminating a large pro-
portion of blue-collar, less skilled jobs, the less trained and less edu-
cated of all races are pressed out of the labor market or into lowly paid
positions. To succeed in postindustrial society requires good education.
Extending and vastly improving education in the ghettos, from very
early Head Start Programs, to financial incentives for students, teach-
ers, and successful schools, to expanding apprentice programs that
combine classroom instruction and on-the-job training, are the direc-
tions to be followed for children and school-age youth. As William
Julius Wilson urges, such programs should be offered to all less privi-
leged people, regardless of racial and ethnic origins.
The experience of blacks in the military suggests an option for young
adults. Prior to the downsizing of the military following the end of the
Cold War, the armed services offered blacks career training and a
chance for stable employment and upward mobility. The whole society
can learn from the success of this performance-oriented institution in
integrating blacks and offering real incentives to succeed.''® That
record argues in favor of a large-scale national service effort, more
extensive than the one enacted in 1993. If all youth are encouraged to
volunteer for duty in national service, those with inadequate education
and skills can be trained for positions that are in demand, while help-
ing to rebuild publicly supported infrastructures or deliver social ser-
vices. Studies of the experience of the economically disadvantaged in
the military could shed much light on the subject.
Moving away from policies that emphasize special preferences need
 150 American Exceptionalism

not—indeed, must not—mean abandoning the nation’s commitment to

guaranteeing equal opportunity for disadvantaged citizens. The con-
cept of individual rights remains integral to the American Creed. Yet,
racial injustice and castelike divisions have constituted a contradiction
to the organizing principles of the nation. The American dilemma is
still with us, and with it a moral obligation to ensure that race is neither
a handicap nor an advantage. Until black Americans are absorbed fully
into the economy and society, we should, in Jefferson’s words, con-
tinue to fear a just God.
 2 ACHAP IER
A Unique People in an Exceptional
Country!

If African Americans are perceived as close to the bottom of the strati-

fication system, Jews are seen by friend and foe alike as near or at the
top. Though extraordinarily successful in the meritocratic competition,
they resemble blacks in their commitment to liberal social reform and
in their concern over discrimination against minorities. This combina-
tion of success and leftist ideology makes them unique in the Ameri-
can ethnic kaleidoscope. To understand the role of Jews in American
society, it is important to recognize that they are exceptional among the
world’s Jewries, and that their experience on this continent differs
qualitatively from those of their co-religionists in other countries. Jews
won acceptance as fully equal citizens earlier here than elsewhere.
They have faced much less discrimination in the United States than in
any other predominantly Christian nation. Although never more than
3.7 percent of the population and now 2.5 or less, they have been given
one third of the religious representation. In many public ceremonies,
there is one priest, one minister, and one rabbi. Strikingly, non-Jews
greatly overestimate the size of the American Jewish population. A
1992 national survey conducted for the Anti-Defamation League by
Marttila & Kiley found the median estimate of the percentage of Amer-
icans who are Jewish is 18. Only a tenth perceive them as less than 5
percent.
As Calvin Goldscheider and Alan Zuckerman note: “The pace of
socioeconomic change and the levels [of occupation and income]
attained are exceptional features of Jews compared to non-Jews.” A
national survey of American Jews and non-Jews completed for the
American Jewish Committee in 1988 by Steven M. Cohen led to the
conclusion that “Jews are among the wealthiest groups in America. . . .
Per capita Jewish income may actually be almost double that of non-
Jews.” Proportionately, more than twice as many Jewish as non-Jewish
whites report household incomes in excess of $50,000. At the other
end of the spectrum, almost twice as many non-Jews as Jews indicate
 152 American Exceptionalism

incomes of less than $20,000.3 The 1990 National Survey of Religious

Identification (NSRI), based on a representative sample of 113,000
people, reported that Jews had the highest median annual household
income ($36,700) among thirty different denominations, including
agnostics and those reporting “no religion” as separate groups. Unitari-
ans were second at $34,800, agnostics third at $33,300, and Episco-
palians fourth at $33,000. An analysis of the four hundred richest
Americans, as reported by Forbes magazine, finds that two-fifths of the
160 wealthiest are Jews, as are 23 percent of the total list.’ Jews are
disproportionately present among many sections of elites, largely drawn
from the college-educated. These include the leading intellectuals
(45%), professors at the major universities (30%), high-level civil ser-
vants (21%), partners in the leading law firms in New York and Wash-
ington, D.C. (40%), the reporters, editors, and executives of the major
print and broadcast media (26%), the directors, writers, and producers
of the fifty top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982 (59%), and
the same level people involved in two or more prime-time television
series (58%).° Since the 1994 congressional election, there are twenty-
four Jewish representatives and nine senators.’ Since almost all Jews in
the previous Congress were Democrats, and the latter suffered heavy
losses in the mid-term contests, it is noteworthy that over three-fourths
of the Jewish representatives were reelected. Many represent regions
with few Jews.
These achievements are related to the extraordinary scholastic
accomplishments of American Jews. At the beginning of 1990, 85 per-
cent of college-age Jews were enrolled in higher education, as com-
pared to two fifths for the population at large.® And, like the Jewish fac-
ulty, they are heavily located in the more selective schools. An
American Council on Education survey of college freshmen found that
those of Jewish parentage had significantly higher secondary school
grades than their Gentile counterparts, in spite of the fact that a much
larger proportion of all Jews than of others go on to college. Moreover,
Jews seemingly perform better as undergraduates; by a considerable
margin, they are disproportionately elected to Phi Beta Kappa.?

THE LINKAGE WITH AMERICAN VALUES

ce |

It has been argued that the ability of Jews to do so well in America

reflects the fact that Jewish characteristics and values have been espe-
cially congruent with the larger national culture. Writing in the 1920s,
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 153

the sociologist Robert Park “suggested that Jewish history be taught in

the schools so that Americans can learn what America is. Park argued
that in their energy and drive for achievement Jews were quintessen-
tially American.”!° Evidence in support of such assumptions may be
found in Weber’s analysis of the relationship between the Protestant
ethic and the spirit of capitalism in America, East European Jews’ reac-
tion to Benjamin Franklin, and the contemporary links between a capi-
talist reformer, Margaret Thatcher, and British Jews. As indicated in
chapter Two, Weber, in explaining the economic success of the United
States, noted that the Puritans brought the religiously derived values
conducive to capitalism—rationality, hard work, savings, a strong
achievement drive—to America, values ultimately expressed in the sec-
ular writings of Benjamin Franklin.!!
Franklin’s values not only appealed to Americans, they found an
enthusiastic audience in Eastern Europe among Jews, to whom they
also resonated as consistent with their religious beliefs and secular cul-
ture. Franklin’s writings were translated into Yiddish around 1800,
were read devoutly, and discussed in Talmudic discourse fashion by
young Jews in Poland and Russia after they had completed their daily
religious studies in yeshivas.'* Weber recognized the “actual kinship of
Puritanism [Calvinism] to Judaism,” and the way it played out in Amer-
ica. He noted that “Puritanism always felt its similarity to Judaism. . . .
The Jews who were welcomed by Puritan nations, especially the Amer-
icans ... were at first welcomed without any ado whatsoever and are
even now welcomed fairly readily. ...”!3 Benjamin Franklin himself
“subscribed to a fund for a new synagogue in Philadelphia” in 1788.'*
The linkages of Protestant sectarian and Jewish values to the bour-
geois or market ethic, and the classical laissez-faire liberalism of Amer-
icanism, are to be found in the closing decades of the twentieth cen-
tury in the relationship of Margaret Thatcher to the Jews. She admires
them as hardworking, self-made people who believe that “God helps
those who help themselves.” She chose to represent the most heavily
populated Jewish district in Britain, Finchley in North London, and
appointed five Jews to cabinet posts at different times. She also desig-
nated the chief rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, a member of the House of
Lords. Various British publications have noted that she much preferred
the tough-minded, self-help, work-oriented values of the chief rabbi—
which also encompass commitment to personal philanthropy—to the
soft Tory welfare emphases of the archbishop of Canterbury.”
Unlike her predecessors (or in part her successor, John Major) as
leaders of the Conservative Party, Thatcher is not a Tory, which as
 154 American Exceptionalism

noted earlier is an orientation once described by one of them, Harold

Macmillan, as “paternalistic socialism.” She is a classical liberal, that
is, a supporter of the Hayek—Friedman—Reagan laissez-faire, anti-sta-
tist, meritocratic view of the world. Basically, the goal of the Thatcher
revolution of the 1980s, whether consciously conceived of in these
terms or not, was to create a country that resembled the United States
sociologically, to get rid of the postfeudal emphasis on ascriptive status
and mercantilist Tory-socialist elements, and become an achievement-
oriented, bourgeois liberal society. She sees the Jews as most like the
kind of people she would prefer her compatriots to be: prototypically
meritocratic and competitively oriented. And unlike American Jewry,
British Jewry turned conservative, reacting to the pro-Palestine position
of many socialists, as well as Thatcher’s overtures and enthusiastic sup-
port of Israel.

THE BACKGROUND
pe
=

From its origins, America has been a universalistic culture, slavery and
the black situation apart. As emphasized in previous chapters, America
has been the purest example of a society which has followed capitalist
market norms, relatively unhindered by values derived from feudalism.
These norms assume universalism. Perceiving America in these terms
implies that it emphasizes the values of meritocracy, of an open soci-
ety, which is open to talent, open to the most efficient, the most com-
petent.
As the self-conscious center of the liberal and increasingly populist
revolutions (from 1776 to early in the twentieth century), the United
States has been viewed by Americans and foreigners alike as open to
new members. One may become an American by joining the party,
accepting the Creed. Though immigrants may acquire citizenship
almost everywhere, the meaning of being English, French, or German
is predominantly a birthright status. And until relatively recently, citi-
zen rights were associated with the dominant established religion—dif-
ferent Christian denominations in Europe and Latin America, and
Islam in most of the Muslim world.
American voluntary denominationalism, as Tocqueville emphasized,
encourages allegiance and participation as well as the formation of a
host of mediating organizations positioned between the citizenry and_
the state. But no one is expected to adhere to any religious group. For
the first time in the history of the Diaspora, Jews became free to par-
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 155

take in the polity as equals with everyone else. As sociologist Edward

Tiryakian presents the unique American environment:

At the heart of American exceptionalism concerning the Jewish experience

in America, is that, while, for Jews, the United States is not and cannot be
ontologically and existentially “the Land” in the way that Israel is, it has
been more of a rewarding and accepting home than any other setting out-
side Israel itself. . . What makes the American case different from others?
Jews in America have not been marginalized as “wholly other” by virtue
of their religion, there has been no historical ghetto experience, no
pogroms. In fact because of a deep-structure, affinity of Calvinist-Puri-
tanism for Judaism, it is in America that Jews have increasingly found full
societal and cultural participation and acceptance in recent years of the
term “Judeo-Christian.”!®

The encouragement to American Jewry to play a full role in society

and the polity is endemic in George Washington's message to the Jews
of Newport in 1790, that in the new United States, “all possess alike
liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” Even more signifi-
cantly, the first president emphasized that the patronizing concept of
“toleration .. . of one class of people .. . [by] another” has no place in
America, that Jews are as American, and on the same basis, as anyone
else.!? He recognized that tolerance denotes second-class citizenship.
Jefferson and Madison also emphasized that America was different
from Europe, that the discrimination against Judaism prevailing there
did not exist here, where in Jefferson’s words, all are “on an equal foot-
ing.” Jefferson “rejoiced over the presence of Jews in the country
because they would insure that religious diversity which, in his judge-
ment, was the best protector of Liberty.”'®
The European democratic movements sought to free Jews from reli-
gious-based restrictions on their rights to citizenship and free move-
ment. But anti-clericalism led them to denigrate Judaism as an obscu-
rantist doctrine that should wither under the pressure of the
Enlightenment. The French Revolution gave Jews all civic rights, but
specifically limited their freedom to maintain an organized communal
structure, explicitly denying them group rights.'? Subsequently,
Napoleon, who tore down ghetto restrictions in countries he con-
quered, grew concerned about the seeming desire of French Jews to
remain religious and socially distinct from others. Such concerns were
foreign to the Americans; they opposed church establishment, but wel-
comed religion.
 156 American Exceptionalism

The most dramatic indicator of the pluralistic character of religion in

the first half century of American independence is evident in one of
the most interesting and peculiar pieces of legislation enacted by an
American Congress, the Sunday Mails Law. Passed in 1810, it autho-
rized the Postmaster-General to sort and deliver mail on Sundays. In
1825, postmasters were ordered to keep offices open for the entire day.
Some churchmen reacted by forming a General Union for Promoting
the Observance of the Christian Sabbath. In answer to such protests, a
Senate Committee headed by Richard Johnson, a Kentucky senator
and head of a national Baptist group, wrote a Report on the Act, to be
adopted by the full Senate in 1830, which explicitly said: “The Consti-
tution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christ-
ian,” and concluded that the government was obligated to affirm to all
its “institutions on Sunday, as well as every day of the week.””°
The fact that leading politicians could openly advocate that the fed-
eral government consider the rights of Jews and other non-Christians
indicates the extent to which many believing Protestants of the early
United States were able to accept religious diversity.2! Richard John-
son, the author of the 1830 Senate Report, was nominated for the vice
presidency as Martin Van Buren’s running mate on the Democratic
ticket, supposedly because of his popularity stemming from the Report.
The Sunday requirement lasted until the late 1880s, when it was
dropped by the Postmaster-General.”? It must be noted, however, that
the situation was quite different in many states, some of which, under
Sabbatherian and later trade union pressure, preserved or reenacted
colonial legislation requiring Sunday closing by business. By 1868,
however, fifteen states had exempted Saturday observers—Jews, Sev-
enth Day Adventists, and Baptists—from the rule.??
In 1860, when Jews still could not hold office in most of Europe, the
House of Representatives was opened with a prayer by a rabbi, thus
acknowledging “the equal status of Judaism, with Christianity, as an
American faith.”** Congress was to reaffirm in 1861 the position that
Jews were entitled to the same rights as Christians. It had passed a law
concerning military chaplains, which stated that they had to be regu-
larly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination. Objections
from Jewish groups led to an amendment to allow rabbis to serve as
well.
The position of the Jews in early America was not only a function of
political developments, but related to the special character of Ameri-
can Christianity, the fact that the United'States is the only Protestant
sectarian country. The churches ascendant elsewhere in Christendom,
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 157

as noted earlier, have been established and hierarchical, while Protes-

tant sectarianism, which stresses the personal relationship of individu-
als with God, unmediated by church or hierarchy, has been dominant
here. The competitive relationship of the Christian sects and churches
has enabled the Jews to fit in as one out of many, rather than as the
only or principal deviant group, which they have been in much of
Europe. In any case, until relatively recently, most Protestant sectari-
ans viewed Roman Catholics more negatively than the Jews. Catholi-
cism was seen by many Americans not as a different set of religious
beliefs, but as an alien conspiracy seeking to undermine the American
Protestant way of life and; therefore, as outside the pale.
The American Jews adapted to the prevalent Protestant pattern.
They developed a congregational style, eschewing the organized com-
munal or hierarchical structures that once characterized Jewry in many
European countries.” In the latter case, Jews were governed by
kehillahs, communal organizations, which included all of them, and in
a number of nations, by chief rabbis whose status resembled that of
bishops or archbishops. Canadian Jewry, living in a country that places
greater emphasis on the solidarity of ethnic and religious communities
than the United States, is organized in one group, the Canadian Jewish
Congress, which is somewhat like a European kehillah. American
Jewry has no chief rabbis or disciplined communal bodies. An effort to
form a kehillah in New York before World War I failed.** Judah
Magnes, who played a major role in creating the short-lived New York
kehillah in 1909, was to note a decade later that the “European notion
of a uniform .. . all-controlling . . . kehillah cannot strike root in Ameri-
can soil . . . because it is not in consonance with the free and voluntary
character of American religious, social, educational, and philanthropic
enterprises. . . .”?”

RELATIONS WITH THE LARGER SOCIETY

==

There were relatively few Jews in the United States before the Civil
War. They totaled only fifteen thousand in 1825, increasing to fifty
thousand in 1848. Some were able to reach high places in the Ameri-
can military and political systems, including a number of congressper-
sons and elected local officials. During the first quarter of the nine-
teenth century, Jews were elected to a variety of local and state offices,
mainly in the South, including a governor of Georgia, and mayors in
Richmond and Charleston. They were in the first classes at both West
 158 American Exceptionalism

Point and Annapolis.”® Two very assimilated Jews, David Yulee of

Florida and Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, were elected to the U.S.
Senate, in 1844 and 1854, respectively. Benjamin is better known as
Secretary of the Treasury and Jefferson Davis's closest adviser in the
Confederacy during the Civil War.” The most prominent of northern
Jewish politicians, Mordecai Noah, served at different times between
1813 and 1841 as U.S. Consul to Tunis, High Sheriff of New York,
Surveyor of the Port of New York, Associate Judge of the New York
Court of Sessions, and editor of six different New York newspapers. He
also headed a number of Jewish communal organizations.*° August Bel-
mont, a Jewish banker who had once represented the Rothschilds, was
chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1860 to 1872.
In 1860, the Commander of the Mediterranean Fleet was Uriah Levy,
an affiliated Jew. There were at least four Jewish generals in the Union
Army.?!
On the other hand, there were some anti-Semitic occurrences dur-
ing the Civil War. In the North, Jewish cotton speculators and traders
were stigmatized as helping the South economically. The most note-
worthy action against them was Ulysses S. Grant's order barring Jewish
peddlers from the area under his command. Abraham Lincoln
promptly countermanded it. The president did not object to penalizing
individuals whose actions were aiding the enemy, which, as he told
Grant, presumably “was the object of your order, but ... it is .. . [the]
terms [which] proscribed an entire religious class” that were objection-
able. Grant, it may be noted, was quick to indicate regret and said that
the order was penned “without reflection.” He informed the War
Department a day later that it would never have seen the light of day
had it not been telegraphed immediately after he signed it. More signif-
icantly, he told his wife that congressional censures against him had
been deserved, since he “had no right to make an order against any spe-
cial sect.” As president, Grant “proved himself a friend of the Jews and
appointed many to posts at home and abroad. He offered a Jew, Joseph
Seligman, the post of Secretary of the Treasury, which he declined.”
Grant supported the Jews in the “controversy raised by ... the
A.S.P.C.A. (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani-
mals) over the alleged cruelty practiced by Jews in the [kosher] slaugh-
tering of animals.”
Concern for the welfare of Jews in other parts of the world has been
characteristic of Western Jewry since Roman times, and American
Jews have conformed to the rule. What ‘is particularly notable about
the phenomenon is the extent to which they have been able to get sup-
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 159

port from the larger political system. In 1840, the United States
protested the persecution of Jews in Turkish-controlled Syria; in the
1880s, pogroms in Czarist Russia were officially condemned. In the
first case, the Secretary of State wrote to the American Minister to
Turkey to do what he could to mitigate the oppression. His letter noted
that the United States places “upon the same footing the worshipers of
God, of every faith and form, acknowledging no distinction between
the Mahomedan, the Jew and the Christian.”#* The American govern-
ment frequently sought to intervene on behalf of the Jews of Romania,
demanding that American and native Jews be accorded equality before
the law. In 1879, in writing to the American minister dealing with
Romania, Secretary of State Evarts noted: “As you are aware, this gov-
ernment has ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of the Hebrew race
in foreign countries, and has viewed with abhorrence the wrongs to
which they have at various periods been subjected by followers of other
creeds in the East.”3°
In the period between the Civil War and World War I, protests
against anti-Jewish policies and pogroms in Czarist Russia occurred
repeatedly. Some stemmed from an 1832 commercial treaty, which
provided that local laws applied to nationals of each power in the other
country. However, when these provisions were used by the Russians to
legitimate restrictions on American Jews, the State Department and
Congress objected. In 1881, President Garfield, in denouncing a
pogrom, inaugurated a pattern of protests about the treatment of Russ-
ian Jews. From then through World War I, American governments
often expressed sympathy with them and voiced complaint to the
Czarist government. Such actions were frequent from 1903 to 1906
when over three hundred pogroms occurred, reflecting the tumultuous
revolutionary times.*° Resolutions were passed by Congress calling for
the abrogation of the treaty. In 1908, the platforms of both major par-
ties denounced it, and it was canceled in 1911.
There were limits to the willingness of the American government to
intervene on behalf of Jews abroad, a fact which may convey a message
for contemporary times. It is easy to win games in which you are the
only major player, but you can lose against a strong opponent. In 1858,
Jews in America and Europe rallied to protest the kidnapping and
enforced conversion to Catholicism of an Italian Jewish youngster,
Edgardo Mortara, an action which the Vatican refused to reverse.
Although American Jews put as much pressure on the national admin-
istration as they could and many supportive editorials appeared in the
public press, this time the State Department did not react. The failure
 160 American Exceptionalism

may have reflected the weakness of President James Buchanan, but

more importantly, Jewish pressure was countered by Catholic efforts.
The Democratic politicians apparently did not want to alienate this
large group of supporters.*”

ANTI-SEMITISM
=

The seemingly philo-Jewish behavior on the part of nineteenth- and

early twentieth-century American political elites did not imply the
absence of hostile attitudes or behavior. Anti-Semitism, of course,
existed in America, sometimes on a large scale. It is a disease endemic
in the long-term competitive relationship between Judaism and its
daughter religion(s). Antagonistic beliefs and negative stereotypes are
part of the folk mythology of Christendom, and the original settlers and
subsequent groups of immigrants brought them to the New World.
The special economic skills in finance and commerce, which Jews
developed in Europe to survive in societies that denied them access to
ownership of land (the principal form of capital and investment), made
them especially vulnerable to blame and persecution in periods of eco-
nomic malaise and other severe crises.
The United States has not been an exception, even if the anti-Jewish
outbreaks here have been much less virulent than in other countries. A
detailed historical analysis of anti-Semitism in the United States up to
the Civil War period by Frederick Jaher emphasizes “the mildness of
American anti-semitism relative to that encountered by Jews in other
parts of the world.”** Comparing the phenomenon in nineteenth-cen-
tury Europe and America, another scholar, Leo Ribuffo, also concludes
that “Anti-Semitism in the United States was relatively less violent,
less racist, and less central to the world views of those who accepted
it.”*° Conversely, nativism (hostility to immigrants) was a recurrent
phenomenon in America, particularly active during periods of eco-
nomic and political crisis. Jews sometimes were included as a sec-
ondary target, but the most extreme forms of nativism were to be found
among the more fundamentalist Protestants and took the form of anti-
Romanism, of opposition to supposed conspiracies and real immigra-
tion waves that seemingly threatened the Protestant character of the
country.*?
Significant anti-Semitism showed up in the late nineteenth century,
directed against the growing affluence of the German Jews, at a time
when the Jews numbered about 250,000. As of 1889, “bankers, bro-
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 161

kers, wholesalers, retail dealers, collectors, and agents accounted for

62 percent of their occupations. In addition, 17 percent were profes-
sionals.”*! In the post—Civil War period, a number of Jews of German
origin developed the leading banking houses of the country. They,
together with New England scions of the Puritans, dominated invest-
ment banking.‘
These extraordinarily successful.people were opposed to social sepa-
ratism. Some were among the founding members of the high-status
social clubs formed in many cities immediately before and after the
Civil War. But as the number of the first generation or otherwise afflu-
ent Jews grew, wealthy Gentiles began to look for ways to deny them
social access. Status strains endemic in a rapidly expanding and chang-
ing society upset people at different levels of the social structure.
Those descended from the old wealthy of the pre—Civil War era found
their claims to superior status threatened by the newly wealthy, some
of whom were Jews. The Gentile nouveaux riches, in turn, discovered
that wealth alone was not sufficient to earn them admission to high
society, and sought to differentiate themselves from the Jews. There
was open resistance to allowing Jews into the social elites, into their
neighborhoods, into their clubs and resorts, and ultimately, there were
efforts to hold down their numbers in high-ranking universities and
professions.*? But it “is important to stress the fact that this caste line
was only drawn at the end of the nineteenth century, when ... the
members of the upper class were setting themselves apart in other
ways.”** As John Higham describes the background:

At every level so many successful people clamored for admission to more

prestigious circles that social climbing ceased to be a simple and modest
expectation. . . . In order to protect recently acquired gains from later com-
ers, social climbers had to strive constantly to sharpen the loose, indistinct
lines of status. With a defensiveness born of insecurity, they grasped at dis-
tinctions that were more than pecuniary, through an elaborate formaliza-
tion of etiquette, the compilation of social registers, the acquisition of aris-
tocratic European culture, and the cult of genealogy.”

EAST EUROPEAN JEWS

b>.)

The late nineteenth century also witnessed the steady mass immigra-
tion of poor Jews from Eastern Europe which, by World War I, pro-
duced a population of over 3 million, mostly concentrated in the tene-
 162 American Exceptionalism

ment districts of the major northern cities. Although much poorer than
their German-origin co-religionists, they were much better prepared for
the life and economy of American cities than other immigrants. Most
Jews came from urban environments. Goldscheider and Zuckerman
point out that “Between 1899 and 1914, fully two-thirds of the Jews
entering the United States had been engaged in manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits in Europe, more than three-fourths as skilled
workers.” This background provided them with “an enormous struc-
tural advantage over other immigrants in the pursuit of occupational
integration and social mobility.”*° Although able to obtain employment
in their traditional skills, most were poor. They worked mainly in the
garment industries or in trade, often initially as peddlers, the lowliest
form of self-employment.*” Living in crowded slums, in areas marked
by high crime rates and red-light districts, speaking Yiddish, frequently
looking unkempt and outlandish, they helped to produce new anti-
Semitic stereotypes. These fed nativist prejudices. Considerable ten-
sions developed between the Jews and other immigrant groups, which
presaged some of the more serious, working-class—based, anti-Semitic
movements of the 1930s.
Many East European Jews arrived as supporters of radical politics.
Facing anti-Semitic regimes and societies, they could not simply enter
the majority cultures. Barred from being members of conservative par-
ties, they supported left-wing movements.** They came to America as
socialists and tried to remain such as workers. As the foremost student
of the subject, Arthur Liebman, notes: “American Jewry has provided
socialist organizations and movements with a disproportionate num-
ber—at times approaching or surpassing a majority—of their leaders,
activists, supporters.”*? Similar statements can be made about the
supporters of subsequent other left third parties, including the LaFol-
lette Progressive Party in 1924, the Communist-dominated Progres-
sive Party in 1948, and the Anderson Independent candidacy in
1980.”°
In 1914, Zionism had much less support among American Jews than
socialism as an alternative political strand, with only twelve thousand
members that year.°! Jews of German descent retained their Abe Lin-
coln—born Republican attachments until the 1930s, but on the whole
they backed the liberal or progressive Republicans who were an impor-
tant force in the party. The one important genuinely conservative seg-
ment among Jews came from the Orthodox minority. Their journalists
felt that in a country in which the right was not anti-Semitic, religious
“conservatism in Jewish matters could best be complemented by con-
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 163

servatism in politics.” But the circulation of their papers “was small in

comparison with the [socialist] Daily Forward.”** The Orthodox
opposed Zionism, believing that only God could redeem the promised
land.*
Poverty and bad housing conditions did not stop these East Euro-
pean Jews from moving up. The skills and values they brought with
them enabled them to quickly outdo others at their starting socioeco-
nomic level in rates of upward social mobility. “For each wave of immi-
gration from Russia bringing penniless and green immigrants into the
slums, there was an exodus by immigrants who after five or ten years or
so had managed well enough so they could leave the squalor of those
slums.”** They advanced through self-employment and education, par-
ticularly education. “Jewish children were in school longer than other
immigrant groups . . . and accounted for relatively high percentages of
those who attended schools and universities in the large cities of the
Northeast. ... In comparison to most other immigrant groups, as well
as to native-born Americans, Jewish children were more likely to reach
and finish high school and more likely to enroll in college preparatory
courses.”
The most significant aspect of the American Jewish experience prior
to the Great Depression was not its religious, organizational, and politi-
cal diversity, but the improvement in its circumstances, as the children
of the immigrants acquired substantial education and skills. Without
going into further detail on the specific patterns of upward mobility, it
should be noted that the East European Jews have been able to
become, first, the best educated; then, the most middle class; and, ulti-
mately, the most affluent ethnoreligious group in the country other
than their co-religionists of German origin.*° As Lucy Dawidowicz
notes, no “other immigrant group evinced such rapid and dramatic suc-
cess.”>” From a concentration in the garment and other skilled trades,
East European Jews moved toward heavy involvement in the profes-
sions.
The desire to attain a first-class education at the best universities led
to crises in the 1920s, as the major eastern private colleges and profes-
sional schools found the proportion of Jews among their students rising
into the double-digit percentiles (40% at Columbia). Arguing that
these developments were undermining the character of their institu-
tions and professions, and that concentrations of Jews in particular
places would result in anti-Semitism, they covertly or openly restricted
Jewish enrollment through the use of quotas or special forms of prefer-
ence, for which few Jews could qualify. Although these restrictions
 164 American Exceptionalism

kept down the number at the Ivy League and other elite private col-
leges, they did not stop ambitious young Jews from securing higher
education. They flooded the public institutions, such as City College
in New York.
Limited in the proportion who could become physicians, many who
could not get into the medical schools became dentists or pharmacists.
Others who were not admitted to major law schools went to less presti-
gious ones, or studied for other business-related professions, such as
accounting. During the 1930s, when economic adversity limited sup-
port for prolonged professional education and opportunities for
employment in private industry, many young Jews became teachers or
civil servants. Self-employment, the most traditional way for Jews to
escape restrictions, probably absorbed the greatest proportion of the
ambitious.
To analyze the sources of Jewish achievement would take this dis-
cussion too far afield. Suffice it to say that students of the subject have
stressed: (1) a religiously inspired drive for education, which, secular-
ized, has been linked to disproportionate intellectual contributions
since the early Middle Ages; (2) the fact that Jews have been urbanites
par excellence, a background that has favored individuals in succeeding
in the centers of business, professional, and intellectual life; (3) a
greater socialization in middle-class norms and habits than any other
less privileged group, including a strong achievement drive, “the habits
of care and foresight,” and the capacity to defer gratification;** and (4)
greater rootlessness, the ability to form new social relations in different
ecological and class environments, an ability which Jews show up as
having more than other American ethnic groups. In discussing these
issues, Nathan Glazer notes:

Judaism emphasizes the traits that businessmen and intellectuals require,

and has done so since at least 1,500 years before Calvinism. We can trace
Jewish Puritanism at least as far back as the triumph of the Maccabees
over the Hellenized Jews and of the Pharisees over the Sadducees. The
strong emphasis on learning and study can be traced that far back, too. The
Jewish habits of foresight, care, moderation probably arose early during the
two thousand years that the Jews have lived primarily as strangers among
other peoples.

The restrictions on Jewish entry into elite institutions, which, in

part, reflected the competitive concerns of the non-Jewish middle class
and elites, were paralleled by increasingly negative reactions among the
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 165

less affluent mass population—particularly, but not exclusively, funda-

mentalist and evangelical Christians in rural areas and smaller urban
centers. This religious stratum dominated the country numerically
until the start of the twentieth century, but massive non-Protestant
immigration—Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish—and the
steady growth of metropolitan areas were undermining its cultural and
religious supremacy. American society was becoming cosmopolitan,
secular, and urban. The Census of 1920 reported that for the first time
in American history, urban dwellers were in a majority. Symbolically,
large cities had become the centers of Jewish and Catholic influence.
Evangelical Protestantism, as noted earlier, had long formed the
base for opposition to Catholic immigration, while ignoring or even
accepting the Jews for the most part. But in reaction to their massive
infusion and economic success, the largely urbanized Jewish popula-
tion also became a target, starting in the second decade of this century.
In 1914, Tom Watson, a former leader of the People’s Party, and sub-
sequently intellectual Godfather of the revived Ku Klux Klan, stimu-
lated a lynching of a Georgia Jewish businessman, Leo Frank, “for the
death of a working-class Gentile” girl, a crime of which he was inno-
cent. Watson continued a vitriolic anti-Semitic campaign for years
thereafter. The outpouring of hate against Catholics, Jews, and blacks
contained in Watson’s nationally circulated newspaper took an institu-
tionalized form in the multi-million-member Ku Klux Klan of the
1920s, although Watson himself never joined, as far as is known.*!
The Klan, which documentably represented a form of evangelical
Protestant backlash, was supported disproportionately by lower-status
rural and small urban community white sectarians. It attacked
Catholics, blacks, Jews, radicals, and “immoral” people (divorcees,
adulterers, prostitutes, and the like). Although much less concerned
with Jews than with Catholics and personal immorality, Klan publica-
tions were replete with elaborate Jewish conspiracies. They reprinted
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which they found in another 1920s
focus of anti-Semitic agitation, Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent.

RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY

Esse)

The changing composition of American Jewry and the diverse impact

of world events led to deep divisions in the community. The older Ger-
man strand adapted to their late nineteenth-century environment by
modifying their religious practice. They developed Reform Judaism,
 166 American Exceptionalism

whose practice and doctrine resembled the liberal Protestantism and

Unitarianism of the non-Jewish middle to upper classes.® The more
successful among the East Europeans—coming, if they were religious,
from more Orthodox backgrounds—helped to create a more American-
ized religious movement, the Conservatives. The Orthodox retained
strength among the poorer and less-assimilated elements.”
To iterate the obvious, the period from the start of the Great
Depression and the rise of Nazism has witnessed the greatest transfor-
mation in world Jewry since the destruction of the Second Temple.
The prolonged economic collapse stimulated the growth of extremist
movements, some of which, in Germany, the United States, and else-
where, focused on blaming the Jews for all that went wrong. The Ger-
man developments led to the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million
Jews, one third of the world’s Jewish population. Ironically, the chain
of events set in motion by Nazism also resulted in increased emigration
to Palestine, and to the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948. Thus, the
most terrible and the most triumphant moments of Jewish history since
the Second Exile are intimately interlinked.
In the United States, assorted anti-Semitic right-wing movements,
the most important of which was Father Coughlin’s National Union for
Social Justice, as well as a number of smaller ones which appealed to
evangelical Protestants, gained strength. There is no reliable estimate of
their support; they failed miserably at the ballot box. On the other hand,
national opinion polls suggest that as much as one quarter of the popu-
lation approved of the racist demagogue Charles Coughlin, who broad-
cast every Sunday on a national radio network. That support dropped to
one seventh by 1940. Assorted surveys designed to estimate the degree
of anti-Semitism among the American public by responses to various
prejudicial statements about Jews, conducted by Jewish defense groups,
reported, however, that roughly one out of two could be classified as
anti-Jewish. This pattern lasted through World War II.
Although the presence of proto-fascist movements and the increase
in anti-Semitism did not have much effect on the personal or economic
lives of American Jews, they clearly affected governmental policy
toward Germany and the Holocaust. Franklin Roosevelt, though
strongly anti-fascist and supportive of American participation in a war
against Germany, consciously refrained from linking such concerns to
the plight of the Jews for fear of losing popular support. America
turned refugees from Europe away. Anxiety about public sentiments
continued to affect American policy during the war, helping to block
efforts to help Jews in extermination camps.
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 167

The Depression stimulated growth of anti-Semitism and the coun-

try's shameful response to the plight of Jewish: refugees and to the
Holocaust. It clearly challenges the assumption that the Jewish experi-
ence in America is qualitatively different from that in other countries,
and that the United States is exceptional. All that may be said is that if
the United States behaved badly, many others—such as Canada,
which refused to take in any Jews—did worse. The American govern-
ment and the large majority of Americans supported all that was neces-
sary to defeat Nazism. Very few people, including the great majority of
American Jews, could bring themselves to believe that the Nazis were,
in fact, trying to physically annihilate the Jews of Europe. The leaders
of the Zionist community in Palestine, including David Ben Gurion,
who headed it, and Yitzhak Shamir, subsequently the hard-line nation-
alist prime minister of Israel, also refused to give priority to the rescue
of Jews in Europe.
For whatever reason, the situation in America changed dramatically
almost as soon as the war was over. Opinion polls documented striking
drops in bigoted attitudes, not only toward Jews but to other minorities
as well.© The United States strongly supported the creation of the
state of Israel. Although most Americans lacked enough knowledge of
the Middle East to voice opinions, the large majority of those who were
familiar with the issue backed Israel against the Arab states that were
trying to annihilate it.
On the behavioral level, dramatic changes developed as well. Almost
all the. restrictions against Jews, such as restrictive quotas, began to
decline or disappear. This was particularly evident in academe both
with respect to admission and hiring. The greater numbers of Jews
trained in elite institutions were able to secure employment commen-
surate with their academic background. By the 1990s, it is hard to find
any area of American life in which discrimination is still a problem.*
Public opinion has changed in tandem with behavior, although a
declining minority, sometimes as much as 25 percent, will still voice
agreement with particular anti-Jewish statements when put to them by
pollsters. Without going into a methodological discussion, it may be
noted that the significance of these opinions is reduced when consid-
ered in light of reactions to the same statements about excessive
power, choice of neighbors, and intermarriage posed for other groups.
Viewed in comparative ethnic context, Jews do extremely well.°* For
example, in March 1993, the Roper Poll inquired how many of differ-
ent ethnic groups “you would like to see living in this neighborhood?”
Jews were much more popular than Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians.
 168 American Exceptionalism

They and Italians, the only other ethnic group listed, were responded
to the same way: only 8 to 9 percent would not like them as neigh-
bors.” There had been no change in these low figures since 1978. Tom
Smith, a historian now directing the National Opinion Research Cen-
ter, concluded a comprehensive review of the plethora of relevant opin-
ion data on anti-Semitism, noting that the “available evidence indicates
no reversal in its long-term decline. On most indicators anti-Jewish
attitudes are at historic low” as of 1993.”
A telling indicator of the low level of anti-Semitism may be inferred
from the fact that the country’s most engaged politician, Bill Clinton,
appointed two Jewish jurists, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven G.
Breyer, to fill his first two vacancies on the Supreme Court. Clinton is
as sensitive to public opinion as any person who has occupied the
White House. And to sustain his judgment, the press has almost totally
ignored the religious background of the new justices. He also nomi-
nated four Jews to cabinet posts, one of whom Zoe Baird, the Attorney
General-designate, withdrew during the confirmation process.
There are seven developments that appear crucially relevant to an
understanding of contemporary American Jewry: (1) commitment to and
activities in support of Israel; (2) Israel-Diaspora relations; (3) differenti-
ated religious involvements; (4) demography—including extremely low
birth rates and sharply increasing numbers of intermarriages; (5) contin-
ued high levels of social mobility; (6) communal organization; and (7)
political participation. The concerns about and links to Israel are not
treated separately; they constitute the most important underlying issues
that have determined the nature of American Jewry since the formation
of the state. Israel is the center of Jewish life, the cause to which more
Jews are deeply dedicated than any other. The story of Jewish philan-
thropy and political activity on behalf of the Jewish state has been
covered in a myriad of books and articles and need not be reiterated
here.
Philanthropy is particularly important. According to Barry Kosmin,
director of research for the New York Council of Jewish Federations,
Jews contributed $3.5 billion to assorted causes in 1986.”! Perhaps one
quarter of this went to Israel, of which less than $400 million had
come via the United Jewish Appeal. The results of the 1990 National
Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) indicate that over three quarters of
all Jewish households in 1989 contained at least one member who
“contributed or gave gifts to Jewish or non-Jewish philanthropies, chari-
ties, causes or organizations.””* Only a tenth gave only to Jewish
causes, while a quarter contributed only to non-Jewish secular groups.
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 169

Two fifths donated to both.” In a 1992 national survey of giving and

volunteering conducted by the Independent Sector, a large percentage
(85%) of Jewish respondents, a close second to Presbyterians (87%),
reported giving—contributing an average of 2.1 percent of household
income and an average of 3.6 hours per week of volunteer time to char-
ity.”4

The emphasis on giving goes back to medieval Europe and has its
roots in the need that the secure and prosperous help the less affluent
and persecuted. This has carried over to contributions to politics as
well, much more so for Democrats than Republicans, but in significant
amounts to the latter also. Jews have played a particularly important
role in financing recent elections.
The results of the postwar elections, as indicated in many opinion
polls, confirm Milton Himmelfarb’s generalization that while Jews earn
more than any other ethnoreligious group for whom data exist, includ-
ing Episcopalians, they are still more liberal or left in their opinions
than other white groups, and vote like Hispanics. In November 1988,
over 70 percent of the Jews backed Michael Dukakis. In 1992, Bill
Clinton, who won a three-candidate race with 43 percent of the vote,
secured 79 percent among Jews, while George Bush and Ross Perot
garnered 10 percent each.” Republican presidential support has
declined slightly, but steadily, since 1980. Close to four fifths backed
Democrats for Congress, behavior repeated in 1994, a year of major
GOP gains. The only identifiable subset that has been conservative and
Republican at times is composed of the Orthodox (less than 10%), par-
ticularly the more extreme and less affluent among them.”®
Blacks apart, Jews are the most favorable of all ethnoreligious groups
toward policies designed to help the less fortunate, including mainte-
nance or expansion of government welfare programs, relying on the
state as an employer of last resort for the unemployed, wage and price
controls in inflationary periods, and government regulations to remedy
assorted ills for which business or other large organizations are held
responsible. They also support activist politics with regard to various
social concerns, such as the death penalty, abortion, gun control,
nuclear freeze proposals, and the like.’” National opinion data gathered
by Steven M. Cohen indicated that as of 1988, in spite of their relative
affluence, “more Jews than whites or blacks endorse raising taxes as a
way of cutting budget deficits,” and opposed reductions in domestic
spending. Jews are also much more likely than others to approve of lib-
eral and civil rights organizations such as the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People, Planned Parenthood, the
 170 American Exceptionalism

National Organization for Women, and the American Civil Liberties

Union.”
Opinion surveys continue to find that in no area “are Jews signifi-
cantly more conservative than non-Jewish whites . .. on many issues
the Jewish center is well to the left of the white gentile center.””? Black
mayoralty candidates, such as Tom Bradley in Los Angeles, David
Dinkins in New York, and Harold Washington in Chicago, received a
much higher proportion of votes among Jews than from any other
definable white group other than academics. “In 1983, the Chicago
mayoral election pitted a black, Democrat Harold Washington, against
a Jewish Republican. ... [S]lightly less than half the Jews voted for
Washington. But that was still two and a half times as high a percent-
age as other whites in Chicago gave the Democratic candidate, even
though Democratic loyalty in Chicago had long seemed a fact of
nature.”®° Clearly, Jews continue to be among the principal supporters
of organized liberal to left tendencies in the country, giving heavily and
disproportionately to liberal political candidates and various liberal to
left organizations.
Most American Jews have remained adherents of the social democ-
ratic values of their parents, as evident in the results of a national tele-
phone survey taken by the Los Angeles Times in 1988. When asked
which among three qualities “do you consider most important to your
Jewish identity,” over half, 57 percent, replied “a commitment to social
equality’; about a fifth chose “support for Israel” or “religious obser-
vance.”®!
The explanation for Jewish adherence to liberal left politics, despite
having become astonishingly affluent, is obviously complex. Earl Raab
and I have dealt with it elsewhere.** We suggest that the behavior is
linked to the continued effect of leftist political values imported from
Eastern Europe, noted above; to deep concern about anti-Semitism,
still linked in the minds of many American Jews much more to the
political right than to the left; and to the impact of norms underlying
tzedekah, the obligation on the fortunate, the well-to-do to help individ-
uals and communities in difficulty. The latter norm became general
among European Jews during the Middle Ages when it was literally a
condition for survival, given that some communities were generally
experiencing severe persecution while others were doing well. The
political values derived from tzedekah are communitarian, implying
support for the welfare state. Beyond this,, historic experience with dis-
crimination seemingly leads many Jews to favor civil rights legislation
for other minorities. Whether for these reasons or not, a plurality by 44
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 171

to 31 percent said in a 1988 opinion poll that “Jewish values, as I

understand them, teach me to be politically liberal.” And the 1990
National Survey of Religious Identification, the best and by far the
largest sample taken of American religious affiliation, reported that 41
percent of the Jews said their usual stand on political issues was lib-
eral, as compared to 19 percent conservative; 35 percent responded
middle-of-the-road. No other denomination came close to the Jews in
degree of liberal identification.*? Surveys of the American population as
a whole taken at the same time found 35 to 40 percent answering con-
servative, and 15 percent liberal.
Apart from the fact that Jews generally agree with most liberal posi-
tions on both domestic and foreign policy, they still have a historically
based visceral feeling that they belong in the company of political liber-
als. They were released from the medieval ghettos by “the liberals.”
They were joined in the fight against Nazism by “the liberals.” Anti-
Semitism, religious intolerance, and immigration restrictions, in their
memory, have been associated with “the conservatives.” Cohen found
in 1988 that, when asked what proportion of a number of groups in the
United States is anti-Semitic, three times as many (20 to 7%) said that
many or most Republicans are, as compared to Democrats. The replies
for “few are” were 32 percent for Republican and 47 percent Democ-
rats. The pattern was similar with conservatives and liberals, 23 to 9
percent, for “many or most are,” and 32 to 51 percent for “few are.”*
The Democratic Party is perceived as the “liberal” party and the
Republican Party as the “conservative” party, and thus the former is
seen as more friendly. In 1991, Cohen inquired how Jewish respon-
dents identified the attitudes of the adherents of the two major parties
toward Israel. By over two to one, 58 percent to 24 percent, respon-
dents perceived more Democrats than Republicans as “generally
friendly” to the Jewish state.®
Jews are basically more comfortable in the Democratic Party than in
the Republican Party. They are more at ease with the kinds of people
they find in the Democratic Party—their fellow ethnics with whom
they grew up in America—than with the white Anglo-Saxon Protes-
tants (WASPS) still predominant in the Republican Party. As Alan
Fisher comments, “Jews identify the Democrats as friends, and, by and
large, they stay with their friends. The Democratic Party is home to
them.”8¢
Jewish liberalism may also be strengthened by the strong concern for
learning, transmuted from religious tradition into an emphasis on secu-
larized intellectuality and education. As we have seen, 85 percent of all
 172 American Exceptionalism

Jewish youth go to universities. They constitute close to one third of

the professoriate at major universities and an even larger proportion of
leading intellectuals.*” In discussing “the intellectual pre-eminence of
the Jews,” Thorstein Veblen commented at the end of World War I on
the fact that they not only contributed “a disproportionate number” of
leaders of “modern science and scholarship,” but that they “count par-
ticularly among the vanguard, the pioneers, the uneasy guild of
pathfinders and iconoclasts, in science, scholarship, and institutional
change and growth.”*
Creative intellectuality, as Veblen and many others have recognized,
includes an emphasis on innovation, on newness, on rejection of the
old, of the traditional.®° It is also linked to universalism, to reacting to
knowledge independently of the background of its exponents. Secular-
ized Jews, in their desire to be treated like others, to become part of
the larger society, support a universalistic ethic, which emphasizes
equality for groups and individuals. Intellectuality and universalism
predispose American Jews to liberalism.
The United States has been open to Jews and the evidence clearly
points to a sharp falloff in social and economic restrictions on, and
prejudice toward, them since World War II.”° Still Jews remain fearful
of anti-Semitism. Only one out of seven of those responding to
Cohen’s questionnaires agreed that “Anti-semitism in America is cur-
rently not a serious problem for American Jews.” An overwhelming
majority, over three quarters (76%), replied that it is a serious problem;
two thirds disagreed with the statement: “Virtually all positions of influ-
ence in America are open to Jews.” The surprising fact that they feel
this way contributes to an identification with the left against the right,
as Cohen’s survey data (noted earlier) indicate.
The reluctance of most Jews to accept evidence that anti-Semitism
has declined or to shift their image as to the relative contribution of the
left and the right, given the reality of their progress in American society
and the strong efforts on behalf of Israel by pre-Bush Republican
administrations, is striking testimony to the role of historical experi-
ence and memory. San Francisco provides strong evidence of how
some Jews can totally ignore reality. Polls taken by Earl Raab among
contributors to the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation have
found that one third agree that a Jew cannot be elected to Congress
from San Francisco. His survey reported such results in 1985 when all
three members of Congress from contiguous districts in or adjacent to .
the city were Jewish, as were the two state senators, the mayor, and a
considerable part of the city council.
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 173

The lack of confidence in the larger community goes beyond concern

with anti-Semitism. A national survey taken in 1964 by NORC pro-
duced evidence that Jews are very much less trustful of others on a per-
sonal level than the members of seven other white ethnic groups—Irish,
Scandinavian, Slavic, German Protestant, German Catholic, Italian,
and WASP. On a scale based on answers to six questions, running from
plus 4 (total trust) to minus 4 (total distrust), Jews scored on the aver-
age minus 3. No other group was in the minus range. The questions
included items such as “Do you think most people can be trusted?” and
“If you don’t watch out, people will take advantage of you?”
But if Jews were more distrustful than others, they were more self-
confident and less self-deprecatory than any of the other ethnic groups.
Congruently, they were highest on the scale measuring “inner-direc-
tion,” self-reliance, and lowest on “other-direction,” need for approval.®!
These orientations contribute to the anti-establishment stance of the
astonishingly successful Jews (i.e., their willingness to be highly partic-
ipatory critics of their society) and to their upward mobility.
The obvious question with respect to these findings about Jewish
attitudes and behavior is to what extent do they continue to hold for
new generations, for those coming of age? The evidence from a number
of national studies and analyses conducted by Steven Cohen, Alan
Fisher, and William Helmreich, as well as examination of the Los Ange-
les Times April 1988 survey and election exit polls by various newspa-
pers and networks, is consistent with respect to politics. During the
1980s younger Jews (under 30 or under 45) were more likely to vote
Republican and to identify as Republicans than older cohorts, by 10 to
15 percent. Younger age is also related to lesser concern over anti-
Semitism, to lower identification with Israel, and to less willingness to
contribute to Jewish philanthropy. Such findings are to be expected,
since these younger Jews are more distant in time from the experiences
which led older generations to act as they do. It seems that success in
an open society, characterized by less anti-Semitism than at any time in
the twentieth century, and growing up with the state of Israel as an
established fact should produce age-related increased conservatism.”
However, as Alan Fisher notes, the lead among Jews of Democrats and
liberals over Republicans and conservatives has “remained surprisingly
stable over the last decade.”? Even though more conservative behavior
by young Jews has been reported over a number of elections, the next
older generations (defined as over 30 or 45) repeatedly turn out to be
more Democratic than they were when younger.
The lack of an identifiably more conservative group to emerge
 174 American Exceptionalism

among the older cohorts suggests that as Jews move into mature adult
status and sink roots in the community, some drop their more conserv-
ative youthful orientations and absorb the dominant community pat-
tern toward American politics and Israel. New substantive issues may
eventually make a difference, but it will require an emotional wrench-
ing, or more generational difference, to eliminate the Democratic
Party's advantage in Jewish voting or the overwhelming commitment to
Israel. The shift to the Democrats in 1992 among all groups probably
resulted from the reluctance to the Bush administration to provide loan
guarantees to Israel in 1992 and the various disdainful remarks made
by the president and Secretary of State James A. Baker II about the
Israeli lobby in America and the Israeli government. Bill Clinton, by
pursuing almost Judeophilic appointment policies and endorsing Israeli
foreign policy objectives, has been reinforcing the ties. And as noted, in
1994, when the Democrats suffered a major setback among all regions,
income classes and religious groups, they received 78 percent of the
Jewish vote, statistically equivalent to the 79 percent reported in the
1992 exit poll. In California, bitterly divided in 1994 over the effects
of massive Latino immigration, Jews voted against Proposition 187,
which denied illegal immigrants basic rights, by 59 to 41 percent. But
the measure passed overwhelmingly, with strong support among
blacks, Asians, and other whites.

CONCLUSION
ea

Can we still speak of American exceptionalism with respect to the

position of the Jews? The answer would appear to be yes. As in the
nineteenth century, America has continued to give more support to
Jewish causes abroad than any other nation by far. This has been evi-
dent in its extensive and often isolated political and financial support of
Israel, in the liberal admission policies for Soviet Jewish émigrés, and
in the financing of the latter's settlement costs in both America and
Israel.
American Jews continue to do extraordinarily well in the economic,
political, and social structures of the country. They not only contribute
liberally to Israel, communal institutions, and politics, but to many
other causes as well. “Jewish support of hospitals, museums, sym-
phonies, and universities [as well as the United Funds] across the
country now appears disproportionate not only to their numbers but
also even to their proportion of the wealthy.”
 A Unique People in an Exceptional Country 175

The commitment of American Jews to their larger community is

being undermined by certain positive developments, such as the
decline of anti-Semitism and the movements toward peace in the Mid-
dle East. These reactions have been dealt with elsewhere by Earl Raab
and myself.** Anti-Semitism and threats to Israel have pressed Jews to
be involved. And the absence of a strong religious commitment among
most Jews lessens the barriers to assimilation and intermarriage.
Ironically, Jewish success also contains within it the seeds of
decline. Almost all Jewish youth attend universities, disproportionately
the very best, and these institutions are liberal both politically and
socially. They not only reinforce the propensity to back left causes, but
press the newer generations of Jews to live by universalistic criteria,
which disparage particularistic ethnic loyalties, not only with respect to
dating and mating but unquestioning support of Israel as well. The very
high rate of intermarriage, now 52-57 percent for new weddings
between 1985 and 1990, and the extremely low birth rate (1.1 for each
Jewish woman) are linked to the high achievement level.” Jews, it
should be noted, are behaving like other American ethnic groups, only
more so. With the exception of African Americans, most of the mem-
bers of almost all ethnic ancestry and religious sectors are marrying
across ethnoreligious lines. The melting pot is operative as never
before.”
The fears concerning demographic decline may be counterbalanced
in small part by the continued attractiveness of America to foreigners,
including Jews. The United States is still by far the world’s largest
receiver of refugees and other immigrants. The upswing from the
1970s on has included a renewed Jewish influx, a phenomenon not
generally publicized since it involves a rejection of Israel as a place to
settle or live. According to HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)
reports, the agency assisted in settling over 125,000 Jews in the United
States between 1967 and 1980. HIAS records do not include the large
number of Jewish immigrants from Latin America, Canada, South
Africa, and Iran. Nor do they list the well over 100,000 Israelis who
have come here.”
Clearly, the story of American and Jewish exceptionalism, closely
intertwined as they are, is not over. But the tale bears telling, for it is
one of the better ones in human history. Unlike the saga of black
Americans, which, as reported in the previous chapter, is still one
marked more by racism than universalism, and by continued hardship,
that of the Jews shows the United States at its best.
 CHAPTER 6

American Intellectuals—Mostly on the

Left, Some Politically Incorrect!

In America, intellectuals, like blacks and Jews, may be described as

“exceptions on the margin.” They have sustained the historically mar-
ginalized left in American politics. But the left within intellectualdom
is currently under attack for creating a wave of repression, comparable
to previous efforts coming from the right, by insisting on “political cor-
rectness,” a term referring to the efforts of advocates of left liberal poli-
tics to impose their views with respect to multiculturalism, minority
rights, and feminism by limiting the free speech and job opportunities
of their ideological opponents. This chapter attempts to account for the
left orientation of American intellectuals, as well as the spread of a
new wave of repressive moralism, to explain some of the issues
involved, to specify sources of support and opposition, and to locate
the moralistic behavior of American intellectuals in a comparative con-
text, that is, in exceptional traits.

MORALISM AND THE POLITICS OF INTELLECTUALS

Lesa)

The concern for political correctness is the latest expression of moral-

ism in the United States, and moralism, as United States history
demonstrates, is as American as apple pie. Starting with the Alien and
Sedition Acts of the 1790s, through various waves of xenophobia and
of heightened nationalism (of which McCarthyism was the most
recent), and including abolitionism, Prohibition, anti-war movements
from 1812 through Vietnam, and most recently pro- and anti-choice
advocacy and debates over the place of religion in the public schools,
Americans both of the right and the left have exhibited a Protestant
sectarian-bred propensity for crusades.
The sectarian emphasis on moralism is reinforced by elements
derived from the fact that the United Statés defines its raison d‘étre ide-
ologically. The emphasis on Americanism as a political ideology has led
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 177

to a utopian and absolutist orientation among American liberals and

conservatives. Both seek to impose their version of a good society. As
noted previously, those who reject American values are incorrect, are
un-American, and may be denied rights. In describing the political
scene of the 1990s, Suzanne Garment notes that the liberals have
viewed politics

as a secular religion, prescribing damnation for ideological evildoers but

absolution for the faithful.
This zealotry gave Mr. [Newt] Gingrich an opening [in 1994]. He would
apply to Democrats the same standards they had applied to the Republi-
cans... . Mr. Gingrich thought that the “secular religion” he saw on the left
could be successfully opposed only by equally moralistic rhetoric.’

The current efforts to impose political correctness on the polity, but

particularly on the campus and intellectualdom generally, go back to
the controversies of the 1960s, when the anti-war and radical univer-
sity-based movements opposed the Vietnam War as immoral. This
moralistic stance led them totry to prevent supporters of the war from
speaking on campuses, to end all forms of collaboration by universities
with the warmaking government, and to politicize discipline organiza-
tions like the Modern Language Association and the American Socio-
logical Association.
Political correctness is not a new phenomenon in American acad-
eme. As all histories attest, private higher education largely began in
church-affiliated schools. Most of these insisted that their faculty be
denominationally correct, be members of the church which paid for
the institution. Faculty who deviated from religious doctrine could be
fired. When particular institutions changed, and became less orthodox,
the churches’ right wings set up new schools. Yale came into existence
to counterbalance Harvard, which had moved toward Unitarianism.?
Abolitionists lost jobs in southern schools, and sometimes in northern
ones as well.
The relationship of American values and leftist political ideology to
political correctness rests in the fact that this tendency mainly arose
among intellectuals, the only occupational stratum in American society
in which radical leftist doctrines have made significant headway. Amer-
ican intellectuals (those involved in creative activities), as well as major
sections of the intelligentsia (those who use intellectual products),
have been alienated from the mainstream of bourgeois society, and for
much of the past century a goodly number turned to socialist ideas as
 178 American Exceptionalism

an alternative. An anti-establishment position on the part of intellectu-

als is not new. As early as 1798, President John Adams concluded that
“learned academies, not under the immediate inspection and control of
government . . . are incompatible with social order.”
American intellectual arenas have been centers of opposition, of an
“adversary culture.”> Daniel Patrick Moynihan has noted that since
“about 1840, the cultural elite have pretty generally rejected the values
and activities of the larger society.”® Writing in 1873, Whitelaw Reid,
then editor of the New York Tribune, emphasized that “exceptional
influences eliminated, the scholar is pretty sure to be opposed to the
established. . . . Free thought is necessarily aggressive and critical. The
scholar ... is an inherent, an organic, an inevitable radical.”” Twenty-
eight years later, after observing such political tendencies at work in
the campus opposition to the Spanish American War and the occupa-
tion of the Philippines, an older and more conservative Reid com-
mented: “It is a misfortune for the colleges, and no less for the country,
when the trusted instructors are out of sympathy with its history, with
its development, and with the men who made the one and are guiding
the other.”® Richard Hofstadter, writing in 1963, concluded that acad-
eme had been on the left for the previous three quarters of a century.”
Many in the smaller group of non-left intellectuals, such as Henry
Adams, William James, and T. S. Eliot, were also alienated from Amer-
ican business and materialistic values. One of the constant patterns in
American political life from the late nineteenth century on, the anti-
materialistic conservation (environment) movement, has always drawn
on the intelligentsia for support.
As the social sciences emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, trustees, alumni, and politicians found the teaching and writ-
ing of some scholars offensive. Sociology became identified with radi-
calism at Stanford, when E. A. Ross was fired at Mrs. Stanford’s insis-
tence in 1900 because he had attacked Leland Stanford and other
railroad barons. Other California universities followed Stanford’s lead
in rejecting sociology. Concern that morals would be corrupted led to
repression of teaching and research about sex-related issues. A cele-
brated University of Chicago sociologist, W. I. Thomas, was dismissed
in the early twenties because of publicized relations with prostitutes,
which he claimed were part of his research. Pacifists, socialists, and
other opponents of the U.S. involvement in World War I were dis-
charged by major universities, including Columbia, which let Charles -
Beard go. The American Association of University Professors was
founded in 1915 to defend academic freedom, to protect the rights of
leftists and agnostics to secure and retain faculty positions.
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 179

SOCIAL SCIENCE EVIDENCE AND ANALYSIS

The earliest surveys of faculty values (questionnaire polls of attitudes
toward religion) were conducted in 1913-14 and again in 1933 by
James Leuba. They attest to the validity of Hofstadter’s report. Leuba
found that the majority in both periods did not believe in God or
immortality, with irreligion stronger in 1933. Studies of American reli-
gious behavior indicated that professors and scientists were far more
likely to be agnostics or atheists than the general population, a pattern
that would reappear in every subsequent survey of faculty opinion.
While Leuba did not inquire directly about politics, anti-religious views
have been associated with left politics. It is noteworthy that both in
1913 and 1933 the more distinguished professors were much more
irreligious than their less eminent colleagues.'° Later local and national
surveys taken in the late 1930s and 1940s, which dealt with partisan
orientations directly, found that faculty were much more leftist and
Democratic than other occupational strata, while social scientists were
disproportionately leftist within academe.'! A late 1930s effort to
account for the leftist views of the more intellectually oriented by two
psychologists suggested that to be “bookish” meant to be exposed to
radical thought.

To be bookish in this era has meant to steep oneself in the disillusioned

gropings of postwar thinkers, most of whom, from philosophers to lyricists,
are clearly “radical.” . . . The literary groups to which these men belong, the
day-by-day conversations in which they train one another to think and to
feel, are full of the modern doubt and disquietude, and even more fre-
quently, of the modern challenge and rebellion. To be bookish today is to
be radical.!?

The Great Depression pressed many American intellectuals to the

far left. In 1932, four hundred writers, artists, and academics, many of
whom were very distinguished, issued a public statement endorsing
William Z. Foster and James W. Ford, the candidates for president and
vice president of the Communist Party. Postwar quantitative studies of
the politics of academics have found anew that professors, particularly
those in the social sciences and the humanities, have been much more
disposed to support socialist or other leftist candidates than any other
segment of the society for which opinion data exist.!? This does not
mean that the majority have been radicals, but that the level of such
commitments among them has been far higher than among the public
at large. And more important than the opinions or vote of the stratum
 180 American Exceptionalism

as a whole is the fact that the survey data indicated that the more suc-
cessful, the more distinguished, the more creative they are, the more
likely intellectuals are to be on the left.’
In 1949, just before the advent of McCarthyism, Friedrich Hayek,
the doyen of free market economists, then visiting at the University of
Chicago, commented that as he traveled around the universities of
America the dominant tone in faculty club conversation was “socialist,”
by which he probably meant supportive of the Keynesian planning wel-
fare state. Hayek went on to say that the brightest academics he
encountered were the most likely to be socialist. In seeking to explain
the phenomenon, Hayek understandably did not hold with the hypoth-
esis that creativity and intelligence dispose to leftism. Instead, he sug-
gested selectivity—that the more intelligent among the young who sup-
port the status quo seek out non-intellectual occupations, while the
“disaffected and dissatisfied” reject positions linked to the business sys-
tem and are more inclined to find a career in the intellectual realm.” A
national survey of 2,500 social scientists conducted in 1955 by Paul
Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, Jr., found that 8 percent had backed
left third-party candidates in 1948, compared to 2 percent in the elec-
torate generally. Most, 63 percent, voted for Harry Truman; only 28
percent voted for Thomas Dewey.'® And, as Hayek suggested, those at
leading universities were considerably to the left of their colleagues at
other institutions. A number of opinion surveys taken in the late sixties
and the seventies, some by Everett Carll Ladd and myself, found again
that militancy and radicalism were strongest at the most prestigious
campuses supported by the brightest students and the most distin-
guished faculty. In discipline terms, they had their greatest strength
among the more purely academic liberal arts subjects, especially the
humanities and non-quantitative social sciences.!? And as Thorstein
Veblen emphasized at the end of World War I, intellectual creativity
and social and political marginality appeared to be functionally interre-
lated.'®
The most recent national survey of American academe, taken by the
Carnegie Foundation in 1989, found that 56 percent identified them-
selves as liberals, while 28 percent said they were conservatives.
Studies of journalists find the same pattern.” Conversely, most polls
indicate the general population to be more conservative, about 35—40
percent, than liberal, 10-20 percent.
Hypotheses to explain findings such ag these have been suggested
by Thorstein Veblen, Carl Becker, Joseph Schumpeter, Paul Lazars-
feld, and C. P. Snow. They contend, in different ways, that academe
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 18 1

and intellectualdom reward originality, innovation, a rejection of the

past, of what one has been taught—ways of thinking linked to political
radicalism.*! Seeking to explain such phenomena generally, Becker
commented in 1936 that the function of the intellectual “is to increase
rather than preserve knowledge, to undermine rather than to stabilize
custom and social authority.””? In a similar vein, Schumpeter suggested
that “from criticism of a text to the criticism of a society, the way is
shorter than it seems.”? Much earlier, Veblen made a comparable
point in 1919 concerning intellectuals’ inherently “skeptical frame of
mind.”** Consequently, the best and the brightest are disproportion-
ately found among the more radical or anti-establishmentarian, usually
located on the left but sometimes on the right as well, particularly in
countries where the left has held longtime power. Inherent in the
obligation to create is the tendency to reject the status quo, to oppose
the traditional as philistine.”°
The Lazarsfeld-Thielens study was in fact conducted to evaluate the
impact of McCarthyism on social scientists. As might be expected, the
overwhelming majority were strongly anti-McCarthy. What was much
more surprising, given the assumption that Joseph McCarthy and other
government investigations of communism were intimidating even polit-
ically moderate faculty, pressing professors to expound conformist
views, was the conclusion that it was less dangerous on campus for a
faculty member to be an opponent of McCarthy than to be a left-
winger. Lazarsfeld and Thielens noted that overt supporters of the Wis-
consin senator, of the anti-communist security program, at major uni-
versities were much more likely to be ostracized by their colleagues
(and, probably, if young, to be denied tenure or promotion) than were
pro-communists.”° While some on the left were discharged or other-
wise penalized, these tended to be scholars who could be formally
charged with or refused to answer questions about present or past
Communist Party affiliations. A number lost their jobs.2”? Other well-
known radicals, including socialists, Trotskyists, and anarchists, were
rarely sanctioned. Val Lorwin of the University of Oregon, whose red
Socialist Party card was reported to investigators as a communist one
by his landlady, is a notable exception.

POLITICIZATION AND QUIESCENCE: THE SIXTIES,

SEVENTIES, AND EIGHTIES
The militant civil rights movement of the early sixties, which engaged
in civil disobedience tactics, was heavily campus-based. Black and
 182 American Exceptionalism

white students joined in demonstrations and sit-ins. They were backed

by many of their professors, who saw in the activity of the movement
revenge for the passivity and outward conformism of the early fifties.
Through a process which led from civil rights sit-ins in business estab-
lishments to student takeovers of administration buildings, actions that
resulted almost everywhere in the calling in of the police and produced
the recurrent condemnation of campus officialdom by faculty, the
American campus was politicized by the end of the decade.
The major catalytic events that gave rise to the movements of the
1960s were the civil rights and anti-war struggles. The student mass
base was dedicated to the substantive issues, but radicals of diverse
varieties took over the leadership in many local and national demon-
strations. They became carried away with the illusion that they were
creating a revolutionary mass movement. As support for authority
began to weaken, a broad coterie of anti-establishment causes was
added to the movement, such as gay and women’s rights, environmen-
talism, and greater freedom in personal behavior, particularly in the
realms of sexual activity and use of drugs.
The movement issues affected faculty as well. They led to the politi-
cization of many academic organizations, particularly in the social sci-
ences and the humanities. Election to offices that had previously been
perceived as honors to be given for contributions to scholarship, much
like prizes, became vigorously contested elections, with the left win-
ning out in a number of associations. Major scholars were defeated
because of their alleged conservatism. Similar issues divided campuses.
Formal faculty political parties were established to contest elections for
faculty senates and to affect the outcomes of faculty meetings. The for-
mal splits continued within some of the academic organizations into
the nineties; the campus-based parties have disappeared, but the lines
of ideological cleavage that undermined collegial relations in depart-
ments and universities remain, to be activated when new issues dealing
with matters such as multiculturalism and free speech rights arise.
The “movements” exhilarated in their seeming ability to stop the war
and to reduce segregation and racially discriminatory hiring practices,
but victory brought frustration. The great majority of the student pro-
testers dropped away, once the Vietnam War and the great civil rights
demonstrations ended. A political quiescence descended on the Amer-
ican campuses in the mid-1970s, with the end of the Vietnam conflict.
Faculties became less liberal or more conservative between 1969 and
1984, according to a series of national surveys conducted for the
Carnegie Corporation, although they remained far to the left of the
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 183

general population. The proportion describing themselves as left or lib-

eral fell off from 46 percent in 1969, to 41 percent in 1975, to 39 per-
cent in 1984, still more than double those so reported among the pub-
lic. Conversely, those academics identifying themselves as conservative
increased from 28 percent in 1969, to 31 percent in 1975 and 33 per-
cent in 1984.
The move to the right among faculties seemingly was reversed in the
latter half of the eighties. In the most recent Carnegie poll (taken in
1989), the percentage agreeing with the statement, “I am apprehensive
about the future of this country,’ moved up from 50 to 63 percent
between 1984 and 1989. The proportion describing themselves as lib-
eral jumped to 56 percent, considerably higher than the 39 percent in
1984.® Again, the data show that scholars at the most prestigious uni-
versities are to the left of those at other institutions. At the research
universities, 67 percent are liberals, while only 17 percent are conserv-
ative. Conservatives are strongest at the predominantly teaching insti-
tutions, 27 percent at four-year colleges and 35 percent at two-year
community colleges, although liberals predominate in these as well, 59
and 48 percent, respectively.”
As the eighties progressed, the intellectual world, including profes-
sors, had been moving toward the left. The “new” faculty liberalism did
not reflect revived mass protest. To some degree, the change may have
been a reaction to Reaganism, to the triumphs of the Republican right
in the larger polity. For even while shifting away from radical left and
activist views, the bulk of academe, particularly in the upper echelons,
remained very much more liberal and Democratic than the general
electorate and more critical of business-related institutions and values.
Hence, many faculty perceived the eighties as a decade of increased
materialism, and as less egalitarian.
The growth of faculty activism, particularly with respect to multicul-
turalism and political correctness, related but partially independent
developments, appears to be a product of the increased presence of the
“veterans” of the sixties, of former student radicals as well as of femi-
nists, racial minorities, and gays in the tenured ranks. In their rejection
of the “bourgeois” world, many student activists had turned to the
academy. The historian John Diggins reports: “Consisting to a large
extent of graduate students, the New Left entered the academic pro-
fession en masse. ...”°° As leading cultural critic and African-Ameri-
can scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., cited earlier, notes: “Ours was
the generation that took over buildings in the late 1960s and demanded
the creation of black and women’s studies programs and now, like the
 184 American Exceptionalism

return of the repressed, has come back to challenge the traditional cur-
riculum.”?!
Even more than in the past, left faculty are to be found in greater
numbers in the humanities and “soft” (qualitative and historical) social
sciences, as well as in some of the professional schools (such as law
and social work), while their relative strength in the quantitative social
sciences has fallen off. Existential and class analyses linked to Marxist
thought have made considerable gains in humanities departments with
the emergence of deconstructionism, and in the law schools in the
form of critical legal studies. In their teachings and writings today,
many historians, legal scholars, English professors, and qualitative soci-
ologists try to expose the dominant “hegemonic” culture that—in their
view—legitimizes the traditional establishments of affluent white
males, by deconstructing their cultural products. New York Times cul-
tural correspondent Richard Bernstein has analyzed the political con-
tent of the new cultural criticism in accurate, albeit polemical terms:

Much of what is claimed under the banner of the new is actually a stale,
simpleminded, Manichaean, and imitative reformulation of that discredited
nineteenth century concept called Marxism... .
Open up almost any contemporary [humanist] academic journal and you
will find phrases like “colonized bodies,” “the vantage point of the sub-
jected,” the “great underground terrains of subjugated knowledge,” the
“marginalized other,” which are in contradistinction to . . . the “socially pro-
duced meaning” of the “dominant white-male culture represented in the
hegemonic curriculum.” Inspired by the French philosopher Michel Fou-
cault, the jargon represents the reformulation of basic nineteenth-century
Marxist ideas that have been borrowed by generations of intellectuals bent
on showing that the world as it exists is the creation (the “social construc-
tion”) of the groups that hold power, their ideology (the “dominant dis-
course”) used to maintain sway over everybody else (the “victimized subal-
terns’).?2

Berkeley philosopher John Searle, once an ardent supporter of stu-

dent activism but more recently a champion of the more traditional
canons, has sought to answer the question why “the ‘cultural left’ is not
heavily influential outside the departments of French, English and
comparative literature and a few history departments and law schools
. . [since] the study of poetry, plays and novels is hardly the ideal basis
for understanding modern structures of power or the mechanisms of .
revolutionary change?” His tentative answers make good sense in
explaining “the migration of radical politics from the social sciences to
the humanities.”
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 185

First, as empirical theories of society or blueprints for social change, Marx-

ism and other such theories have been discredited by recent events. The
collapse of the Soviet empire only marks officially something that most
intellectuals have known quietly for a long time. The standard versions of
radical leftist ideology in the form of theories of society and social change,
such as Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and Castroism, are all in
disrepute. The most congenial home left for Marxism, now that it has been
largely discredited as a theory of economics and politics, is in departments
of literary criticism.

Secondly, for reasons I do not fully understand, many professors of litera-

ture no longer care about literature in the ways that seemed satisfactory to
earlier generations. It seems pointless to many of them to teach literature
as it was understood by such very different critics as Edmund Wilson, John
Crowe Ransom, or I. A. Richards; so they teach it as a means of achieving
left-wing political goals or as an occasion for exercises in deconstruction,
etc. The absence of an accepted educational mission in many literary stud-
ies has created a vacuum waiting to be filled. Perhaps the original mistake
was in supposing that there is a well defined academic discipline of “literary
criticism’”—as opposed to literary scholarship—capable of accommodating
Ph.D. programs, research projects, and careers for the ambitious. When
such a discipline fails to be “scientific” or rigorous, or even well defined, the
field is left wide open for various fashions such as deconstruction, or for
the current political enthusiasms.”

Observers, both on the left and the right, native and foreign, have
repeatedly noted in the eighties and nineties that Marxism is alive and
relatively well in American intellectualdom, even beyond the activism
of the humanities. The Marxist scholars Bertell Ollmann and Edward
Vernoff introduce a comprehensive work on Marxists in academe by
saying, “A Marxist cultural revolution is taking place today in American
universities.”*4 Journalist Garry Abrams notes that “American universi-
ties may be one of the last bastions of intellectual Marxism, at least in
the developed world.”3> Oxford political theorist John Gray, writing in
the Times Literary Supplement, also concludes that “the academic insti-
tutions of capitalist America will be the last redoubt of Marxist theoriz-
ing. .. .”°6 Feminist historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese observes that “a
good case could be made that, as a group, they [conservatives] are
more vulnerable to exclusion from or marginalization within the acad-
emy than even the most radical of their left-wing opponents.”*” And
radical sociologist Richard Flacks, a former leader of Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS), states that by the eighties, “the tradition of
the left was rather well-entrenched in American academe, having come
 186 American Exceptionalism

to have a taken-for-granted influence on the curriculum, on dominant

outlooks of the social sciences and humanities, and the micro-politics
of academic life. . . [I]n the major universities (if nowhere else in this
country), it is intellectually respectable to express an affinity with
‘Marxism’ and to be some kind of socialist.’**
Journalist John Leo, reporting on the annual convention of the
32,000-member Modern Language Association, describes the major
organization of American humanists as a “hard-edge, heavily politicized
academic group that looks at Western literature .. . as the ideological
expression of white male dominance.” He comments that the central
orientation at the conference, “totally dead in the real world, is Marx-
ism. It is a vulgar Marxism ... and it goes like this: Whether we
acknowledge it or not, everything we do or say works to support our
ideological interests. Realizing that all creative writing is already politi-
cal, the left works to reveal literature as the expression of an elite ruling
class.”
Gerald Marzorati, senior editor of Harper’s magazine, emphasizes
that the American academic radicals have dropped “liberalism, with its
notions of tolerance” in favor of “a mix of neo-Marxism and semeiotics
...a Continental language, precisely that [is] being abandoned” by the
younger European intellectuals who have resuscitated liberalism, the
emphasis on individual rights, and pragmatism. Ironically, he notes
that these overseas “writers and thinkers seem to harbor none of the
easy anti-Americanism of their intellectual forefathers and of America’s
academic radicals.”
Writing in the New York Review of Books on the attitudes and writ-
ings of American elite scientists, Cambridge University Nobel laureate
M. F. Perutz indicates, “Marxism may be discredited in Eastern
Europe, but it still seems to flourish at Harvard.”*! Commenting in a
similar way in The New Republic on the differences between American
and Russian literary analysts, Robert Alter, a leading student of com-
parative literature, points out that “Literature in our own academic cir-
cles is regularly dismissed, castigated as an instrument of ideologies of
oppression. ...” But after a trip to Moscow, he “came away with the
sense that there are still people in the world for whom literature mat-
ters urgently.”*? Margo Culley, a University of Massachusetts professor
of English, is not one of them. In contradistinction to Alter, she exu-
berantly called attention to the growth of the multicultural world view
in the humanities as a kind of Copernican revolution, which has
reduced the importance of materials produced by Euro-centered white
males in favor of non-white, non-European, and female products. She
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 187

notes that within the Modern Language Association, “the subjects of

gender and race have overwhelmed the field. .. .”43
Leftists in other disciplines also emphasize their dominance.
Richard Flacks wrote in Critical Sociology in 1988, “If there was an
Establishment sociology twenty years ago, we helped do it in, and so,
for good or ill, the field is to a great extent ours.” A year later, the left-
ist historian Jonathan Wiener noted in the Journal of American History
that “radical history in the age of Reagan occupied the strongest posi-
tion it has ever held in American universities.”** He documented his
thesis elsewhere by noting that in “the past several years an impressive
number of prizes have gone to radical and feminist historians. ...
[E]specially in the crucial field of American history, radical and femi-
nist historians have made their work the center of discussion and
debate. ... The Organization of American Historians has elected sev-
eral leftists to its presidency in recent years. ...”° A survey of
emphases in the humanities conducted under the auspices of the
Modern Language Association found Marxist approaches used in more
than one quarter of all humanities departments and in over two fifths
of those in major universities.*’ Self-identified radicals have been
elected to office in communities with concentrations of academics and
the creative intelligentsia—for example, Ann Arbor, Amherst, Austin,
Berkeley, Boulder, Burlington (Vermont), Cambridge, Hyde Park
(Chicago), Ithaca, Madison, the West Side of Manhattan (New York
City), Santa Cruz, and Santa Monica.*8
If American academics, particularly in the leading research universi-
ties, have remained on the left, the bulk of the intellectuals in Europe
and Japan appear to have dropped their former allegiance to Marxism.
Polls indicate that British intellectuals and academics have backed
center-left parties, while Swedish professors have also supported non-
socialist groups. French intellectuals turned very anti-Marxist and were
anti-Soviet hard-liners during the seventies and eighties.*? Japanese
academics have also moved to the right.*° Their behavior in different
countries may stem from past links to strong socialist, labor, and, in
Italy and France, Communist parties.*! Socialism as a utopia clearly
has failed, both in its authoritarian and democratic forms. Many intel-
lectuals previously involved with left politics have turned away. An ana-
lyst of Swedish society, Ron Eyerman, in explaining why European
intellectuals, unlike American, have not been “an alienated stratum
with an independent tradition vis a vis the state,” points out that conti-
nental intellectualdom, even when on the left, “found itself at the cen-
ter, rather than the margins, of society.” Intellectuals there could take
 188 American Exceptionalism

part in the large labor and social democratic movements. The “alien-
ated intelligentsia that did exist was limited to the arena of high cul-
ture,” not academe.”
The American situation has been quite different. As Richard Flacks
emphasizes, “The left has had more meaning in the United States as a
cultural than as a political force.”*? Leftist party politics, particularly
since World War II, has been too small a matter to count, and trade
unions disdain intellectuals. There has been little application of radical
theory to policy. As a consequence, John Gray indicates, the American
“academic class . . . uses the rhetoric and theorizing of the radical intel-
ligentsia of Europe a decade or a generation ago to legitimate its
estrangement from its own culture. ... American academic Marxism
... [is] politically irrelevant and marginal . . . [and] compensates for its
manifest political nullity by seeking hegemony within academic institu-
tions.”** Leftist ideologies, therefore, have been academic in both
senses of the word. They remain important in the university world and
the creative culture generally, and a large and perhaps growing segment
of the American intelligentsia, including the media and.entertainment
elite, appears more inclined to support leftist ideologies than their
compeers in most European countries.»
Radical sentiments do not appear to affect the bulk of the students
nor the majority of the faculty on most teaching-oriented campuses.
But they have reached out to many in the leading universities and have
received the support of many discipline leaders. As Hayek noted half a
century ago, in an analysis that is even more true today, the conserva-
tive bourgeoisie control the economy while the campus anti-establish-
mentarians dominate intellectual life in the humanities and much of
the social sciences, particularly in the elite research universities.

CONFLICTS WITHIN THE LEFT

t=)

Relative to the size of the organized left in America, ideologically purist

tendencies (i.e., political sectarianism) have been stronger in this coun-
try than elsewhere in the democratic world, a phenomenon discussed
earlier. Prior to 1945, Trotskyism was more influential in the United
States than in Europe. Trotskyism appealed as a revolutionary ideology
not corrupted by power or the need to compromise with electoral reali-
ties which undercut the social democratic appeal. Partisan Review, for
many years the major literary magazine in America, was edited by peo-
ple loosely sympathetic to Trotskyism. A significant number of intellec-
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 189

tuals were Trotskyist fellow travelers during the 1930s. They took ultra-
left positions developed in the conflicts among the intelligentsia about
Marxism, socialism, the nature of the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil
War, and the like. Besides the Trotskyists, who declined numerically
with the outbreak of World War II, there was a vigorous, much larger
independent left which also thought of itself as revolutionary. The
American Socialist Party, led by Norman Thomas, stood considerably
to the left of the European affiliates of the Second International during
the 1930s and 1940s, as was the larger pre-World War I party led by
Eugene V. Debs. Anti-Stalinism, a sophisticated radical opposition to
the Communist International, was very popular among a sizable minor-
ity of American intellectuals. Although the Communist Party was the
strongest force among leftists in membership terms and general politi-
cal influence during the New Deal period, it had less appeal to Marxist
theory-oriented intellectuals than the Trotskyists and revolutionary
socialists, in part because the Communist Popular Front supported
Roosevelt and the Democrats.
The 1930s witnessed incredibly bitter fights between the commu-
nist and the anti-communist American lefts about the character of the
Soviet Union.” Stalinism was seen by the anti-communist radicals not
only as oppressive in the USSR, but as having betrayed the cause of
revolutionary socialism around the world. As Gillian Peele notes, “the
primary divisions in American intellectual life in the 1930s were within
the far left,” and resulted in “a heritage of ideas and an awareness of
disputes within the communist movement which was unusual among
scholars and rare among practicing politicians.”*” A generation of radi-
cals was weaned on the interpretation that the communists were
responsible for the rise of Hitler, since they had cooperated with the
Nazis in strikes in 1931 and 1932, and had undermined the Social
Democratic government in Prussia. Before the Nazis came to power,
Stalinist communists denounced the socialists as social fascists, that is,
objective allies of fascism. The anti-communist left believed that the
Stalinists had sabotaged the anti-fascist struggle during the Spanish
Civil War, that they had been more concerned with destroying anti-
Stalinist radicals than with defeating Franco. Ultimately there was the
Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939 which made World War II possible. In
1940, Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, visited Berlin and said that
fascism was a matter of taste. Until the Soviet Union itself was
invaded, communists sought to work with the German conquerors in
occupied Europe. The French Communist Party, for example, applied
for permission to publish L’'Humanité in Paris in 1940. In 1941, after
 190 American Exceptionalism

the Soviet entry into the war, the American communists openly sup-
ported the Roosevelt administration’s indictment of the leaders of the
Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party under the Smith Act, a law enacted
as an anti-communist measure.
The revulsion to Stalinism among the American anti-communist left
affected reactions to McCarthyism in the early 1950s. Although no one
who could be considered “left” openly supported Senator Joseph
McCarthy, some anti-Stalinist radicals were soft on his platform.
While they agreed that his methods were bad and disapproved of his
tactics, they favored fighting his target: the communists. The commu-
nists themselves played into the hands of McCarthy and his allies by
rarely defending their constitutional right to free speech, to agitate or
organize as communists. When attacked by government or congres-
sional investigators, they would insist they were liberals, that the inves-
tigations were designed to intimidate the Progressive movement.
Although the Socialists and the Wobblies, members of the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), had defended their civil rights as radi-
cals when arrested during World War I, and the Trotskyists did the
same in 1941, as did New Leftists during the Vietnam War, commu-
nists never stood up to McCarthy or other post-World War II investi-
gators to proclaim their right to be revolutionaries. For the most part,
they took the Fifth Amendment, either refusing to answer political
questions or denying, even when under oath, that they were members
of the Party. Hence, frequently at issue was whether X actually was a
communist, not whether he or she had a right to be one. Under such
conditions, some anti-Stalinist leftists found it difficult to speak up for
people whom they regarded as committed supporters of an extremely
repressive and anti-Semitic system.
The anti-Stalinist left intellectuals on the whole continued to iden-
tify themselves as socialists or liberals during the postwar period. The
Cold War of the late 1940s and early 1950s was waged in the free
world by liberals and social democrats, for example, Harry Truman,
Clement Attlee, Ernie Bevan, Kurt Schumacher, Guy Mollet, and
Haakon Lie. When Henry Wallace left Truman’s cabinet and joined
with the communists to set up a new dovish left third party, the Pro-
gressives, in 1948, few liberals or trade union leaders followed.
The reasons for the growth of anti-Stalinism in the immediate post-
war period were rooted in events: the takeover of Czechoslovakia in
1948, the overtly anti-Semitic trials subsequently held in that country,
Stalin’s increasing reliance on anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, the
end of any pretense of democratic rights and the suppression of the
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 191

Socialists in Eastern Europe, the blockade of Berlin, and the Korean

War. The non-communist intellectuals united for a brief period in the
Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization set up to oppose com-
munist influence in the intellectual world. At the most important
meeting of the Congress in Milan in 1955, many leaders from both the
democratic left and right were present, joined in their agreement that
communist totalitarianism should be opposed.
This unity dissolved in the 1960s with the Vietnam War and the
subsequent rise of a radical, student-based anti-war movement which
rejected the anti-communism of the anti-Stalinist left.5® These devel-
opments led to a sharp split within the liberal and social democratic
communities. In the United States, the leading New Left group, Stu-
dents for a Democratic Society (SDS), emerged out of the student sec-
tion of the League for Industrial Democracy (SLID). The parent orga-
nization was founded in 1905 to organize intellectuals and
professionals in support for trade unions and social democratic princi-
ples generally. In the mid-1960s, as the youth affiliate turned further to
the left and showed a willingness to collaborate with any radical group,
including the Communists, the older socialists in the LID, led by
Michael Harrington, sought to discipline their youth, telling them to
stay away from the communists. The student segment rejected this
advice, which they viewed as red-baiting. They broke with the SLID
and, as the SDS, went out on their own. They adopted a strong anti-
anti-communist stance and denounced Harrington and his political
friends.
The division was not limited to the student or youth movements. A
growing conflict developed within the adult left, particularly between
the New Left and the old Trotskyist and social democratic segments.
The bitter anti-communism of the old left continued to be the main
passion of many involved in the latter two. Max Schactman, who
founded a dissident revolutionary movement that broke with the offi-
cial Trotskyists in 1940 over their support of the Soviet attack on Fin-
land, opposed World War II as an imperialist war, but in the mid-
1960s endorsed the American involvement in Vietnam. At the onset of
American intervention, the majority of the American non-communist
left supported an American role in Vietnam, viewed as support of resis-
tance to communist aggression. South Vietnam had a labor movement
with close ties to the AFL-CIO. As the war continued, the left and lib-
eral communities became increasingly involved in the anti-war move-
ment, and leftists who did not oppose it found themselves isolated.
When the protest took on the character of a mass movement led by
 192 American Exceptionalism

radicals, those who wanted to continue leftist or socialist activities

were faced with a choice: oppose the war or be perceived by the new
growing generation of young radicals as reactionaries. The Socialist
Party, which included the former Trotskyists, split. Its left was to reor-
ganize as the Democratic Socialists. Its right formed an organization
called Social Democrats USA, which supported the Vietnam War. The
left, led by Michael Harrington, opposed the war, though they rejected
the pro-Hanoi—Viet Cong stance of many of the New Left radicals
involved in the anti-war movement and their confrontationist tactics,
frequently aimed at universities.
These struggles within the non-Communist left were paralleled in
the conflicts within the Democratic Party and the liberal community.
The New Deal groupings, which had been more or less united behind
the strong anti-communist foreign policies of Harry Truman and John
F. Kennedy, also began to divide. The New Politics wing, identified
with Senators Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Robert
Kennedy, opposed the war and favored efforts to negotiate with the
Soviets on arms control and other matters. Conversely, a number of
old-line New Dealers, including Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey,
and Henry Jackson, together with the major leaders of the AFL-CIO,
remained strong in their opposition to communism and supported the
war in Vietnam.
The left and liberal worlds were now sharply split. Some prominent
intellectuals with roots in the anti-Stalinist left were dismayed by the
rise of the increasingly influential New Left and New Politics tenden-
cies, which they perceived as soft on communism. They were espe-
cially critical of the student movement, and identified many of the new
single-issue movements that had developed in the 1960s as somehow
linked together in undermining resistance to communism. These reac-
tions gradually led them to concentrate on fighting the anti-anti-com-
munist left. They continued, however, to favor welfare state policies
and strong trade unions. Viewing democracy as an end in itself and
strongly attached to the values of scholarship, they argued that the con-
frontationist attacks by the New Left and the anti-war movement on
the universities and on the democratic political system were not only
unwarranted, but played into the hands of anti-democratic extremists,
both of the left and the right. Hence they were regarded as renegades
by the New Left. To their surprise, they found a greater emotional kin-
ship with Old Right conservatives and Republicans than with their
erstwhile political colleagues, whom they considered too dovish in their
foreign policy views.
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 193

LABELING AND THE EMERGENCE OF

NEOCONSERVATISM
Lae |

The hard-line anti-Stalinists were, however, still perceived as within

the liberal or left communities until Michael Harrington, the leader of
the Democratic Socialists, one of two major groups which succeeded
the Socialist Party, and his colleagues on the editorial board of Dissent,
coined the term “neoconservatism” in the mid-1960s.°? They argued
that the right wing of the dissolved party, Social Democrats USA, and
their intellectual fellow travelers among other former radicals were
neoconservatives, people who are objectively conservative and allied to,
if not a part of, the conservative movement. They were in effect telling
the left of center world, particularly the militant New Left students
who regarded self-described left social democrats like Harrington and
Irving Howe as non-radicals, that there was a difference between
themselves and right-wing hawkish social democrats and other
pro—Vietnam War leftists. _
The subsequent development of the neoconservative “movement” is
a good example of the consequences of a phenomenon sociologists
describe as “labeling.” Labels determine reactions to those labeled,
whether they are described as “psychotic,” “communist,” or “conserva-
tive.” In the case of the neoconservatives, the label induced many of
their former friends and allies, for whom “conservative” is an invidious
term, to reject them. Conversely, the label led many traditional right-
ists, Republicans and business people, long unhappy about their lim-
ited support among intellectuals, to welcome as new allies a group of
prominent writers and academics who, they were told, had come over
to their side.
The term quickly became part of American political discourse.
Many in the United States and elsewhere assumed that neoconserva-
tives were hard-line right-wingers on domestic as well as foreign issues,
in spite of the fact that initially almost all of them remained supportive
of welfare planning state and New Deal policies. They were identified
with the Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Pat Moynihan Democrats;
the George Meany, Lane Kirkland trade unionists; and the Social
Democrats USA led by Sidney Hook and Bayard Rustin. But this back-
ground was forgotten or ignored as the old-line conservative intellectu-
als, Republican politicians, and many in the business community
reacted positively to being told that a group of prominent, dispropor-
 194 American Exceptionalism

tionately Jewish, intellectuals, who had once been on the left, were
now conservatives.
Neoconservatives (though more social democrats than not) thus
found themselves rejected by their old friends and hailed by their
opponents. The latter’s welcome frequently included appreciative audi-
ences, particularly when the neoconservatives dealt with issues upon
which they and the conservatives agreed, such as an anti-Soviet foreign
policy and opposition to affirmative action quotas. Neoconservatives
were invited to write for conservative magazines, speak to their meet-
ings, and work for their think tanks. Since the neoconservatives’
strongest passions were reserved for their opposition to the Soviets and
communists and they were concerned that most American liberals had
become appeasers, they welcomed an alliance with hard-line foreign
policy conservatives. But their political leaders remained Humphrey,
Jackson, and Moynihan. The latter two were to become the co-chairs
of the one organization which could be described as neoconservative,
the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), founded in 1973 to
rally Democrats in opposition to the New Politics McGovern liberals.
The Republicans tried hard to win over the neoconservatives.
Richard Nixon appointed Moynihan as his domestic policy adviser in
1969, and subsequently made him his ambassador to India and the
United Nations. He tried to recruit Henry Jackson to serve as Secretary
of Defense. In 1972, the Republicans pressed the neoconservative
intellectuals to endorse Nixon against the Democratic presidential
nominee, George McGovern, who as an ardent foreign policy dove was
anathema to them. Few, except for Irving Kristol, did so. The majority
sat out the election, although Daniel Bell and Nathan Glazer, succes-
sively co-editors with Kristol of The Public Interest, publicly endorsed
McGovern. The Social Democrats USA and the AFL-CIO under
George Meany abstained.
In 1976, most of the neoconservatives backed Henry Jackson for the
Democratic nomination for president, but the previously unknown
Jimmy Carter won. Carter, who had supported Jackson against
McGovern four years earlier, turned out to be a big disappointment to
the anti-communist left. His appointments to positions below cabinet
level were largely to people identified with McGovern’s views on for-
eign policy and Ralph Nader’s on domestic issues. CDM, which had
backed Carter for the nomination after Jackson withdrew, submitted a
list of sixty names to Carter as possible appointments. Only a few were
appointed to minor posts. Among those on the list who were not
appointed were Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, Max Kampelman
(until the last six months), and Nathan Glazer.
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 195

The Republicans attempted to capitalize on the frustrations of the

neoconservatives with the Carter administration. Bill Brock, the chair-
person of the Republican National Committee, invited neoconservative
intellectuals to lunch on a one-to-one basis, but had little success in
recruiting them. At his invitation, Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote an article in
1979 for Common Sense, a Republican magazine, explaining “Why We
Are Not Republicans.” She said the problem rested in the fact that the
Republican Party was a WASP vehicle, and the people connected with
it were corporate board, country club types who were anti-welfare and
had no concern for the poor and blacks.®!
By 1980, many of the neoconservatives had become deeply antago-
nistic to Jimmy Carter, whom they saw as too soft in foreign policy
terms. They were personally wooed by Ronald Reagan. He asked Jeane
Kirkpatrick (who together with her husband Evron had been close to
Humphrey) and others among them to be on his campaign team. She
was subsequently given the U.N. ambassadorship. A number of neo-
conservatives, such as Richard Perle (a major Jackson aide), Kirk-
patrick, Carl Gershman (a leader of Social Democrats USA), Elliott
Abrams (a son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary),
and Max Kampelman (formerly Humphrey's chief of staff), were
appointed to major positions in the State or Defense departments.
Richard Pipes worked for the National Security Council. Others such
as Podhoretz and Ben Wattenberg (previously a Johnson aide) received
advisory posts in the administration’s international communications
apparatus. Michael Novak became ambassador to the U.N. Human
Rights Commission. William Bennett served consecutively as chair-
man of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Secretary of
Education, where he was assisted by Chester Finn and William Kristol.
Gertrude Himmelfarb held a presidential appointment on the Council
of the National Endowment for the Humanities. A 1987 article in The
New Republic described these developments as a Trotskyist takeover of
the Reagan administration.
As should be evident from this list of Reagan’s erstwhile left and
Democratic appointees, their positions were almost entirely in the for-
eign, defense, or education and intellectual policy realms. No neocon-
servative was assigned to a post affecting economic or welfare policy,
such as the Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, Labor, or Health and
Human Services departments. The reason is fairly clear: questions of
affirmative action and meritocracy apart, almost all the neoconserva-
tives remained liberals on most domestic policy issues, at least as of the
beginning of the Reagan presidency in 1981. Although the ideological
leader of the tendency, Irving Kristol, supported Nixon in 1972 and
 196 American Exceptionalism

became a Republican soon after, he continued to favor a variety of wel-

fare programs and to disagree with Friedman, Hayek, and Reagan on
these issues. As he put it in a 1976 article seeking to define what it
meant to be a neoconservative, “Neo-conservatism is not at all hostile
to the idea of the welfare state. ... In general, it approves of those
social reforms that, while providing needed security and comfort to the
individual in our dynamic, urbanized society, do so with a minimum of
bureaucratic intrusion in the individual’s affairs. ... In short, while
being for the welfare state, it is opposed to the paternalistic state.” The
reforms he approved of “would include, of course, social security,
unemployment insurance, some form of national health insurance,
some kind of family assistance plan, etc.” Two decades later, writing
in the Wall Street Journal, Kristol reiterated this description. In com-
paring neoconservatives to the “sober” conservatives around William
Buckley's National Review, he noted that while “critical of Great Soci-
ety programs,” the “neoconservatives” did not share National Review's
hostility to the New Deal or its enthusiasm for Jeffersonian individual-
ism.
Kristol noted in the 1976 article that while he was willing to accept
identification as a neoconservative, “some of my friends who have been
identified as fellow neo-conservatives are less complaisant about this
business. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for instance, suggests that he is a
modern version of a Wilsonian progressive. Professor Daniel Bell of
Harvard asserts that he is, as he always has been, a right-wing social
democrat.”® Dan Himmelfarb, assistant editor of The Public Interest,
denied in 1988 that the neoconservatives had changed ideologically.
Rather, he concluded that American liberalism had moved left. Neo-
conservatives, he contended, believed that the left had “usurped the
liberal label, leaving real liberals to be designated neoconservatives.”
The wooing of neoconservatives by Reagan and Brock, and, more
fundamentally, changes in the larger political scene, led a number of
them to follow Kristol in becoming Republicans. This group included
Elliott Abrams, William Bennett, Peter Berger, Midge Decter,
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Evron and Jeane Kirkpatrick, Norman Pod-
horetz, and Aaron Wildavsky. While they have been well received by
the Republican Party leadership, traditional American conservative
intellectuals, adherents of classical liberal laissez-faire doctrines,
increasingly began to criticize neoconservatives as a foreign body
within their ranks, corrupting their basic values. Patrick Buchanan has.
described the views of the neoconservatives, which are distasteful to
the “Old Right,” in these terms:
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 197

Ex-Great Society liberals, almost all of them, they support the welfare state
and Big Government. They are pro-civil rights and affirmative action,
though anti-quota. They are pro-foreign aid, especially for Israel. They favor
higher immigration quotas, and some demand open borders. Many are vis-
cerally hostile to the Old Right, and to any America First foreign policy.
They want to use America’s wealth to promote “global democracy” abroad
and impose “democratic values” in our public schools.
While they support Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter, their heroes
are Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, globalists and architects
of the mammoth modern state.°”’

And he tells conservatives that they are “going to have to take back
their movement ... [from] the neoconservatives ... the ex-liberals,
socialists and Trotskyists who signed on in the name of anti-commu-
nism and set the limits of permissible dissent.” One of his presidential
supporters, Clyde Wilson, complained that the “offensives of radical-
ism have driven vast herds of liberals across the borders into our terri-
tories.”
Buchanan’s views are not idiosyncratic. John Judis summarized the
criticisms that appeared in various conservative journals: “[The tradi-
tionalists] .. . charge that the neoconservatives are not really conserva-
tives, but welfare-state liberals and Wilsonian internationalists.”®? Writ-
ing of conflicting conservative tendencies, E. J. Dionne noted the
critique by “old-time conservatives” of “neoconservatives, such as Irving
Kristol and Norman Podhoretz ... , who are mainly former Democrats
... [for] importing liberal ideas within the conservative movement and
seeking to transform conservatism into something quite different: a
kind of 1940s anti-Communist liberalism more suitable to Harry S.
Truman than to Robert Taft or Barry M. Goldwater.””°
Judis’s and Dionne’s conclusions referred to articles published in
traditional conservative magazines, which have argued that “welfare-
state Democrats ... have taken over once conservative publications
and institutions,”’! that ex-Democrats like “Irving Kristol seem to want
to reconstitute the Democratic party of the 1950s and early 1960s (the
party of big government and anti-Communism—Senator Henry Jack-
son's dream).”” Earlier, George Gilder criticized the neoconservatives
for their refusal to support the conservatives on social issues such as
the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, sex education, pornography,
school prayer, and gay liberation.”
Although Jeane Kirkpatrick joined the GOP, in 1985, she remained
on the liberal side on many domestic issues. The National Review
 198 American Exceptionalism

explained her rejection of a presidential bid in November 1987 on the

grounds that she recognized that “questions about her views on eco-
nomic and social issues would have inevitably arisen.” As “a portent of
the battle to come,” an aide to then prospective conservative candidate
Jack Kemp sent a letter to the Manchester Union Leader listing her lib-
eral positions on various matters.”
The bulk of the neoconservatives remained Democrats. Writing in
1985, the conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet noted that “only a
small fraction of those who had been most prominent in The Public
Interest and in Commentary voted for Reagan.””? The one important
neoconservative organization during the seventies and early eighties
was the Coalition for a Democratic [Party] Majority, although it pre-
ferred to be known as neoliberal. It basically disintegrated during the
1984 election when its members differed over their role in the presi-
dential contest. At its height, the group included four past presidents
of the American Political Science Association, and many other promi-
nent scholars, such as Nathan Glazer, Michael Novak, Martin Peretz,
John P. Roche, Adam Ulam, Leon Wieseltier, and Raymond Wolfinger.
The organization was supported by a number of AFL-CIO leaders,
including its president, Lane Kirkland, as well as by Social Democrats
USA. The CDM intellectuals and the labor movement had a mutual
admiration society and cooperated strongly. In the late 1970s, the Com-
mittee for Labor Law Reform, set up on behalf of the AFL-CIO, was
chaired by two prominent neoconservative political scientists and drew
largely on the CDM for membership. In 1992, the Cold War over, a
number of neoconservatives who had supported Reagan endorsed Bill
Clinton. But they were not welcomed into the new administration,
which, like Carter’s, largely appointed liberals into its foreign policy
posts.’
Although they have separated politically, Democratic and Republi-
can neoconservatives have been able to work together. From its incep-
tion in 1965 to 1972, The Public Interest was co-edited by Irving Kris-
tol, who supported Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984, and Daniel
Bell, who endorsed McGovern in 1972 and Mondale in 1984. In 1973,
Nathan Glazer, who also had backed McGovern and Mondale (and
would later support Clinton), took over Bell’s position as co-editor. Its
publications committee has included Republicans like Robert Nisbet
and a key Democratic leader, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is
liberal on domestic issues. ‘b
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 199

THE MEANING OF NEOCONSERVATISM

La)

Neoconservatism arose out of and is therefore defined by a specific

sequence of historical events. The common link in the sources of neo-
conservatism is past involvement in struggles against communism as
anti-Stalinists in the radical movements, or as liberal opponents of
Communist-dominated factions in sections of the Democratic Party
where the Communists were once strong, for example, the states of
Washington, Minnesota, and New York.
While I have stressed the continuing commitment to New Deal
objectives of most neoconservatives, they have, like most socialists,
become more moderate in their general approach to the polity. Their
experiences with the confrontationist tactics of the New Left, such as
the attacks on the universities in the 1960s and early 1970s, led them
and others to place a greater emphasis on public order and respect for
authority. An opposition to the “adversary culture” and anti-American-
ism is also an important characteristic of neoconservatives. The failure
of socialism abroad and the counterproductive results of many U.S.
welfare policies led to a concern for “unanticipated consequences.”””
This involved the belief that many of the social changes of the past few
decades which were designed to extend equality and to upgrade the
bottom have brought with them unanticipated destructive conse-
quences for the individuals who were supposed to be helped. Hence, it
is necessary for government to act with humility, caution, and recogni-
tion of complexity.
Neoconservative views remain difficult to locate ideologically pre-
cisely because the “ism” was invented in an effort to label a diverse
group of political opponents. No one created a doctrine and called
him-/herself a neoconservative. Daniel Bell once summed up the politi-
cal views of people like himself by saying that “I am a socialist in eco-
nomics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.” That is, he
believes in the welfare state, in meritocracy and individualism, and in
employing “the principle of authority” and tradition in evaluating cul-
tural developments.” Not surprisingly, Irving Kristol has referred. to
Bell as “the theoretician for what may be called our ‘social democratic’
wing.””? Kristol, himself the Godfather of Republican neoconservatism,
strongly attacked Ronald Reagan’s domestic policies in 1987, late in his
administration, as miserly, as typical of “Republican administrations
[which] are forever denying themselves any interesting initiatives in
 200 American Exceptionalism

social policy, because such initiatives always cost some money.” He

urged support for a variety of welfare policies, even though “they would
cost money” and increase the budget deficit. Most specifically, he
argued for measures to aid the elderly, such as withdrawing the restric-
tions on incomes earned by those who receive Social Security and,
more radically, for raising stipends for all those existing below the
poverty line. “Why not raise Social Security payments so that the Rea-
gan administration can proclaim proudly that it has abolished poverty
for our older citizens?”®°
The neoconservative priority on resisting Communist expansion
continued to surface into the late 1980s among veterans of the political
wars of the 1960s. A 1987 article in the radical magazine Mother Jones
described the foreign policy accomplishments of a young neoconserva-
tive Democratic “Gang of Four,” three of whom, Bruce Cameron,
Robert Leiken, and Bernard Aronson, were active in the anti-Vietnam
and other liberal and radical movements, and one, Penn Kemble, was a
leader of the Social Democrats. They were credited with playing a
major role in the Washington debates over Nicaragua and helping win
crucial Democratic congressional votes for aid to the contras.®!
Neoconservatism, however, has basically ceased to exist. The term
lost its meaning as commentators applied it beyond its original applica-
tion to strongly anti-communist leftists. The label has since been used
to describe a wide range of traditional conservatives in the United
States and abroad who are classically liberal anti-statists on domestic
issues and hard-liners on foreign policy, largely by non-Americans, who
identifying conservatism with Tory statism, thought the neo label
applied to libertarians. Political scientist Percy Lehning writes: “I have
chosen the theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman as repre-
sentative of neo-conservative thought,” and stresses their views on the
market system.®* The New York Times Book Review, in dealing with two
books on the Margaret Thatcher years, called the most powerful British
disciple of Milton Friedman a “neoconservative,” a description the
author of the review gave to Ronald Reagan as well.*? Canadian politi-
cal scientist Philip Resnick, in analyzing the right-wing, laissez-faire
Social Credit government of British Columbia, categorized it as “neo-
conservatism on the periphery.”** These writers are simply wrong.
Hayek, Friedman, Reagan, and Thatcher are classical liberals, libertari-
ans, not neoconservatives. Others have erroneously applied the term to
social conservatives, advocates of teaching religion in the public
schools and opponents of legalized abortion, although most neoconser-
vatives take the opposite position on these and related issues.
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 201

These varied uses of the label, as I have noted, are incorrect since
almost all of the original neoconservatives have been supporters of the
welfare state and most continue to reject Friedmanite free market eco-
nomics. Ironically, on a philosophical level the neoconservative posi-
tion is closer to classic Toryism in British or Canadian terms. But since
the British Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher moved toward
classic anti-statist liberalism, the Tory position in the United Kingdom,
prior to John Major's accession, was advocated by the Liberal Democ-
rats and a Conservative minority led by Edward Heath, the so-called
wets. If the neoconservatives were in Britain during the 1980s, most
would have been members or supporters of the Social Democratic
Party, the right-wing split from the Labour Party, which during its
short life probably came closer to the positions of the American neo-
conservatives on most issues (except trade unionism) than any other
party in the world, and which was much more strongly anti-Soviet than
the Tory wets. The British Social Democrats were no longer socialists;
they resembled the strongly anti-communist American New Dealers.
Evidence of the disparate orientations of the neoconservatives is
illustrated by the changing perspectives (loosely defined) of a number
of magazines that were at one time labeled “neoconservative.” David
Broder referred in the mid-1970s to the principal organs of neoconser-
vatism as The Public Interest, Commentary, and The New Republic. The
editorship of the first has been divided between a Democrat and a
Republican, as are the articles which it publishes; the editors of the
second were social democrats who eventually became fairly consistent
supporters of Reaganite conservatism; while the third has been domi-
nated editorially by centrist Democrats who have been hard-liners and
interventionists on foreign policy and moderate liberals on domestic
issues.
It is interesting to note the impact of an earlier politically influential
group of formerly radical American intellectuals, those who gathered
around William F. Buckley and the National Review in the 1950s and
afterwards. They played a major role in changing the direction of Amer-
ican politics. As in the case of the neoconservatives, what initially drew
the group together was hard-line anti-communism. Buckley, his
brother-in-law Brent Bozell, and his family friend Frank Chodorov
apart, almost all of the major initiators of the magazine were former
leftists: ex-Communists Willi Schlamm and Frank Meyer, former Trot-
skyists James Burnham and Willmore Kendall, and the first managing
editor, Suzanne LaFollette, who had been involved with Socialists and
Progressives. As John Judis notes in his biography of Buckley, the
 202 American Exceptionalism

“National Review's masthead was heavily weighted with former left-

ists.”®> Over the years, former radicals, both socialists and communists,
associated with it have included Tom Bethel, Whittaker Chambers,
Robert Conquest, John Dos Passos, Max Eastman, Will Herberg,
Eugene Lyons, Frank Meyer, Richard John Neuhaus, John P. Roche,
Morris Ryskind, George Schuyler, Ralph de Toledano, Freda Utley,
Karl A. Wittfogel, and a host of others. Like the neoconservatives,
many are Jewish. Unlike the neoconservatives, they were never singled
out for attack by leftist critics as a special new movement since they
explicitly placed themselves on the right and rejected the welfare state.
Together with longtime conservative intellectuals like Edward Ban-
field, Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and William
Rusher, they helped to revive American conservatism (classical laissez-
faire liberalism), transform the Republican Party, and refurbish belief
in the free market system. They paved the way for Reaganism.

THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

i=

The emergence of various types of “conservatism” in the main centers

of intellectual life seemingly also stimulated what was left of the
“movements,” particularly of ethnic civil rights protesters, the blacks
and the Hispanics, the feminists and the environmentalists. The tradi-
tional radicals, undermined by events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union, also have turned to the movements and have added a strong
intolerant strain to their activity. Frustrated by the Reaganite domina-
tion of the polity, the movement radicals concentrated on the campus,
raising issues about South African investment, preferential hiring and
admission practices, and multicultural programs which challenged the
dominance of the traditional literary canon as standards of intellectual
judgments.
Conservative, even moderate, speakers, faculty, and books have
become “politically incorrect.” Major political spokespersons with
impeccable academic credentials such as former professors Jeane Kirk-
patrick, Henry Kissinger, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan have been
forced to cancel lectures because of actual or threatened protest
demonstrations.** A survey taken of a national sample of senior college
and university administrators during the 1990-91 academic year indi-
cated that “controversies over the political or cultural context of
remarks made by invited speakers are reported by 1 in 10 institutions,
and by 20 percent of the nation’s doctoral universities.” Complaints
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 203

from faculty “about pressures to alter their course content [occurred] at

five percent of institutions. Among doctoral universities, 12 percent
reported such complaints.” Similarly, 4 percent of all institutions and
10 percent of doctorate-granting ones report having “experienced sig-
nificant controversy over the political or cultural content of information
presented in the classroom.”*’ A year earlier, in 1989, a comparable
survey of college and university presidents, which questioned whether
“disruptive protest demonstrations” were a problem on their campuses,
found that 91 percent of all institutional chief officers replied they
were not a problem, but many fewer, 60 percent of the heads of
research and doctorate-granting institutions, gave this response.®® Such
variations between the research universities and others may be credited
to the greater liberalism of the students at the former and/or to encour-
agement given to activists by a more leftist faculty.
How strong are the movements behind such efforts? Not very, if we
examine the distribution of opinions among students. More powerful,
if we recognize the ability of activist minorities to mobilize militant stu-
dent demonstrations against “incorrect” opinion and teaching, which
though including only 5 or 10 percent of the undergraduate population,
means a few thousand demonstrators on large campuses. An indication
of the incendiary role played by some faculty may be found in an article
by a prominent professor of English and Law at Duke University, Stan-
ley Fish, a founding leader of the left academic association Teachers
for a Democratic Culture. In an essay entitled “There’s No Such Thing
as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too,” Professor Fish writes:

[A]bstract concepts like free speech do not have any “natural” content but
are filled with whatever content and direction one can manage to give
them. Free speech, in short, is not an independent value but a political
prize, and if that prize has been captured by a politics opposed to yours, it
can no longer be involved in ways that further your purposes for it is now
an obstacle to those purposes... .

[P]eople cling to the First Amendment pieties because they do not wish to
face what they correctly take to be the alternative. That alternative is poli-
tics, the realization . . . that decisions about what is or is not protected in
the realm of expression will rest not on principle or firm doctrine, but on
the ability of some persons to interpret—recharacterize or rewrite—princi-
ple and doctrine in ways that lead to the protection of speech they want
heard and the regulations of speech they want silenced. . . When the First
Amendment is successfully invoked the result is not a victory for free
speech in the face of a challenge from politics, but a political victory won by
 204 American Exceptionalism

the party that has managed to wrap its agenda in the mantle of free
speech.®?

Such views are not an aberration among the American cultural left.
During the sixties and early seventies, opposition to free speech had
wide circulation in Herbert Marcuse’s ideas about “repressive toler-
ance,” a critique of the free circulation of ideas as suffocating revolu-
tionary approaches, which had considerable support among New Left
students.” In 1969, Louis Kampf, professor of literature at MIT and
president of the Modern Language Association, told the activist stu-
dents to disrupt all establishment cultural institutions, not just the uni-
versities. Speaking of the new Lincoln Center in New York City, which
he said was “built upon the ruins of a low-cost residential area,” he pro-
posed that “Not a performance should go without disruption. The
fountains should be dried with calcium chloride, the statuary pissed
on, the walls smeared with shit.”?! Writing of the situation two decades
later, the Berkeley sociologist and former SDS leader Todd Gitlin
noted that “A bitter intolerance emanates from much of the academic
left."*2 And the socialist intellectual Paul Berman observed in 1992
that “if the intolerance is bitter among some of the professors, how
much worse it is in the world of their students—among the hard-
pressed student leftists especially.””*
The Marxist historian Eugene Genovese, who stands out as a
defender of the rights of those with whom he disagrees, has summed
up the situation in strong terms in reacting to “the repression of profes-
sors and students who take unpopular stands against quotas, affirma-
tive action, busing, abortion, homosexuality and the like.” He sees the
situation as worse for the right than it was for the left in the fifties, not-
ing: “As one who saw his professors fired during the McCarthy era, and
who had to fight, as a pro-Communist Marxist, for his right to teach, I
fear that our conservative colleagues are today facing a new McCarthy-
ism in some ways more effective and vicious than the old.”™
The nature of the concerns for academic freedom and free speech
on campus has changed particularly at the leading universities and col-
leges. Complaints once came from the more liberal or left faculty and
students who worried about extramural efforts—undertaken by conser-
vative trustees, alumni, and state legislators as well as administra-
tions—to dominate the university, to repress various forms of deviance
and political radicalism. Today, the mote conservative and apolitical
faculty now are the most likely to report harassment by students and
colleagues, as well as feelings of malaise about the behavior of adminis-
trators.
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 205

Increasingly, non-scholarly, particularistic criteria, such as political

views, and ethnic, religious, and gender characteristics, are affecting
faculty selection.» Of course, they always have done so. Atheists,
Catholics, Jews, women, and leftists faced discrimination before World
War II. The norms, however, remained as they must, universalistic and
meritocratic, even if they were violated. But they are now being chal-
lenged by demands for increased representation of women and minori-
ties, and, less openly, for political correctness, that is, for overt discrim-
ination in favor of those with correct attributes, even if they are less
competent than other candidates.
Progress has been made with respect to gender for some time.
Changes in the position of women attest to this. Jessie Bernard, an
older feminist sociologist, described the considerable increase of
women in academe which occurred after World War I as an outgrowth
of the suffragette movement. The proportions, however, declined
greatly immediately after World War II, a phenomenon described by
Bernard as “the great withdrawal.” What she documented was the way
in which the values espoused by female leaders, including the heads of
women’s colleges, were revised to emphasize the creative roles of
mother and wife, which were put on par with a career. They argued
that denigrating child rearing, community activity, and homemaking in
favor of jobs was an anti-female view. Bernard contended that the col-
lege women of the forties and fifties responded willingly, rejecting the
greater emphasis on career of earlier cohorts. She noted a change in
values, which pressed women in the years following World War II into
“a headlong flight into maternity. Whether they wanted babies or not,
they felt they should have them.””* She pointed out that the dropoff in
the proportion of women in the professoriate in the forties and fifties
appeared to be “the result of a declining supply of women offering their
services’ much more than of a “declining demand. ... The picture
seems to be one not of women seeking positions and being denied but
rather one of women finding alternative investments of time and emo-
tion more rewarding.””” The situation, of course, changed dramatically
once again from the mid-sixties on as a new wave of feminists rejected
the home in favor of career and demanded not just meritocratic equal
opportunity, but preferential treatment to make up for past discrimina-
tion. The record shows that women, who, unlike African Americans,
are distributed in the same class and formal educational attainment
groups as the traditionally dominant group, white males, have been
able to take advantage of such increased opportunities.”®
The condition of blacks has, of course, been different from that of
white women. They entered the affirmative action era considerably
 206 American Exceptionalism

behind whites in educational attainments, as we have seen. Proportion-

ately, relatively few were qualified (had good Ph.D.’s) for academic
positions, particularly in major universities. As more have won entrance
to the better institutions, they have sought to qualify for the more eco-
nomically rewarding positions, rather than for academe or intellectual
pursuits. Doing so is typical first-college-generation behavior among all
groups. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explains the shortage of black Ph.D.'s
by the fact that “we don’t have a long tradition of academic families.”
The best and the brightest among African Americans disproportion-
ately seek to succeed in business management, medicine, law, and the
like. This pattern has continued the situation in which African Ameri-
cans remain heavily underrepresented in the pool of those qualified for
the professoriate. And their low presence among the faculty con-
tributes to campus tension and activism among minority students and
left-disposed faculty. It seems to confirm the belief that discrimination
is still widespread in hiring in higher education.
Higher education has been severely divided between those favoring
meritocratic norms and others who press for social diversity and affir-
mative action quotas since special preferences and quotas for minori-
ties and women were introduced by the Nixon administration in
1969.!° While opinion surveys of faculty indicate that significant
majorities back meritocracy, administrators, members of the affected
minorities, feminists, the more left-inclined academics, and activist
students all press for proportional representation targets. The latter
goals have become “politically correct.” Political correctness also
involves support for multiculturalism, the emphasis on including in the
curriculum the contributions of minority and Third World cultures,
while reducing or rejecting any emphasis on Western ones.!°! As John
Diggins concludes: “To be PC was to denounce Western Culture. .. .
[MJulticulturalists attacked racism, sexism, and DWEMism—partiality
to dead, white, European males who wrote most of the books on a
course's reading list.”'* Opponents face stigmatization as racists or
chauvinists and frequently fear to speak up at faculty or student meet-
ings.

CONCLUSION
[=F

As far as I can judge, an emphasis on ‘political correctness is much

more prevalent in American universities than elsewhere in the eco-
nomically affluent democracies. Such behavior is not unique to acad-
 American Intellectuals—Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect 207

eme or to leftists, feminists, or environmentalists. Social conservatives

in this country are much more aggressive in their efforts to impose
their morality on the body politic with respect to issues like the right to
life than their ideological compeers elsewhere, even in predominantly
Catholic countries like Italy, France, or West Germany. Such repres-
sive aspects of American culture may be related to two exceptional
national characteristics discussed earlier: first, the utopian ideological
context of the American Creed, which defines the country in ways that
nations characterized by a common history, not an ideology, lack; and
second, the predominance in the United States of Protestant sectarian-
ism, a minority elsewhere in Christendom. As we have seen, the politi-
cal emphasis on loyalty to Americanism, the defining of deviants as
“un-American,” and the sectarian stress on personal morality represent
forms of behavior that are less prevalent in historically defined coun-
tries, where religious ethos and orientation toward personal morality
reflect the values of hierarchically organized, state-related churches,
which assume that humans and their institutions are inherently imper-
fect. American values encourage concern for “correctness,” both on
and off campus, by the right as well as the left. Both are more moralis-
tic, insistent on absolute standards, than their ideological compeers
elsewhere in the developed world.
A quarter of a century ago, I dealt in some detail with the efforts of
the activist left to politicize the American university.’ I will not
repeat the arguments here. The debate then was almost identical to
that waged today. Principles apart, I noted that “the myth of the apo-
litical university, though a myth, serves to protect unpopular minori-
ties,” often radicals, and I cited various prominent leftists, including
Noam Chomsky, to this effect. He wrote: “One legacy of classical lib-
eralism that we must fight to uphold with unending vigilance, in the
universities and without, is the commitment to a free market place of
ideas. . .. Once the principle is established that coercion is legitimate
... it is rather clear against whom it will be used. And the principle of
legitimacy of coercion would destroy the university as a serious insti-
fution.<g.
Universities must be free places; they must be open to talent, to crit-
ical ideas, to the possibility of revisionism from many sources. Censor-
ship, even self-censorship, has no place on the campus. Repression
from the left, even though drawing its legitimacy from populist values,
must suffer the same fate as repression from the right once did. If it
does not, it will repeat the pattern. The only policy possible in a univer-
sity worthy of the name was enunciated in 1975 by the Committee on
 208 American Exceptionalism

Freedom of Expression at Yale, chaired by the historian C. Vann —

Woodward, who still identifies himself as a socialist.

No member of the community with a decent respect for others should use,
or encourage others to use, slurs and epithets intended to discredit
another's race, ethnic group, religion, or sex. It may sometimes be neces-
sary in a university for civility and mutual respect to be superseded by the
need to guarantee free expression. The values superseded are nevertheless
important and every member of the university community should consider
them in exercising the fundamental right to free expression. ... The con-
clusions we draw, then, are these: even when some members of the univer-
sity community fail to meet their social and ethical responsibilities, the
paramount obligation of the university is to protect their right to free
expression. . . . If the university's overriding commitment to free expression
is to be sustained, secondary social and ethical responsibilities must be left
to the informal processes of suasion, example, and argument.!%

In the following section, I return to macroscopic comparative con-

siderations, seeking to document the way in which the sharply differing
organizing principles of Japan and the United States have produced
American exceptionalism and Japanese uniqueness. The two remain the
outliers among the developed nations.
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 | CHAPTER 7 |
American Exceptionalism—Japanese
Uniqueness!

Japan and the United States are two of the foremost examples of indus-
trial success in the contemporary world, and they took very different
paths to reach that position.? Efforts to account for America’s past suc-
cess discussed earlier have emphasized that, as compared to Europe, it
had fewer encrusted preindustrial traditions to overcome, and in partic-
ular, that it had never been a feudal or hierarchical state church-domi-
nated society. All of Europe and, of course, Japan was once feudal,
organized in terms of monarchy, aristocracy, and fixed hierarchy, with a
value system embedded in institutions that both emphasized the
virtues inherent in agrarian society and deprecated commercial activi-
ties. Japan’s feudal period, moreover, did not end until the latter half of
the nineteenth century.
As I indicated in chapter Three, in discussing the expansion of capi-
talism, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Marxists, much like
followers of Max Weber, pointed to the United States as the purest of
bourgeois societies, the least feudal one, and therefore the most suc-
cessful. An efficient market economy is seemingly best served by a
value system which regards the individual as the equivalent of a com-
modity within the market.
The interpretation which identifies postfeudal structures and values
as antithetical to the development of modern industrial society is chal-
lenged by the history of Japan, which boasts the most successful econ-
omy of the postwar era. Rising from a terrible military defeat and the
almost total destruction of its economy, Japan experienced a level of
sustained economic growth which enabled it to become, in per capita
terms, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and to compete
successfully with the United States. But this postwar “miracle” contin-
ues a successful development pattern that began in the latter part of
the nineteenth century, long after Northern Europe and North Amer-
ica began their industrial revolutions. Self-starting industrialization and
modernization took place almost exclusively in a few European coun-

ea
 212 American Exceptionalism

tries and the English-speaking overseas settler societies. Japan is the

earliest non-Western country to become affluent and industrially
developed. Its record, compared to that of the United States or, to
some degree, of Western Europe, seems to contradict much of what
economic historians and comparative social scientists generally had
thought they learned from the American experience.
In this chapter, I look at the two outliers, the two developed nations
which are most different from each other. They clearly have distinct
organizing principles and their values, institutions, and behaviors fit
into sharply different functional wholes. These variations, of course,
have been written about in myriad comparative scholarly, business, and
journalistic works. These analyses not only tell us about Japan; they
give insights into Western, particularly American, culture, which is the
main concern of this book as well.
The question which now interests the West is: what is it about
Japan that enabled this to happen? The Japanese themselves are fasci-
nated with discussions of Japanese uniqueness, Nihonron, their coun-
terpart to American exceptionalism.’ The “reiterated refrain underlying
the literature on Japanese identity is that of uniqueness.”* One litera-
ture survey estimates that over two thousand works dealing with Japan-
ese uniqueness have been published since World War II.° Sugimito
Yoshio and Ross Mouer take note of the agreement among many
Japanese that their culture is “uniquely unique” and consequently can-
not be understood by Western scholars.” These arguments have a long
history.

REVOLUTION FROM ABOVE

ee

Japan has modernized economically while retaining many aspects of its

preindustrial feudal culture. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the
social structure under the Tokugawa Shogunate was still feudal; its cul-
ture still resembled that of Renaissance Europe. Japan was an
extremely hierarchical society, which placed a tremendous emphasis
on obligation to those higher up as well as to those down below. Inferi-
ors were expected to show deference and give loyalty while superiors
were obliged to protect and support them.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, Japan avoided a prolonged break-
down of feudalism, when the Japanese ‘aristocratic elite decided that
the country had to industrialize to escape being conquered by the
imperialist West. Determined to avoid dependence on or takeover by
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 213

Western powers, this elite sought to remake the country economically

along Western lines. To do so, they recognized the need to consciously
remold the social structure so as to create the conditions for economic
development, a dauntingly gargantuan task.® If individualism, egalitari-
anism, and liberalism (a weak state) are highly conducive to economic
development, Japan has been more disadvantaged than most nations.
Comparatively, it is still extremely status-conscious (the vernacular lan-
guage and social relations are particularly hierarchical), politically cen-
tralized, and above all, by Western standards, collectivity-oriented and
particularistic (group-centered).
Few Westerners, other than scholars, are knowledgeable about the
reorganization of Japan. The record of the country’s mid-nineteenth-
century barons, that brilliant group of oligarchs who took over the
country determined to modernize it, makes that of any group of Com-
munist rulers seem like the work of indifferent bumblers. The changes
which occurred in Japan from the 1860s on were among the most
remarkable societal transformations that have ever occurred. The
barons carried through a sociological transformation, using Emperor
Meiji to legitimate it.?
Recognizing that the rapid and major changes they planned for the
nation would create major social strains which could precipitate seri-
ous discontent and protest, the Meiji barons restored the prestige of
the emperor, enlarged his role, and revitalized the ancient Shinto reli-
gion with its links to emperor worship and stress on loyalty to the
state.!° The concern to resist domination by the West and the contin-
ued postfeudal association of aristocratic status and military prowess
led to a strong emphasis on armed strength, which continued until the
end of World War II. Still, the Meiji elite were prepared to deliberately
introduce an institution, the modern university, which they anticipated
would be an inherently disruptive, even rebellious, force.
In 1870, Japan did not have a single institution which resembled a
university when Arinori Mori, the first minister of education, prepared
a memorandum stating that the country required first-rate universities.
These would train people to become leaders in scientific research,
engineering, and other necessary aspects of modern life. Mori wrote
that a university is a place whose faculty and students must be free to
read and discuss all the ideas that exist in the world. He recognized
that scholarship involves innovation, the superseding of old knowledge,
of tradition. In this context, he wrote, the creation of new ideas means
a rejection of the past, and therefore exposure to new concepts could
result in expressions of doubt about the validity of the predominant val-
 214 American Exceptionalism

ues of Japanese society. Hence, though universities are endemically

sources of disloyalty, he emphasized that Japan must have them. Since
they inevitably will be centers of opposition, even of sedition, they
should not be allowed to influence those who teach students at lower
levels of education. He proposed that teachers’ colleges be separated
geographically from universities, so that children in the elementary and
secondary schools would not be taught by instructors who had
attended a university."
The Meiji planners were faced with the need to reorganize the sta-
tus system. In a feudal agrarian society, banking and other commercial
activities were held in low repute. This had been true in Europe where
merchants, even when wealthy, were looked down upon by the feudal
rulers; they were necessary, but they were not considered equals by the
aristocracy. The Meiji elite realized that Japan had to encourage com-
merce and industry, the pursuit of profits. The populace, and the elite
as well, had to regard business pursuits as important and worthy occu-
pations. The solution was to foster the merger of aristocratic and busi-
ness statuses by encouraging the lowest aristocratic stratum, the samu-
rai (knights), to become businessmen. This was possible since the
samurai had been almost functionless even before the end of feudal-
ism.!?
The Meiji transformation highlights the widely discrepant roles of
the state in developed societies. The ideological heritage of Japan,
derived from a postfeudal alliance of throne and altar, engenders a pos-
itive sense of the role of government, much as a somewhat similar
background produced in most of Europe. Industrialism in Japan, as in
Imperial Germany, was planned by the government, indicating Japan
has been less unique in this respect than many Japanese believe.!3
Thorstein Veblen, writing in 1915, noted these developments in terms
which resemble recent writings:

It is in this unique combination of a high-wrought spirit of feudalistic fealty

and chivalric honor with the material efficiency given by the modern tech-
nology that the strength of the Japanese nation lies. In this respect . . . the
position of the Japanese government is not unique except in the eminent
degree of its successful operation. The several governments of Europe are
also ... endeavoring similarly to exploit the modern state of the industrial
arts by recourse to the servile patriotism of the common man.'4
‘
The “evolution of Japan,” Emile Durkheim stressed, corresponded in
“ . ” . : .

many ways to European “social evolution. We have passed through

 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 215

almost the same phases.”'> Norman Jacobs, Carmi Schooler, and

Kenichi Tominaga all emphasize that feudalism and consequent state
centralization aided industrialization in Japan and Europe.!* The
United States developed with much less government involvement in
the economy than almost all other now industrialized countries, mak-
ing it truly exceptional.
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has con-
tinued the tradition of guidance set by the Meiji economic planners.'’
David Okimoto points out that MITI’s contemporary approach is
“anticipatory, preventive, and aimed at positively structuring the mar-
ket in ways that improve the likelihood that industry-specific goals will
be achieved.” The ministry views the operations of a “pure” market
economy as flawed, in part because laissez-faire ideology entails the
pursuit of narrow interests, and thus a lack of attention to “collective
interests ... and... national goals.”'® Conversely, the classically lib-
eral, laissez-faire, anti-statist ideology is the political tradition of the
United States.'? The American polity stands out in resisting state lead-
ership in the economic arena.*° In contrast to the Japanese experi-
ence, the U.S. government “tends to deal primarily with failures after
they have occurred. . . . [It] suggests a preference for leaving the mar-
ket alone unless there is tangible evidence of a breakdown.
Whereas Americans are content to let the chips fall where they may,
the Japanese prefer to remove as much of the element of uncertainty
from the market processes” as possible.*! In an exaggerated sense, the
Japanese economy may be described as a form of market socialism, or,
as Shin-ichi Nakazawa, a popular social critic, comments: “It’s as if
Japan has a kind of Communistic capitalism, or state socialism with-
out the socialism.” Douglas Moore Kenrick, a successful business-
man and Japanologist, after thirty-five years of working in Japan, wrote
a detailed analysis of the society and economy under the title Where
Communism Works.*? He emphasizes that Japan has developed “an
advanced, bureaucratic, economic and social system that is different
from, as well as similar to capitalism.”** Chalmers Johnson also
describes the system as a “different kind of capitalism,” one which
operates in “ways that neither Adam Smith nor Marx would recognize
or understand,” one which is fundamentally different from the Ameri-
gan?
The image of the Japanese economy as operating under qualitatively
different rules than the American or other Western ones has frequently
been challenged by Western economists.”° Two North American econ-
omists, Richard Beason and David Weinstein, examine thirteen sectors
 216 American Exceptionalism

and conclude that the Japanese bureaucrats, like Soviet ones, fail to
pick winners in the economic competition. Basically, they report a neg-
ative correlation between government support and growth: the more
support to an industry, the slower its growth.”” But these findings may
only demonstrate that the Japanese planners, like other “socialist” ones,
seek to keep less productive sectors operative, not that they believe
these will become winners.”*
As I stated in chapter One, comparative approaches such as this can
never produce absolute evaluations. It should be noted that most Euro-
pean countries fall in between the United States and Japan; they are
more like Japan than the United States is, but more like the United
States than Japan is. As Ronald Dore emphasizes in concluding a book
comparing Britain and Japan: “In the dimension ... which I have
called ‘individualism-collectivism,’ ‘individualism-groupism,’ the United
States and Japan stand at opposite ends, with Britain somewhere in the
middle.”
The group or consensus model of Japanese society, and the individu-
alistic and conflict model of American society, both of which are fol-
lowed by much of the literature and are employed in this chapter, have
been criticized by some scholars. They suggest that other approaches,
including the structuralist, stratification, and social exchange (focusing
on the emphasis on reciprocity and gifts) models, provide alternate
ways to conceptualize the two nations. Harumi Befu has suggested as
an alternative model for Japan a social exchange one. He notes cor-
rectly that the Japanese stress the need to repay all obligations, indebt-
edness to others who may have helped out or given favors of any kind;
while Americans feel less impelled to act in such ways, especially when
to do so may create the impression of cronyism, of special favors in
return for “bribes.”*° But these are not mutually exclusive.?! Nations
develop new institutions, patterns of acting, which fit into their orga-
nizing principles. Receptivity to particular modes of behavior is a func-
tion of the larger value system. Quality circles premised on group coop-
eration, which were invented in the United States, took hold in Japan,
not in America. Clearly, while it is possible to organize the analysis of
any society along a variety of lines, it is necessary for comparative soci-
etal analysis to focus on organizing principles or values that encourage
insight into sources of variation with other systems.
Societies are characterized by both aspects of analytical polarities. A
society is not either group-oriented or individualistic or ascriptive or
egalitarian or consensual or not.?2 All systems are marked by stratifica-
tion, conflict, and consensus. There is considerable individualism in
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 217

Japan as well as particularism (group orientation) in the United States.

Such concepts must be treated in a comparative context, as measured
by relative rankings, that is, as more or less. Viewed in such a fashion,
Japan appears to be the most group-oriented culture among developed
societies; the United States is the most individualistic. Beyond the data
presented in this chapter, these conclusions are documented in Tables
8-1 and 8-2 of chapter Eight (drawn from the 1990 World Values Sur-
vey led by Ronald Inglehart), which demonstrate that Americans
belong to and are more active than Europeans and Canadians in volun-
tary organizations, while Japanese are the least involved.33 Worldwide
surveys of fifteen thousand managers conducted between 1986 and
1993 by Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars on many
attitude and behavioral items also produced large differences between
Americans and Japanese, with the two almost invariably at opposite
poles; all other nations fell between them.** (See Appendix, pp.
293-296.

DUTY AND OBLIGATION

fie

A fundamental difference between Japan and the United States lies in

the fact that the Japanese governing elite has made a conscious effort
to merge the traditional with the modern. The Japanese have contin-
ued to uphold values and institutions which, from the perspective of
Western market economics analysis, make little sense. They maintain a
society in which deference and hierarchy are important, in which there
is a “continuing ethos of patrimonial relations derived from Japan's feu-
dal past. . . ."° In theory, the person does not exist as an individual, but
only as a member of certain larger groups: family, school, community,
company, nation.*° A 1990 Japanese government study of American
and Japanese high school students concluded that, unlike the situation
in the United States, “child rearing in Japan, the educational system,
the style of education plays against individualism. Rote learning is
favored over a creative approach to study. In addition, the Japanese do
not want to STAND OUT as individuals. The proverb about the nail stick-
ing up which must be pounded down implies that the individual who
behaves in an individualistic way is significantly different from the
group, will be punished and not rewarded.”*”
The continuity in the American emphasis on individuality and the
Japanese emphasis on conformity to the group may be seen in the
 218 American Exceptionalism

cross-national variation in polls taken in 1989, which asked respon-

dents to react to the statement: “It is boring to live like other people.”
Over two thirds, 69 percent, of the Americans agreed that conforming
is tedious, compared to 25 percent of the Japanese.** The latter seek to
avoid individual responsibility.
The 1990 World Values Survey asked respondents to locate them-
selves on a ten-point scale running from “Individuals should take more
responsibility for themselves” to “The state should take more responsi-
bility to ensure that everyone is provided for.” Seventy percent of the
Americans places themselves in the three highest individual responsi-
bility categories (45% at the extreme point), in contrast to 17 percent
of the Japanese (7% at the top end).”?
Notions of duty and obligation constantly come through in conversa-
tions with Japanese.*° They feel an obligation to each other and to the
institutions of which they are a part. Individuals are indebted to their
parents, teachers, employer, and state. They must repay all favors, even
casual ones. Gifts are exchanged frequently as a way of maintaining
social relationships, of meeting and developing obligations.
The psychologist Janet Spence, in explaining how “the Japanese
character differs profoundly from the American one,” notes that con-
trasting socialization processes result in sharp variations in ego, with
individualism in the United States leading to “a sense of self with a
sharp boundary that stops at one’s skin and clearly demarks self from
non-self.” For the Japanese, the “me becomes merged with the we, and
the reactions of others to one’s behaviors gain priority over one’s own
evaluations.” These differences are related to the varying values and
institutions of the two nations. “These contrasting senses of self in the
two societies are produced by and lead to differing emphases on rights
versus obligations, on autonomy versus personal sacrifice, and on the
priority of the individual versus that of the group—differences that
have broad ramifications for the structure of political, economic, and
social institutions.”*!
According to psychological studies, the development of these dis-
tinct cultural identities begins in infancy. After noting “sharply differ-
ent styles of caretaking” in the two societies, William Caudill and
Carmi Schooler comment: “[I]t would appear that in America the
mother views her baby, at least potentially, as a separate and
autonomous being who should learn to do and think for himself. . . .
In Japan, in contrast to America, the mother views her baby much
more as an extension of herself, and psychologically the boundaries
between them are blurred.”*? A report on comparative surveys of chil-
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 219

dren age 7 to 11 indicates that when questioned “whether their moth-

ers treated them ‘more like a grown-up or a baby,’ 65 percent of the
American children answered ‘more like a grown-up,’ compared to only
10 percent of the Japanese children.”*? A similar cross-national view of
the parent-child relationship is found in the answers samples of
fathers gave in 1986 to the question: “Do you try to treat your child
like an adult as much as possible?” An overwhelming majority of
American fathers, 79 percent, replied, “Yes,” compared to less than
half, 43 percent, of Japanese.** The same survey inquired of children
aged 10 to 15 years: “When you and your father disagree, does he lis-
ten to your opinion?” In tandem with the responses of the fathers, the
majority of American offspring, 72.5 percent, said, “Yes, he does,”
compared to 45 percent of the Japanese.*® And when asked: “What
does your father usually do when you do something bad?” twice the
proportion, 37 percent, of the Americans chose the response, “He
doesn’t get upset but tries to talk to me,” contrasted to 18 percent of
the Japanese young people.** The latter were more likely than Ameri-
cans ages 10 to 15 to continue the pattern when dealing with younger
siblings. Only 36 percent of the Japanese, against 56 percent of the
Americans, said they would allow “a younger child [who] wanted to
watch some other [TV] program” to do so even when the older one
would like to see another one.“
The strength of Japanese group allegiance is strangely and starkly
illustrated by the Japanese prisoners of war who offered to engage in
espionage against their homeland during World War II. “The prisoners
became excellent spies. Once they had changed ingroup, having been
taken prisoner against the explicit instructions of their superiors, they
no longer defined the self as Japanese.”** This behavior, when com-
pared to the intense sense of duty and commitment of kamikaze fighter
pilots, seems to indicate that motivating ideology is of secondary impor-
tance to the basic fact of group cohesion.
Ironically, the Japanese emphasis on obligation and loyalty to mem-
bership groups appears to result in a lower level of civic consciousness,
a lesser willingness to help individuals or institutions to whom no oblig-
ation exists, than in the more individualistic America.*? | have been
told by Japanese that they are not supposed to assist strangers unless
they are in very serious difficulty, since the person assisted will then
have a new obligation which he or she does not want. Such reports are
congruent with opinion poll findings. Youth surveys (ages 18-24) have
been conducted in different countries by the Japanese Youth Develop-
ment Office of the Department of Public Affairs. In 1977, 1983, and
 220 American Exceptionalism

1988, the Office asked: “Suppose you meet a man lost and trying to
find his way. What would you do?” Over half, from 51 to 60 percent, of
the Americans chose the answer “ask him if he needs help,” while less
than a third, 26 to 32 percent, of the Japanese gave the same
response.” Similar cross-national differences were reported in the
study of 10- to 15-year-olds in 1986. They were asked: “If you saw a
person with more luggage or packages than he or she could comfort-
ably handle, would you offer to help him or her even if you didn’t know
him or her>” Over three fifths, 63 percent, of the American young peo-
ple said they would, while only a quarter, 26 percent, of the Japanese
would do the same.”!
American parents are much more likely than Japanese ones to report
that they try to teach their children to help those in need and to follow
civic rules. A 1981 comparative survey conducted for the Prime Minis-
ter’s Office in Japan, based on interviews with parents of children
under 15 years old, reported that over two thirds, 70 percent, of Ameri-
cans were instructed to “care for the elderly and the handicapped,”
compared to one third, 33.5 percent, of the Japanese. The correspond-
ing figures for “not to litter in parks and on roads” were 66 percent for
Americans and 33 for Japanese; for “to wait one’s turn in line,” the per-
centages were 44 for Americans and 19 for Japanese.”

CHANGE AND STABILITY

[ates

A detailed review of the literature on Japanese uniqueness, inherently

comparative like that on American exceptionalism, suggests major dif-
ferences in structures, cultural styles, and values, variations which “are
more or less identical with differences between industrial and prein-
dustrial (feudal) civilization in the West.” Japanese social scientists
have been monitoring their values and “national character’ through
survey research since the 1950s. Their findings indicate that “no
change in basic values has occurred in Japan. This evidence challenges
the evolutionary view which posits the Western pattern as the end
point, the culmination of societal development. Alternative patterns of
family and human relations appear to be enduring rather than transi-
tional.”** The studies stress that the “central Confucian and Samurai
values such as seniority, loyalty or priority of the group are still domi-
nant. ...”> Tatsuko Suzuki concludes from reviewing the Japanese
experience that in spite of “institutional changes ... in the areas of
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 221

economics and politics . . . the systems of belief in Japan owe their rel-
ative stability to the stability in the structure both of family relations
and of supplementary, informal social relations.” These findings
seemingly reiterate Veblen’s, reached in 1915, that it is “only in respect
of its material ways and means, its technological equipment and infor-
mation, that the ‘New Japan’ differs from the old. . . .”57
Various reports on Japanese values indicate, however, that while
many attitudes and values appear stable, a number have changed con-
siderably between the 1950s and the 1990s. Some of these changes
seem to involve an acceptance of Western values. For example, the
proportion of Japanese who would “adopt a child to continue the family
line” (traditional behavior for those without children) declined steadily
over eight National Character surveys taken between 1953 and 1993,
from 73 to 22 percent. Those who say the prime minister should visit
the Imperial Shrine annually moved down from 50 percent in 1953 to
17 percent in 1993.°° Asked repeatedly what sex they would choose to
be if born again, the percentage of women who would prefer to be men
fell off in linear fashion from 64 percent in 1958 to 29 percent in 1993.
The proportion of men, however, who opt for a masculine rebirth has
been constant at 90 percent from 1958 on. In three American polls
taken between 1946 and 1977, the same and unchanging percentage,
also around 90, of American males preferred to be born in the same
sex. American women, however, have consistently shown a much
greater desire to retain their gender than Japanese women, with the
percentage wanting to be of the opposite one going down from 26 in
1946 to 17 in 1958 and 9 in 1977.°°
Conversely, respondents to the National Character surveys, as well
as to the youth studies, have become more traditional and less Western
in their answers to many other questions. The varying patterns have
been brought out in a review of the National Character studies by Japa-
nologist Scott Flanagan of the six surveys taken between 1963 and
1988. Flanagan summarized the patterns of change for seven items,
classifying responses as being “traditional,” “modern,” or “unclassifi-
able.” I have not used one of the items due to difficulties I have with
coding which response is modern and which is traditional. The unit of
measurement is the percentage difference between modern and tradi-
tional responses. In four of the six items, the change from 1963 favored
the traditional response, while the remaining two items changed in the
modern direction. Five of these six changes were relatively small, from
6 to 12 percent.
Flanagan’s results also indicate that the few early postwar shifts
 222 American Exceptionalism

toward modernity began “to halt or reverse in the 1970s, as a result of

several factors”:

The 1973 Arab oil boycott sent shock waves through the Japanese econ-
omy; the oil crisis diverted attention from the environmental, quality-of-
life, and participation issues that had come to the forefront in the 1960s
and refocused national attention on economic issues, leading to a resur-
gence in conservatism. This period also coincided with a renewed interest
in Nihonjinron (essays on what it means to be Japanese) as the Japanese
began to reassess the enduring aspects of their culture in light of the previ-
ous three decades of massive importation of goods, ideas, and practices
from the West. Toward the end of the 1970s this renewed interest in the
enduring traditions of Japanese culture was reinforced by a growing nation-
alism and cultural self-satisfaction with Japan’s new international standing
and dramatic economic success.°!

In Flanagan’s analysis, as well as in results from other studies, I find

further evidence for the continued strength of traditional values. An
increasing lack of confidence in science, certainly a modern institution,
appears to characterize the Japanese, while Americans retain their con-
fidence. The belief that there is a loss in “the richness of human feel-
ings as a result of the development of science” increased from 30 per-
cent in 1953 to 51 percent in the National Character studies of 1993.
These results are supported by the findings of 1980-81 and 1990
World Values Surveys, which asked: “In the long run, do you think that
scientific advances we are making will help or harm mankind?” They
both found the majority of Japanese critical or fearful of science, while
most Americans reacted positively. Fifty-six percent of Americans
replied in the first World Values Survey that advances would “help,”
increasing to 62 percent a decade later; Japanese who responded this
way increased from 22 to 26 percent. Similar cross-national results
with comparable magnitudes of difference in response rates were
obtained to a number of questions seeking to evaluate benefits or dam-
ages from the development of science and technology in cross-national
surveys conducted in 1991 by the Japanese Science and Technology
Agency. For example, 83 percent of Americans, compared to 54 per-
cent of Japanese, agreed that “Scientific development makes my daily
life healthier, more safe and comfortable.” The Agency also reported
much higher interest in “News and Topics on Science and Technolo-
gies” in the United States in 1990 than in Japan in 1991.% Interest by
Japanese young people in science and technology is declining. It fell
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 223

from 67 to 41 percent between 1977 and 1991. Studies of the occupa-

tional aspirations of Japanese high school students found that in spite
of the fact that “the employment rate for science and engineering [uni-
versity] graduates is very high. ... High school students are steering
away from the science and engineering disciplines.”
Other responses in the National Character research also suggest a
revival of traditionalism. Thus, when asked to choose the “two most
important values,” those answering “respect individual rights” fell off
from 48 percent in 1963 to 38 percent in 1993. Those listing “filial
piety,” being dutiful to one’s parents, increased from 61 percent to 69
percent over the same period, while “respect freedom” increased
slightly from 40 percent in 1963 to 42 percent in 1993. And on “the
rather delicate question of whether or not the Japanese feel they are
superior to the Westerners ... those who believe they are superior
increased from 20% in 1953 to a massive 47% in 1968 ... [and then
went down somewhat to a lower 41% in 1993]. The pattern observed
here indicates the renewed self-confidence of the Japanese. . . .”*4
Perhaps the best example of the strength of traditional practices
even when they appear dysfunctional for an economically developed
society is the nation’s refusal to adopt the system of street names and
consecutive numbers on buildings that exists in the West. Japanese
streets are not named or numbered in the same systematic way, and
house numbers refer to the order of construction in a given district.
Strangers are expected to find their way with local maps or by direc-
tions from a nearby landmark, such as a train station. The Japanese had
an opportunity to change after the war when the American occupation
forces assigned alphabetical or numerical names to streets. But this
system, apparently so much more functional for commerce in a large
city like Tokyo, was largely discarded as soon as the occupation ended.
Seemingly, in spite of the tremendous strides Japan has made
toward technological modernization, higher self-esteem is leading
toward a regained “confidence in tradition,” to a “return to traditional
values.” These developments in turn should enhance the differences
between Japan and the United States and other Western countries.
The variations which have been suggested in the literature between the
Japanese and American belief systems are summed up in Table 7-1, a
modified version of one presented by Peter Dale.
Many Japanese tend to agree with the stereotype that they are a less
universalistic and more particularistic society than America. Thus,
when asked by the Nippon Research Organization in 1990 whether
Japanese are more “intolerant of other races,” 40 percent said they
 224 American Exceptionalism

TABLE 7-1. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AMERICA AND JAPAN

America Japan

A. Society (Gesellschaft) A. Community (Gemeinschaft)

B. Individualism B. Groupism contextualism

C. Horizontality C. Verticality

D. Egalitarianism D. Hierarchy

E. Contract E. “Kintract”

F, “Private” F, “Public”

G. “Guilt” G. “Shame”
H. Urban-cosmopolitan H. Rural-exclusive
I. Rights I. Duties

J. Independence (inner-directed) J. Dependence (other-directed)

K. Universality K. Particularity-uniqueness

L. Heterogeneity L. Homogeneity

M. Absolutism M. Relativism
N. Rupture N. Harmony, continuity
O. Artifice O. Nature
P. Abstraction P, Phenomenalism, Concreteness
Q. Donative/active Q. Receptive/reactive
R. Open R. Closed
Source: Adapted and modified from Peter N. Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 44, 51.

were, while only 13 percent thought Americans were more intolerant

than Japanese. A plurality of Japanese (35.5%) replied that their coun-
trymen are more disposed to “put priority on [matters concerning] one’s
own country” (nationalistically self-centered), compared to 22.5 per-
cent who believe the Americans are more nationally oriented. More
Japanese, 33 percent, see themselves as “selfish,” while only 12 percent
identify Americans this way. In each case, Americans, answering the
same questions for the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, were more
likely to give the converse response, to think themselves more tolerant
of other races than the Japanese (by 46 to 40%), less nationalistic (by
64 to 24%), and less selfish (by 44 to 33%). Analysis of the 1990 World
Values data indicates that the belief that the Japanese are much more
intolerant and xenophobic than Americans is true. Americans are more
disposed than Japanese to believe it important to encourage their chil-
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 225

dren to exhibit “tolerance and respect for other people,” by 72 to 59.5

percent. Asked to react to various groups, as neighbors, Japanese are
much more likely than Americans to reject “immigrants/foreign work-
ers,’ as well as Muslims, Jews, and Hindus. They object even more
strongly to homosexuals, people who have AIDS, and drug addicts.
When the issue is presented in terms of employment, when “jobs are
scarce,’ only 14 percent of the Japanese disagree with giving priority to
their fellow citizens, while an astonishing 43 percent of Americans
would deny such advantages.

CONFLICT AND CONSENSUS

eS

The United States is a much more discordant society than Japan and,
to a lesser extent, much of Western Europe. The combination of capi-
talist and Protestant sectarian values, to be found dominant only in
America, encourages conflict and moralism. As the purest example of a
bourgeois nation, America follows the competitive norms of the mar-
ketplace in union management and other relationships. Actors seek to
win as much as they can and will ride roughshod over opponents if pos-
sible. American unions have been reluctant to cooperate with execu-
tives on management problems or to take responsibility for corporate
welfare. They are described in the comparative labor literature as
“adversarial,” as distinct from the behavior of unions in postfeudal,
more social democratic, corporatist nations.*%© The American unionists
have pressed to secure as much from management as their strength
permits. (In recent years, of course, their loss of membership, as
detailed in chapter Three, has hampered their ability to gain conces-
sions and they are much less militant.) Unionists among the Japanese
belong to companywide labor organizations which show concern for
the company’s needs, not nationwide ones which include all in the
same trade or industry, as in America. American unions historically
have not been concerned about the welfare of specific companies.
Japanese workers have been much less prone to strike than American
unionists. The proportion and number of workers engaged in work
stoppages have declined in both countries, but the United States
remains far ahead of its trans-Pacific rival. Thus in 1980, one million
work days were lost to strikes in Japan, as compared to almost 21 mil-
lion in the United States. By 1991, the Japanese figure had fallen to
96,000, while the American was close to 4.6 million.*? A “de facto
incomes policy has grown organically out of a routinized set of norms,
 226 American Exceptionalism

procedures, and institutions developed over years of interaction

between labor and management.” Okimoto points out that the coopera-
tive and “self-regulating nature of labor-management relations has
spared the Japanese government from being engulfed by the consum-
ing task of binding up economic and social wounds following outbursts
of labor unrest.”®
Related to the emphasis on obligation (exchange relations) is the
ideal of a consensual society. “The ideal solution of a conflict . . . [is]
not a total victory for one side and a humiliating defeat for the other,
but an accommodation by which winner and loser could co-exist with-
out too much loss of face.”®? Labor relations reflect the more general
patterns. “Japanese dispute processing structures tend to minimize
adversarialness. . . . They parallel Japanese social structure in the sense
that they tend to treat people as connected rather than separated, and
to encourage solutions that minimize conflict and reduce the probabil-
ity that relations between disputants will be permanently severed by
the dispute.””? When conflict occurs, persons and groups linked by
institutional relationships seek agreement. Majorities do not simply
outvote minorities in parliament. Those who can win the vote (pretend
to) allow their opponents to influence the final outcome. Japanese
politicians, as one once told me, deliberately introduce sections of leg-
islation which they do not want so they can yield them in the final
negotiations with the minority opposition. In American election con-
tests, the minority is voted down. The electoral system invariably pro-
duces a recognizable winner and loser even when the difference in
votes between them is small. The traditional Japanese method, on the
other hand, now in the process of being modified in the mid-1990s, has
encouraged minority representation by a number of parties via the elec-
tion of members of parliament representing disparate groups in the
same multi-member constituency. But the myth of consensus, the ritu-
als of agreement, remain dominant.”!
In America, as we have seen, Protestant sectarian moralism helps to
produce adversarialness, since political and social controversies are
more likely to be perceived as non-negotiable moral issues than as con-
flicts of material interests which can be compromised. Japanese reli-
gious traditions reinforce the need for consensus and compromise.
They are synchronistic rather than sectarian. Many Japanese who are
both Buddhists and Shintoists pray at the temples of the former and
the shrines of the latter. Unlike America, “Japan never possessed a dog-
matic mee which makes a sharp’ distinction between right and
wrong. ... None of... [Japan’s] religions had a stern, omnipotent
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 227

God. . . . Ina situation where no one fought for God or against Satan, it
was easy to reach an accommodation once the fighting was over.””?
The varying consequences of a society which stresses obligation to
groups as a major virtue and one which emphasizes individual success
and rights are also reflected in the sharply different rates of crime. In
America, as noted, the emphasis is on winning, by fair means if possi-
ble and foul if necessary. The Japanese crime rate is much lower than
the American on a per capita basis. As a result, while Americans worry
about walking the streets of their cities, “Japan is one of the few major
nations—perhaps the only one—where one can walk the streets of its
large cities late at night and feel in no danger.”’3 The serious crime rate
in the United States is over four times the total crime rate of Japan.
Only .98 per 100,000 of the Japanese population were murder victims
in 1994, compared with 9.3 Americans; for rape, the variations were
1.5 and 42.8. The data were even more striking for robbery: 1.75 cases
per 100,000 population in Japan, contrasted with 255.8 in the United
States, while for larceny the differences were much less, 1,526 and
3,103." As with other measures, European crime rates fall in
between.” As Hamilton and Sanders note: “Japan and the United
States occupy the opposite poles in the distribution of violent and
property crimes among the major capitalist countries.””°
The trans-Pacific rates are not converging. Between 1960 and 1995,
they increased greatly in the United States for homicide and larceny,
while in Japan they fell for murder and remained constant for larceny.””
In 1995, in proportionate terms, thirteen times as many Americans
were in prison as in Japan, a gap which has been growing. Japan has a
much smaller police force, about 68 percent the size of America’s in
per capita terms, and many fewer lawyers.”®
There is a frequent and much exaggerated reference to the enor-
mous difference between the number of lawyers in the two countries,
allegedly 13,000 in Japan and around 800,000 in the United States.
The second figure is correct. America has one third of the world’s prac-
ticing attorneys; but the first refers only to bengoshi, who are the
licensed litigators (barristers) handling “only a small part of Japan’s
lawyering.” In fact, the country has about “125,000 suppliers of legal
services,” including all sorts of specialized persons dealing with particu-
lar aspects of law, and “in-house corporate legal staffs filled with law
graduates who never bothered to pass the bar exam.””? Adjusting for
these results shows a difference of three to one, 312 lawyers per
100,000 for the United States and 102 for Japan.®° There are many
fewer tort cases in Japan. As a result, the “tort tax” on business and the
 228 American Exceptionalism

professions is much lower across the Pacific. It is estimated that “liabil-

ity-loss payments in America totalled $117 billion in 1987, about 2.5%
of the GNP. Japan's cost was eight times less, about 0.3%.*!
The vast differences have been explained by variations in structures,
rules, and culture, though the first two are in large part an outgrowth of
the third. As a postrevolutionary new society, the United States has
lacked the traditional mechanisms of social control and respect for
authority that mark cultures “based on traditional obligations which
were, or had been, to some extent mutual.”*? The American emphasis
on individualism has therefore been associated with the universalistic
cash nexus and legally enforceable contractual agreements, a pattern
which in comparative terms has continued to the present. Agreements
among business firms are spelled out in much less detail in Japan than
in America. Contracts are not written in anticipation of possible future
litigation. It is assumed that if conditions change so as to benefit one
party against the other, the two will modify the agreement, including
adjustments in price. The Japanese “prefer mediation. Even when suits
are brought before a court, the judges prefer to use conciliation in
order to avoid humiliating the loser.”®? Legal informality, rather than
litigiousness, characterizes the Japanese approach to law.** On the
other hand, the United States’ legal-rational culture has resulted in a
very much higher rate of litigation. Tocqueville stressed the contractual
and litigious character of Americans in the 1830s, and over 150 years
later, John Haley writes: “In no other industrial society is legal regula-
tion as extensive or coercive as in the United States or as confined and
as weak as in Japan.”®
Japan has relied much more than the United States on informal
mechanisms of social control—the sense of shame or loss of face, not
only for individuals but for their families and other groups with which
they are closely identified, including business. An Australian criminol-
ogist, John Braithwaite, explains the uniquely low rate of crime in
Japan as a product of the “cultural traditions of shaming wrongdoers,
including an effective coupling of shame and punishment.’* The
anthropologist George DeVos concludes that “most social evidence
points toward the greater continuing influence of informal social con-
trol and social cohesion within the Japanese groups than is found
within their western counterparts.”®’ As a 1995 New York Times arti-
cle notes: “The value of good behavior, of fitting into a common soci-
ety, is drummed into [Japanese] children from the moment they set
off to first grade in identical school uniforms.” Should someone exhibit
criminal behavior, the judicial system emphasizes making the offender
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 229

feel remorse, fostering a societal environment where crime is not to be

tolerated. In prisons, offenders are “sometimes kept in tiny, individual
cells, and at times they are barred from talking to one another or even
looking at one another.”** And even after completing their sentences,
paying their debt to society, Japanese criminals typically face
ostracism from their families and friends. An earlier 1983 survey of
the opinions of national samples of 10—15-year-olds, which inquired
about various socially disapproved activities, found only 28 percent of
the Japanese children admitting to such behavior, in contrast to 80
percent of the Americans.
Behavioral as well as attitudinal data show that Japanese have been
much less prone to violate traditional norms with respect to marital
continuity than Americans, even though the proportions voicing dis-
content with the relationship are similar. Opinion poll data from the
1980s show Japanese much more opposed to divorce than Americans.
The cross sections of mothers of teenagers were asked whether they
believed that “a man and a wife, even if they want a divorce, should
consider their children’s future and remain married.” The question
yielded overwhelming majority responses in both countries, but in
opposite directions. Almost three quarters of those in Japan said they
should stay married, while three fifths, 61 percent, in the United States
chose the option of divorce. The divorce rate, as of 1992, was much
lower in Japan, 1.53 per 1,000, than in the United States, 4.80 per
1,000.%° As William Goode emphasizes, “by Western standards, it
remains low.”?!
Comparative surveys indicate that the Japanese are much more con-
sciously committed to following the rules or customs than innovating,
while Americans take the opposite tack. In 1978, cross sections inter-
viewed for the Japanese National Character studies in both countries
were asked to respond to the following question:

If you think a thing is right, do you think you should go ahead and do it
even if it is contrary to usual custom, or do you think you are less apt to
make a mistake if you follow custom?
1. Go ahead even if contrary
2. Depends
3. Follow custom

Fully three quarters, 76 percent, of the Americans replied “go

ahead” even if you have to violate traditional custom, as compared to
less than one third, 30 percent, of the Japanese. Even when the issue
 230 American Exceptionalism

does not involve illegitimate or socially disapproved activities, Japanese

prefer to adhere to the rules, while Americans will innovate.”
Americans are much more likely than Japanese to say they will do
anything necessary to get ahead individually. A majority of the former,
52 percent, agreed in 1989 that “I will do whatever I can in order to
succeed,” compared to only 14 percent of the latter. Comparable dif-
ferences were reported for the responses to the statement: “I want to
be successful no matter how much pain might be involved in doing so.”
Over three fifths, 63 percent, of the Americans and more than one
third, 36.5 percent, of the Japanese agreed.”

WORK AND THE ECONOMY

a

Although a highly urbanized industrial nation, Japan retains many of

the informal practices, norms, and client relationships of manorial soci-
eties..* Companies, particularly large ones, are obligated to their
employees, for example, to keep them employed, and to establish pen-
sion funds, and are quite paternalistic in ways that range from arrang-
ing marriages to school placement for employee offspring. The “corpo-
ration is a social unit in which everyone has a role and a stake.”
Ideally, boards of directors are not supposed to emphasize the maxi-
mization of profits. “Many senior Japanese managers . . . feel at least as
obligated to the workers as to the owners of the corporation.””°
Employees are expected to be loyal to their companies. And as indi-
cated in Table 7-2, the survey evidence confirms the generalization
that employees in Japan are much less prone to shift jobs than in
America.” The comparative study of managers found that 59 percent
of Japanese and only one percent of Americans agreed that if they
applied for a job with a company, “I will most certainly work there for
the rest of my life.”* These cross-national variations have also held up
among the three samples of youth, with no change occurring between
1977 and 1988. Close to three quarters, 72 percent, of the Japanese
said they were still on their first job, a reply given by only one quarter,
24 percent, of the Americans. Almost a third of the Americans
reported having held four or more positions; only one percent of the
Japanese did the same.”
Some analysts challenge the belief that prolonged employment and
low separation rates in Japan have cultural components by the con-
tention “that life-time employment is only a large-firm phenomenon.”
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 231

TABLE 7-2, ESTIMATES OF THE NUMBER OF JOBS HELD BY MALES OVER A

LIFETIME IN JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES
———————

ALL Joss
OECD HASHIMOTO-RAISIAN
JAPAN —_—UNITED STATES JAPAN —_—sUNITED STATES
Age Group 1977 1981 1977 1978
16-19 0.54 1,07 0.72 2.00
20-24 1.19 2.54 2.06 4.40
25-29 1.54 3.69 2.71 6.15
30-34 BGS 4.57 6351 7.40
35-39 1.92 5.35 3.46 8.30
40-44 2.05 5.98 4.21 10,25
45-49 2.15 6.45 4.91 10.95
50-54 2.26 6.90 — iTS
55-64 2.62 7.50 _ 11.16

Source: OECD Employment Outlook, September 1984, p. 63. Masanori Hashimoto and John
Raisian, “Employment Tenure and Earning Profiles in Japan and the United States,” American Eco-
nomic Review, 75 (September 1985), p. 724, as reprinted in Masahiko Aoki, Information, Incentives
and Bargaining in the Japanese Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 61.

In fact, however, research by Masanori Hashimoto and John Raisian

and also by Robert Cole indicates that although job tenure “is longer in
large Japanese firms, it is quite long even in the tiny and small firms,”
and much longer in all size groups than in American ones.!° And
although mandatory retirement age is 60, the age at which guaranteed
job security ends, many Japanese workers continue to work for the
same employer—but often with fewer benefits and responsibilities.’
International comparisons of the labor force participation rate by age
show that at age “65 and over,” Japanese participation (at 38%) far
exceeds the United States rate (16%).!
The recession of the early 1990s forced many Japanese companies
to tighten their belts. The unemployment rate of 3.5 percent in 1995 is
the highest since the post-war growth cycle began, up from 2.2 in
1992, 1.9 in 1975 and 2.6 in 1985.!% Thus far (1995) they have not
broken the obligation to retain long-term employees, but they have cut
back sharply on hiring new potential executive talent and have laid off
female employees, many of whom have always been looked on as “tem-
porary,” until they married.
Japanese clearly exhibit much stronger ties to their employers than
 232 American Exceptionalism

Americans do. Cross-national interviews with samples of male workers

in 1960 and 1976 found that the proportions who said that they
thought of their company as “the central concern in my life and of
greater importance than my personal life,” or as “a part of my life at
least equal in importance to my personal life,” were much greater in
Japan than in the United States in both years and increased in absolute
terms in Japan. The combined percentages for the company commit-
ment responses, in surveys taken sixteen years apart, were 65 moving
up to 73 percent for Japanese workers, compared to 29 declining to 21
percent for the Americans. The Americans were much more likely to
choose other categories defining their relations to their employers in
instrumental terms, that is, as less important than their personal lives.
Seemingly, the Japanese changed toward favoring a deeper involve-
ment with their company, while the Americans became even less
enamored of such a stance over the decade and a half between the two
surveys.'°*
Varying emphases toward particularism in economic life are evident
in the responses to 1978 surveys in both countries, which indicated
that Japanese were much more likely than Americans to prefer a work
supervisor who “looks after you personally in matters not connected
with work,” by 87 to 50 percent. The alternative formulation, favoring
someone who “never does anything for you personally in matters not
connected with work,” was endorsed by 10 percent of the Japanese and
47 percent of the Americans.'® The difference in particularistic expec-
tations about the role of supervisors is brought out most strongly in the
responses by samples of male workers in 1960 and again in 1976 to the
question, “when a worker wishes to marry, I think his (her) supervisor
should [pick from four alternatives].” Close to three quarters, 71—74
percent, of the Americans chose the category, “not to be involved in
such a personal matter,” as contrasted to 7 going down to 5 percent of
the Japanese. The dominant answer of the latter, 66 percent moving up
to 80, was “offer personal advice to the worker if requested,” an answer
given by 20 percent descending to 15 of the Americans.'® Similar
cross-national differences are reported by the World Youth Surveys
when they inquired in 1972, 1983, and 1988: “Suppose you work
under a superior, do you think it is a good idea to have social contact
with him after hours?” The percentage replying, “No” changed slightly
from 25.5 to 28 among the Japanese, a response given by a much larger
segment of Americans, 42 to 46 percent.” Japanese workers are in
fact much more likely to socialize “outside of work” with their supervi-
sors and managers, as well as with co-workers.!°8
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 233

The continued Japanese preference for particularistic relations is

also exhibited in the reactions to a question posed in 1973 and 1978
asking them to choose between working for a firm which “paid good
wages, but where they did nothing like organizing outings and sports
days for the employees’ recreation” and a “firm with a family-like
atmosphere which organized outings and sports days, even if the wages
were a little bit less.” The Japanese respondents to both surveys over-
whelmingly chose the particularistic alternative, even if it involved less
pay, by 74 percent in 1973 and 78 percent in 1978.!” Japanese execu-
tives (50%) were much more likely than Americans (21%) to feel that
in determining compensations, “a company should take into account
the size of the employee’s family,” as compared to believing that “an
employee should be paid on the basis of the work he is doing for the
company ... [which] does not have to take into account the
employee’s family.”!!°
The Japanese, to reiterate, are more loyal to their employers than are
Americans.’ A review of the relevant behavioral evidence of the early
eighties documented the generalization that “Japanese workers put in
more time on the job per week than American workers . . . unexcused
absenteeism is generally so low as to seem nonexistent; strike activity is
lower in Japan than in the U.S... . and unions cooperate with manage-
ment in achieving corporate goals and in carrying out company pro-
grams. .. .”!!2 Since 1992, however, the workweek differential has van-
ished as American industry has become “leaner” to be competitive,
although the other generalizations still held up.!
Studies of leisure and family involvements, both attitudinal and
behavioral, agree that the Japanese devote less time than Americans to
leisure pursuits and are more disposed to emphasize work over leisure
or home life generally. Thus James Lincoln and Arne Kalleberg found
“only 35 percent of our Japanese sample (vs. 70 percent of the Ameri-
cans) rate family life as more important than work responsibilities.”!!*
The Japanese (49%) were also more likely than Americans (28%) to
agree with the statement: “Employees shouldn't take time off when
things are busy, even though they have a right to take time off.”"” A
1980 NHK (the public broadcasting system) survey found more than a
quarter, 27 percent, of Americans gave the highest priority to leisure
activities, while 18 percent of Japanese did. The World Youth Survey
reported that when asked in 1977, 1983, and 1988, “Which do you
find more worthwhile, work or something else?” two thirds, 67—71 per-
cent, in the United States replied something other than work, as com-
pared to around half, 49-57 percent, of those in Japan.''®
 234 American Exceptionalism

A survey-based comparison by the Leisure Development Center of

Japan in 1989 of work and leisure in seven developed nations noted
that the Japanese work the most and have the least time off. Two out
of three Japanese employees worked more than 45 hours a week; in
every other country surveyed, the majority of workers spent less than
45 hours per week at their jobs. “The American figure [for more] is
42.5 percent. As for weekend holidays, the most common pattern in
Japan is one day off, and less than 20% of workers have two-day week-
ends every week. On the other hand . . . 68% of Americans are assured
two-day weekends every week.”!!” Not surprisingly, “leisure participa-
tion is comparatively low in Japan. Japan was last in 23—or more than
half—of the [42 leisure activity] categories.”!'®
The United States is not an outlier in these respects. In 1994, The
Economist reported that behaviorally, Americans are now close to the
Japanese pattern and well ahead of the citizens of the European Union
in average number of working hours per year, 1,945 for the United
States, 2,017 for Japan, and 1,771 for the European Union.'!? Ameri-
cans appear significantly more work-oriented than Europeans for every
country, still reflecting their Protestant sectarian origins.
Although Japanese groups and firms are intensely competitive, indi-
viduals within them are not expected to be—nor do they want to be—
in overt rivalries with colleagues in seeking to get ahead. Promotion
and salary increases within Japanese firms tend much more to be a
function of seniority than in American ones, even among white-collar
employees and executives.'*° Seniority is even more important and
strictly respected within the civil service, where political appointees do
not intervene in personnel matters.!2! Chie Nakane points out: “In the
West, merit is given considerable importance, while in Japan the bal-
ance goes the other way. In other words, in Japan in contrast to other
societies, the provisions for the recognition of merit are somewhat
weaker, and the social order is institutionalized largely by means of
seniority.”'*2 When national cross sections of employed young adults
(18 to 24 years of age) were asked in 1977, 1983, and 1988 for their
preferred basis for promotions and pay increases, an average of 80 per-
cent of the Americans favored giving more weight to performance than
seniority, compared to 36 percent of the Japanese. Preference for
seniority basically stayed constant from 1977 to 1988 at 46 to 44 per-
cent among the Japanese and 16 to 15 percent for the American
youth. !73 .
The two World Values Surveys conducted in 1981-82 and 1990-91
also found that Americans are much more likely than Japanese to
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 235

believe in merit pay; more of the latter are inclined to pay the same to
all in a given type of work. Thus in the first survey, as noted in chapter
Four, when asked whether a secretary who “is quicker, more efficient
and more reliable at her job” should be paid more than one of the same
age who does less, over four fifths of the Americans, 82 percent, said
pay the more useful one more, compared to 68 percent of the Japan-
ese.'“* The American support for merit basically stayed the same a
decade later, while the Japanese actually fell to 48 percent. A second
question, presented in 1990, asked respondents whether “there should
be greater incentives for individual effort,” or should “incomes be made
more equal.” As in the response to the earlier query, the Americans
favor greater emphasis on “incentives”by 59 percent to 29 for the
Japanese (top four categories). Not surprisingly, business executives in
the two countries differed in a similar fashion. Thus, when asked to
express a preference between “Jobs in which no one is singled out for
personal honor, but in which every one works together” or “Jobs in
which personal initiatives are encouraged and individual initiatives are
achieved,” almost every American (97%) opted for “individual initia-
tives,” compared to 49 percent of the Japanese.!°
Individualistic expectations of the American worker, in contrast to
the Japanese, are reflected in a comparison of job satisfaction measures
taken in 1991 using the “Worldwide Office Environment Index.” In
response to a question about things workers look for in a job, a large
number of U.S. workers said it was very or somewhat true that “I can
contribute significantly to my company” (92%), “My job is challenging”
(92%), “Management recognizes my contributions” (84%), and
“Employees at all levels are encouraged to participate in problem-solv-
ing” (78%). The concomitant percentages of Japanese workers who
responded similarly were 69 percent, 73 percent, 63 percent, and 51
percent.!*°
Ronald Dore accounts for the conundrum of greater emphasis on
equality of result in the more elitist society by suggesting that in Japan,
“egalitarianism is a matter of the equal rights of all members of the
family to consideration granted by the responsible head—viz, in mod-
ern terms, responsible elite,” in other words, Tories. In America, on the
other hand, “egalitarianism is based on the notion of equal rights of
free-standing, rights-asserting individuals.”!”” The difference may also
be linked to the greater stress on individualism and competitiveness in
the United States (see Appendix pp. 293-296).
‘Economists and culturally oriented social scientists debate to what
extent the much higher savings rate of the Japanese (15% in 1991)
 236 American Exceptionalism

compared to Americans (4.9% in 1992) is a function of variations in

corporate structures and tax policies or of values.'* Without trying to
challenge the effect of economic and political policies on savings pat-
terns, it may be noted that in the 1990 World Values Survey, the
Japanese were more likely than Americans to say that it is especially
important that parents should encourage or teach children about
“thrift, saving money and things’”—by 40 to 28 percent.
Some, though not all, of the comparative survey results dealing with
economy-related attitudes appear contradictory. On a subjective ver-
bal level, a number of surveys have found that Japanese are less work-
oriented, less satisfied with their jobs, and less positive in feelings
about their companies than Americans.!”? James Lincoln and Arne
Kalleberg, who have commented on these inconsistencies between
behavioral and survey findings, note—correctly, I believe—that there
are “cultural biases operating to generate overly positive assessments
of work life on the part of American employees and understatements
by the Japanese. . . .”3°
The cultural biases are in part an “apparent manifestation of Japan-
ese collectivism and Western individualism . . . [as in] the tendency for
Japanese respondents to give average or non-committal answers, while
Anglo-American respondents are somewhat more prone to take strong,
even extreme stands on issues. . . .”!?! Ronald Dore suggests that varia-
tions in “average personality” also affect cross-national attitudes, such
as “a difference on a dimension which has cheerfulness and good-
humored complacency at one pole and a worried earnestness and anx-
ious questing for self-improvement on the other.” He believes this
affects varying propensities to express job satisfaction.!** Answers to
questions about job satisfaction or working hard or ratings of employers
are also relative, are affected by conceptions of what hard work means,
of expectations about a job or organization, by perceptions about fellow
workers or supervisors. It has been argued that it is “precisely because
the Japanese subscribe to a strong work ethic that they are less likely to
feel that their expectations have been met.”!?
If the Japanese are more reluctant than the Americans to speak in
favorable terms to interviewers about their work role and environment,
the positive feelings of the former may show up in their response to
another question posed in the 1990 World Values Survey as to quali-
ties which it is especially important to impress on children. Almost
three fifths, 59 percent, of the Japanese, mention “determination, per-
severance,” compared to 36 percent of the Americans. But it must be
noted that the Americans lead in emphasizing “hard work,” 48.5 to 31
 - American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 237

percent, a response pattern which reiterates the curious reluctance of

Japanese to speak in approving terms of work.
Cultural dispositions clearly affect differences in verbal responses.
Japanese are not disposed to boasting, to expressing positive judgments
about themselves, a trait which extends to groups of which they are
part, such as pride in country, an item on which they rank close to the
bottom in international comparisons. Kiyoshi Ando, in explaining why
“Americans start speeches by cracking jokes, [while] the Japanese do
so by apologizing for their lack of information and their inability to live
up to the expectations of the audience,” notes that the difference
reflects the fact that in Japan, “to be modest is considered desirable
and to boast of one’s accomplishments is regarded as negative.” He
refers to research which shows that the more advanced elementary
school students are, the more likely they are to consider “humble pride
or modesty as the hall-mark of a capable person.”!34 Americans, con-
versely, are almost uninhibited in such terms. They lead the world in
positive expressions about their own country.'* In 1991, 77 percent
told Gallup, “I am very proud to be an American,” and 19 percent said,
“quite proud.” Only 4 percent responded negatively. Americans also
show up as among the most optimistic people in Gallup Polls con-
ducted in thirty countries, while the Japanese are among the least.
Polls taken annually near the end of each year from 1959 to 1987, and
again in 1990, posed the following question: “So far as you are con-
cerned, do you think [next year] will be better or worse than [last
year]?”!36 Even in December 1990, after the recession began, the
United States still led, with 48 percent of Americans, compared to only
23 percent of the Japanese, who had not yet entered a recession, reply-
ing next year will be better. At the end of 1992, Americans were even
more optimistic (61%), while the Japanese were unchanged; 24 per-
cent thought 1993 would be better.
Individualism may also press Americans to give positive responses
about satisfaction with job and company, while embeddedness in
strong group allegiances reduces the propensity of the Japanese to
answer in comparable terms. Since Americans believe in personal
choice of jobs, schools, and mates, a response that one does not like
his/her situation raises the question: what is wrong with the
individual?!3”? Why does he/she not quit? Japanese, in contrast, do not
have the option to break from a group relationship. If the individual
does not like the spouse or company, there is no implication that there
is something wrong with the respondent. Hence, Japanese can be
much more outspoken about voicing negative feelings than Americans.
 238 American Exceptionalism

In this case, individualism constrains speech; group allegiances liberate

ies
Group-oriented commitments are weak in the United States, where
the religious tradition, linked to its Puritan origins, emphasizes individ-
ualism and personal rights. Bourgeois norms enjoin the same behavior.
Americans do not feel obligations, other than familial, if these conflict
with the requirements of efficiency or income. They are more disposed
than other people to expect individuals to do their best for themselves,
not for others.

STATUS PATTERNS
[sis

The dominant stratification orientations of the two societies are also

quite different. America, as noted, stresses equality of opportunity and
equality of respect, but not of income. Tocqueville suggested that
Americans believe individuals should give and receive respect because
they are human beings. Everyone recognizes that inequality exists, but
it is impolite to emphasize it in dealing with others.
In Japan, as the industrialized society most recently derivative from
feudalism, hierarchy remains important in defining social relations.
Edwin Reischauer has written that no other people place a greater
emphasis on status differentiation in social relationships than the
Japanese.'** Living in a relatively collectivist society, Japanese “show
much more status consciousness and accept [social] inequality to a
greater extent than individualists,’ such as Americans.'*? Each person
and institution has a place in the prestige order. It is generally recog-
nized that medicine everywhere is the most status-conscious occupa-
tion. Physicians demand and receive more deference than those in
other professions, perhaps because of the concern about health and
the consequent need to respect and obey doctors.'*° But the compara-
tive evidence indicates that the Japanese again are outliers in this
respect. Stephen Anderson reports that more than in other “advanced
industrial societies, physicians in Japan make treatment decisions
with little consultation with their patients. Compared to client behav-
ior in the United States, clients in Japan seldom question a physician
and are less likely to file cases of malpractice to challenge errors in
medical judgment.”'*' Conversely, Americans are the most prone to do
so. \

This concern for status also shows up with respect to education.

The comparative surveys of youth aged 18-24 conducted in 1977,
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 239

1983, and 1988 found, in response to the questions concerning the

factors valued about a college education, that the Japanese were much
more likely than their trans-Pacific counterparts to say that “having
gone to a top ranking college” should be valued, by an average margin
of 25 to 16 percent, while Americans put much more emphasis than
Japanese on “school performance and school record,” by 39 to 10 per-
cent.'” The results of a detailed study of the relationship of college sta-
tus and occupational attainment in Japan and the United States on a
mass level challenges the thesis that educational credentialism is
greater in Japan than in the United States. However, “when we focus
on the process of elite formation, a different picture emerges. The link-
age between the summit of educational stratification and top of the corpo-
rate managerial [and civil service] hierarchy appears to be much stronger
in Japan than in the United States.”'*3 And Ronald Dore notes that in
Japan, the “examination-selected official still has higher prestige than
the elected politician.”!** Douglas Kenrick states that Americans “think
of civil servants as wielders of red-tape which clogs private enterprise.
The Japanese think of them as functionaries who make and implement
the rules which make for communal harmony.”!*°
Hierarchy is particularly evident in the Japanese use of words, many
of which are laden with social-status connotations. Japanese employ
different terms in conversations with superiors, equals, and inferiors.
In this way, their language is one in which status determines how peo-
ple talk to each other. When two people meet, they must be able to
place one another in order to determine how to interact, although for a
brief meeting persons who are unacquainted may use status-neutral
terms. A friend of mine, an anthropologist at Stanford, tells of an expe-
rience during his stay in Japan as a visiting professor. He invited two
Japanese colleagues, who did not know one another, to dinner. They
devoted considerable time trying to place each other hierarchically.
Not only would this determine the language they used to each other,
but even who would walk through the door to the dining room first. My
friend could not get them to move to go in to dinner. At last, acting like
a hungry, uncouth American, he literally shoved them into the dining
room. To those who may think this story is unrepresentative, I submit
the observation by Chie Nakane: “In everyday affairs a man who is not
aware of relative ranking is not able to speak or even to sit or eat. When
speaking, he is always expected to be ready with differentiated, delicate
degrees of honorific expressions appropriate to the rank order between
himself and the person he is addressing. The English language is inade-
quate to supply appropriate equivalents in such contexts.”!*°
 240 American Exceptionalism

Although both countries are political democracies, the Japanese are

more respectful of political leaders, of persons in positions of authority,
and less likely to favor protest activities. Americans, on the other hand,
tend to be more anti-elitist and suspicious of those in power. George
DeVos notes that in Japan, “[aJuthority figures—political, administra-
tive, and familial—are for the most part, granted a degree of respect
rare in the United States. . . .”!4” These generalizations are borne out by
comparative survey research which indicates that Japanese are more
likely than Americans to agree that “if we get outstanding political lead-
ers, the best way to improve the country is for people to leave every-
thing to them, rather than for the people to discuss things among
themselves.” Both, however, express a low level of “confidence” in their
current (1995) crop of politicians. Japanese respect for authority is also
evident in the finding that a much greater percentage of them than of
Americans feel that parents should support teachers by denying to
their child the validity of a story “that his teacher had done something
to get himself in trouble,” even if the rumor is true.'*®
The Japanese are also less disposed to give verbal support to extra-
parliamentary activism, although the behavior of their students during
the sixties may have contradicted such statements. The youth surveys
conducted in 1972, 1977, 1983, and 1988 found that the Japanese
were the least likely among persons aged 18 to 24 in six countries
(France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West
Germany) to say that if they “are not satisfied with the society,” they
would “engage in active actions as far as they are legal” to change
things—21 percent in 1988, down from 37 in 1972—while the Ameri-
cans were the most disposed among the six to favor activism, 55 per-
cent falling off from 62. The modal response (39 to 41%) for the Japan-
ese was, ‘I will use my voting rights but nothing more.”!4? A somewhat
similar question was posed in the 1990 World Values Survey with com-
parable cross-national findings. Over three fifths, 61 percent, of the
Japanese said they would never take part in a demonstration, while
only 38 percent of the Americans would commit themselves not to do
so. The latter were consistently more likely to indicate a greater willing-
ness than their trans-Pacific peers to engage in various forms of more
militant or even illegal political action. Here is further evidence of the
different attitudes of Americans and Japanese (as well as Europeans)
to conformity.
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 241

GENDER RELATIONS
maa

Gender-linked behavior presents another area in which the United

States and Japan continue to vary along the traditional-modern axis,
with Japan continuing to maintain its historic values and behavior.
Mary Brinton emphasizes that Japan is “a persistent outlier among
industrial societies, demonstrating a greater male-female wage differ-
ential and more pronounced sex segregation across a range of indica-
tors, including employment status and occupation. . . .”!°° The United
States differs from Japan on all of these variables.!*!
Before the recession of the early 1990s, structural changes in the
economy forced the Japanese to choose between admitting large num-
bers of foreign workers, thereby upsetting their traditional aversion to
accepting outsiders, or allowing a sizable increase in employed married
female labor, thereby undermining the norms defining the relations
between the sexes. The Japanese chose to do the latter, although they
remained far behind the United States and almost all other industrial-
ized nations in participation by women in the employed labor force.!*
The recession, however, led to a great erosion of the job gains Japanese
women had made during the eighties. This reaction could have been
anticipated from the findings of the 1990 World Values Survey, which
asked respondents to react to the statement: “When jobs are scarce,
men have more right to a job than women.” The great majority of
Americans, 70 percent, disagreed, a sentiment shared by only 23 per-
cent of the Japanese. A 1993 Labor Ministry survey of one thousand
companies “found that more than half said they were cutting back in
the hiring of women so they could keep hiring male students. . . .” The
New York Times reported in May 1994 that Japanese “corporate execu-
tives said ... they were not inclined to ... comply with the country’s
eight-year old Equal Employment Opportunity Law. .. .” The behavior
of Japanese employers during a recession demonstrates that their previ-
ous willingness to hire women “had far less to do with a change in
national values than with a shortage of workers.”!? Essentially, Japan
responded to the economic downswing of the early nineties by cutting
back sharply on female employment. Many companies stopped hiring
women college graduates.'**
Japanese values, of course, do change. This is particularly evident in
the almost 40 percent decline in the marriage rate in Japan over the
past two decades, while the increase in the average age of newlyweds
 242 American Exceptionalism

has been greater than in any other society. Marriage rates have
changed little in America in recent years, hovering around 15 per 1,000
population, aged 15 to 64, between 1960 and 1991, while dropping
from 14.5 to 6 per 1,000 in Japan in the same period.'®* The age of
marriage in Japan is the highest in the world.'** And not surprisingly,
the changes in behavior have been paralleled by shifts in attitude. The
proportion of Japanese females agreeing with the statement: “Women
had better marry because women’s happiness lies in marriage,”
declined from 40 percent in 1972 to 14 percent in 1990.'°’ Marriage
rates apart, traditional values concerning cross-sex relations and the
behavior of single women remain much stronger in Japan. Mary Brin-
ton points out: “Rates of cohabitation [with an unmarried person of the
opposite sex] have . . . increased dramatically in the United States, but
this trend is scarcely visible in Japan.”!*®
Gender relations remain much more traditionally hierarchical, more
asymmetrical in Japan than in Western nations, particularly the United
States.'5° The traditional male-dominant family is much more charac-
teristic of Japan. Comparative survey data gathered by NHK in 1980
indicate that three fifths of the Japanese think males “have higher ana-
lytical ability’ than women; most Americans, 72 percent, believe that
“by nature there are no differences between men and women.” The
same NHK study reports that 80 percent of Japanese men and 74 per-
cent of the women say the “husband should have the final deciding
voice” in the family, compared to 40 percent of American men and 34
percent of the women. When asked how the household chores should
be divided when the husband and wife both work, 90 percent of the
Americans said equally between the spouses, a position taken by only
slightly over half of the Japanese, including 54 percent of the
women.'® That these cross-national variations in opinions correspond
to behavioral differences is evident in Table 7-3 below. In Japan
between 1965 and 1990, an unchanging nine tenths or more of the
time spent on household chores is spent by women, compared to 79
percent declining to 64 percent in the United States.
Given these cross-national differences, it is not surprising that the
Prime Minister's Office multinational Survey of parents of children,
which inquired in 1981 whether women should have jobs after mar-
riage or “after childbirth,” found that a majority of Americans, 52.5 per-
cent, replied, “Yes, at any time,” in contrast to 30 percent of the Japan-
ese.'! Similarly, the 1990 World Values, Survey reports that Japanese
are more likely than Americans to agree that “A pre-school child is
likely to suffer if his or her mother works,” by 70 to 51 percent. The
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 243

TABLE 7-3. DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN OF AVERAGE TIME

SPENT PER WEEK IN HOUSEWORK AND CHILD CARE: JAPAN, 1965-90, AND
THE UNITED STATES, 1965-86 (PERCENT)
Se re ve a eps 2Beet Cefn Sh coy algi ee ey ed
Country YEAR PERCENT SHARE OF:
Women Men Total

Japan 1965 92 8 100

1970 92 8 100

1975 9) S) 100

1980 91 9 100

1985 92 8 100

1990 90 10 100

United States 1965 79 21 100

1975 75 25 100

1986 64 36 100

Source: Noriko O. Tsuya, “Work and Family Life in Japan: Changes and Continuities.” Unpublished
paper, Department of Sociology, Nihon University, Tokyo, 1992, Table 4.

Japanese-conducted international youth surveys reported cross-

national differences running in the same direction when they asked
respondents to react to the more general statement: “Men should go
out to work while women stay home and take care of the house.” In
each year (1977, 1983, and 1988), the large majority of Americans dis-
agreed by 71, 81, and 81 percent, compared to minorities, albeit
increasing ones, of Japanese, 32, 35, and 44 percent, who felt the same
way.'* The Prime Minister’s Office also reported that American
spouses are much more likely to socialize together than Japanese. The
percentages for “eating out” are 48 American, 17 Japanese; for “films
and theaters,” 40 percent and 7; for “social parties,” 37 and 5; and for
“travel,” 33 and 5.16
Polls conducted in 1990 by the Roper Organization and the Dentsu
Institute for the Virginia Slims Company in both nations supply further
evidence of continued Japanese traditionalism in gender relations.’™
Working females were asked whether “the men you work with really
look on you as an equal or not?” American women replied by 59 to 29
percent that they are viewed as equals. The Japanese response pattern
was diametrically opposite, with 55 percent of the women saying they
are not looked upon as equals and only 31 percent thinking they are.
Asked whether women’s opportunities are the same as those of men in
various job-related areas, American women are much more likely than
 244 American Exceptionalism

Japanese women to perceive equality for salaries—65 to 24 percent, for

responsibility—74 to 37 percent; for promotion—60 to 18 percent, and
for becoming an executive—49 to 15 percent. These perception differ-
ences correspond to variations in national behavioral patterns. In 1990,
two fifths, 40 percent, of administrative and managerial positions in the
United States were filled by women, up from 27.5 in 1981, as com-
pared to only 7.9 percent in Japan, up from 5.3 in 1981.'® Clearly,
women are gaining more rapidly in America than across the Pacific in
the attainment of executive positions. And a report by the Japanese
Ministry of Labor shows that “women made up just 1.2 percent of
company division managers in 1991, not significantly higher than the
figure of 0.8 percent recorded in 1981.”'%
A 1991 survey of mothers of junior high school students in Japan
and America found again that women in Japan are much more tradi-
tional than their trans-Pacific peers with respect to gender roles of
adults and their treatment and expectations for their offspring. Thus
over half, 53 percent, of the Japanese mothers agree that “Husbands
should work outside and wives should take care of the family,” in con-
trast to 39 percent of the Americans. Similarly, over three fifths, 61
percent, of the American mothers disagree with the statement: “Men
are supposed to play a central role and women are supposed to support
them,” a point of view rejected by less than half, 44 percent, of the
Japanese mothers.
Japanese mothers are more disposed than Americans to vary their
treatment of siblings according to gender. Just over half the former, in
contrast to 38 percent of the latter, say “boys and girls should be raised
differently.” More specifically, when asked: “What education level do
you want your child to achieve?”, Americans do not differentiate their
expectations for sons and daughters; 83 percent want both to graduate
from university. Japanese mothers, on the other hand, vary anticipa-
tions according to the sex of their children. Sixty-seven percent want
their male offspring to go to university, while only 35 percent wish the
same for females.!*
Cross-national attitudinal and behavioral differences are linked
closely. Of the 38 percent of Japanese males who continue their edu-
cation beyond high school, fully 95 percent attend four-year universi-
ties; among the one third of females who are in post-high school
studies, “nearly two-thirds ... go on to junior colleges and the rest
enroll in four-year universities.”'° The situation is reversed in the’
United States, where a larger proportion of college-age women (64%)
than of men (55%) are enrolled in tertiary institutions, more or less
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 245

proportionally distributed by gender in different types of higher edu-

cation.!®©
Basically, as Mary Brinton has stressed, “a central purpose of
women’s education in contemporary Japan is preparation for family
roles.” More education does not lead to “a stronger career orientation.”
University graduates are less likely to take a job upon graduation than
junior college or high school graduates. Conversely, “the primary rea-
son stated for enrollment in higher education among American women
in 1980 was job preparation.”!”°
The distinctive gender-linked attitudes and behaviors in Japan and
America appear to be supported by friendship patterns. Both younger
(18-24) and older (65 plus) Japanese are much more likely than com-
parably aged Americans to say that all of their close friends are of their
sex. Among the youth, the ratio of Japanese to Americans to so report
is 51 to 10 percent; among the aged, it is 57 to 32 percent. The dropoff
between the generations in traditional behavior is clearly much greater
in the United States. Over four fifths of American youth report having
friends of both genders in 1977, 1983, and 1988; less than half of the
Japanese do so, although the percentage has been increasing from 32
percent in 1977 to 49 percent in 1988.'7!

FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
ea

The family has been an area of considerable change as societies have

moved from predominantly rural and small-town environments to
industrial and metropolitan ones. There has been a shift everywhere
from single-household, multi-generational, stem families to nuclear
ones; fertility rates have declined greatly; and the role of parents in
arranging marriages has been replaced by an emphasis on love. The
United States has been in the forefront of such developments; Japan
has been a laggard among industrialized nations, although it too has
moved considerably.'”
Familial relations seemingly reflect the continuity of traditional
elements in Japan. In spite of the strains of adjusting to the rapid
social change encompassed by the pace of industrialization and
urbanization in postwar Japan, the family is more secure there than
in the United States. As Nathan Glazer emphasizes, “The Japanese
family is undoubtedly changing; but for a developed country it still
maintains a remarkable stability, which underlies the stability of the
value patterns. . . .”'”3 Divorce rates, as noted earlier, are much lower
 246 American Exceptionalism

in Japan. Aged parents are more likely to live with or near their off-
spring and to receive deference and assistance from them. A 1980
international study of “human values” found 89 percent of a national
cross-section of Japanese in favor of adult children living with their
parents and older parents residing with a married son or daughter, a
position taken by only 25 percent of a comparable sample of Ameri-
cans. Surveys of the elderly, 65 and older, taken in 1981, 1986, and
1991, found that the majority of the Japanese in each year (59, 58,
and 54%) said they wished to always “live together” with their chil-
dren and grandchildren, compared to very few Americans (6.5, 2.7,
and 3.4%).!74 Cross-sections of mothers of teenagers in the two soci-
eties, when interviewed in 1983, also varied in their responses to a
question concerning their desired relationship with their children in
old age. The overwhelming majority of Americans, 87 percent, said
they would like to dwell apart from their offspring; 56 percent of the
Japanese preferred to be with them. These attitudes correspond to
behavior. In the 1980s, three fifths of Japanese 65 years or older
were living with relatives, compared to one seventh of similarly aged
Americans. The 1981, 1986, and 1991 studies of people aged 65
and over found that in the United States, about four fifths of the
“elderly were either living alone or were living alone as couples. In
Japan, about 50 percent of the elderly interviewed were living with
children. . . .” Even more strikingly, the data showed that “roughly 35
percent of the Japanese are living in three [adult] generation house-
holds against [almost] no Americans.”!”? Conversely, during the
1980s, 30.4 percent of Americans 65 years of age or older were living
by themselves, as contrasted to 8.6 percent of elderly Japanese.
Comparative research finds that “except in Japan, the one-person
household has shown the most rapid growth of all household types
since 1960.”!”6
These findings reinforce the conclusion put forth in 1992 by Junko
Matsubara that Japanese society basically “recognizes families as basic
social units and disregards individualists who desire to live alone.” An
unmarried freelance writer in her mid-forties, Matsubara was told by
landlords she was unqualified to rent an apartment by herself.!”” Grown
children among the Japanese are more disposed to remain with their
parents in the (physically small) family households than Americans,
who generally live in much larger dwelling units. Surveys of 18- to 24-
year-old Japanese youth report that from 79 percent in 1977 to 83 per-
cent in 1988 were residing with parents, compared to 59 percent to 62
percent of the same age group of Americans.'”* The differences are
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 247

particularly strong for women, in spite of the great changes in Japanese

marital patterns.!”°

THE PERPETUATION OF TRADITION

=

The argument has frequently been made that to develop economically,

less developed countries must become modern, individualistic, and
meritocratic. In other words, they must come to resemble America.
Even Marxists, writing in a period when the United States was per-
ceived as the great capitalist success (not yet the great capitalist vil-
lain), saw America as the equivalent of modernity.
The Japanese elites were able to employ the country’s traditions in
ways that made industrialization possible. They were able to use reli-
gion, since pre-Meiji beliefs contained elements that encouraged ratio-
nally oriented work and economic behavior. Robert Bellah concludes
that Japanese economic development was causally linked to its Bud-
dhist and Confucian heritages.!®° Shinto, one of the country’s two
major faiths, is older than most Western religions and helped to legiti-
mate the Meiji transformation. Traveling around Japan, one can see
business people enter Shinto shrines and clap to get the attention of
the local god, the god of a river, of aviation, of a district. They are prac-
ticing a form of the same animist or shamanist religion that existed in
the pagan Western past and persists today in tribal societies.'*!
Religion everywhere tends to institutionalize values and practices
from previous eras. As Weber emphasized, traditionalism in the form
of religion helped to modernize America and facilitated the develop-
ment of a competitive capitalist society. The same Protestant sects
which fostered individualism and rational market behavior also sus-
tained many values and beliefs derived from the preindustrial history of
Western societies. Americans form the most devout population in the
West, as we saw in chapter Two.
The Japanese, of course, not being Christians, cannot be expected
to accept biblical teachings, but in any case they are much less reli-
gious than Americans. The three youth surveys report that, over an
eleven-year period, more than 90 percent of Americans said they
believe religion should be important in their life (41-47% “very impor-
tant,” 45-46 “somewhat”), contrasted to around two fifths of Japanese
(6-10 percent “very,” 31-35 “somewhat”).'*? The 1990 World Values
Survey found 79 percent of Americans and only 17 percent of Japanese
reporting religion as an important value. It is interesting to note that
 248 American Exceptionalism

similar differences showed up when the responses of a national cross-

section of Japanese were compared with those of a sample of Japanese
Americans in Hawaii, both taken at the beginning of the 1970s. For
example, only 31 percent of the Japanese said they had a personal reli-
gious faith, compared to 71 percent of the Hawaiian Japanese.'*°
The lesser religiosity of the Japanese may explain the poll findings
that they are more permissive or liberal with respect to sexuality-related
issues. Americans are more likely than Japanese to say that married
people should never have an affair, by 79 to 57 percent.'** They are 10
percent less likely than Americans to believe that “pre-marital sexual
intercourse is immoral,” and 14 percent more disposed to agree that
“legal abortions should be available to women who choose to have
them.”!8 Even more strikingly and logically, the Japanese are more
likely to believe that “what is good and evil depends entirely on the cir-
cumstances of our time” than European and American Christians (see
chapter Two, Table 2-2), who give more emphasis to guidelines, with
Americans showing the greatest differences.
Various students of American values cited in chapter One have con-
cluded that, as in Japan, there has been little change over time in the
key characteristics of American culture. For the most part, this judg-
ment is premised on the assumption that the United States was “born
modern”; that values like universalism, egalitarianism, individualism,
and an emphasis on meritocracy were present from the beginning of
the republic.!8* However, the European postfeudal societies, with their
earlier stress on hierarchy, particularism, and ascription (hereditary sta-
tus), while remaining different from America, changed greatly to meet
what some believe are the functional requirements of industrial soci-
ety. But Japan, as we have seen, has modernized economically while
retaining many traditional ways which have declined in most of post-
feudal Europe.
The United States, like Japan, contradicts the assumption that the
emergence of a developed urban economy necessarily undermines tra-
dition. Most Americans still adhere to pre-modern religious beliefs. In
some ways, therefore, as Alan Wolfe has emphasized, America is a
more traditional society than Western Europe, or even Japan.!®” Public
opinion studies conducted since World War II in the United States
attest to the strength of ancient sacred traditions, which are much
stronger in America than in almost all other Christian countries.
The supposedly greater commitment of the Japanese to traditional
ways of life, such as choosing to live in small towns, also did not appear
when samples in both countries were asked in the late 1970s by Gallup
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 249

International about preferences for community of residence. The

Americans turned out to be more wedded to older models. Close to
three fifths (56%) of those interviewed in the United States stated they
would like to live in rural areas or in a small town of up to ten thousand
persons, as compared to only a quarter (27%) of the Japanese.
Although the Japanese are closer in time (generations) to residence in
small communities and although many now have to live in highly con-
gested urban conditions, 36 percent said they would prefer to live in a
large city, while only 13 percent of the Americans expressed the same
choice.
Antagonism to big cities in America has been linked for many
decades to an image of these communities as centers of moral corrup-
tion, sin, and irreligion, an image held by fundamentalists and evangeli-
cal Protestants. As Earl Raab and I documented, such views have given
rise to anti-modernist and anti-urban movements from the Anti-
Masonic Party of the 1820s and 1830s through the Know-Nothing
American Party movement of the 1850s, the Ku Klux Klan of the
1920s, and the more recent right-wing religious linked groups, of
whom the most publicized have been the Moral Majority of the 1970s
and 1980s and the Christian Coalition of the 1990s.!88
On a completely secular level, the American refusal, discussed in
chapter Three, to give up the ancient systems of measurement in favor
of the metric system is another illustration of an American attachment
to established ways. By the criterion of measurement units, America
(and Britain) are more traditional than Japan. But the latter, as noted
earlier, insists on retaining an equally dysfunctional approach to street
names and numbers.
Another major pattern in the United States which involves the per-
petuation, even the extension, of traditional behavior is ethnicity. Until
recently, most scholars of this topic agreed that ethnicity reflected the
conditions of traditional society, in which people lived in small com-
munities isolated from one another and mass communications and
transportation were limited or nonexistent. They expected that indus-
trialization, urbanization, and the spread of education would reduce
ethnic consciousness, that universalism would replace particularism.
But as we have seen in chapter Four, this generalization is still prob-
lematic in the United States, not to speak of various European coun-
tries. However, the image of the universalistic American “melting pot”
would appear to be validated by intermarriage statistics, which indicate
that majorities of Catholics, Jews, Italians, Irish, and Japanese Ameri-
cans marry out of their ancestral groups. But the rise of minority ethnic
 250 American Exceptionalism

and racial consciousness has resulted in a deprecation of the melt-

ing pot as the image of the future of American ethnicity, particular-
ly by intellectuals and the ideological left, in favor of the goal of an
ethnically pluralist society that seeks to preserve various national
origin groups—blacks, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and so on.'®?
The emphasis on universalism has declined in political discourse,
while particularism—described by some as multiculturalism—has
become more important. But these discussions and proposals have
little impact on mass behavior. The “melting pot” remains as appropri-
ate an image as ever. Japan clearly is much more particularistic and
race-conscious.

MODERNITY AND CONSERVATISM

a

The belief that Japan is a peculiar exception to the assumption that

economic development necessitates a shift from tradition to modernity,
because it retains major aspects of the value systems associated with
feudalism, is clearly invalid. Every industrial country is a combination
of tradition and modernity. As Weber, Reischauer, and Bellah have
suggested, development in the Western sense is an outgrowth of cer-
tain traditions that fostered rational economic behavior, elements pre-
sent more strongly in Northern Europe, North America, Japan, and
Confucian East Asia than in other parts of the world. The new is intro-
duced as an outgrowth of the right combination of the old. The strains
of social change, of adjusting to new forms of behavior, of rejecting the
old, can only be reduced if societies are able to link the new with the
old, if they maintain considerable elements from previous stages of
development. Not all cultures, however, have equally usable cultural
elements.
Tatsuzo Suzuki draws conclusions from examining the responses to
five Japanese National Character surveys conducted over a quarter of a
century which apply to some degree to the United States and other
developed countries.

First, the processes of social change did not bring about a total disappear-
ance of a “traditional” outlook, to be replaced by a “modern” outlook.
Despite all the changes in the postwar era, the systems of values in Japan
have continued to provide culturally legitimate and meaningful outlets for
different ideas.
Second, large-scale institutional changes may occur without drastic
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 251

shifts in the systems of attitudes. In fact, in view of the Japanese experi-

ence, we are inclined to argue that it is precisely the relative stability in the
systems of beliefs which allows institutional changes to take place, for
example in the areas of economics and politics, without major social dislo-
cations.’”

The Japanese differ from Americans and most Western Europeans

in having done much more to plan their economic development. One
of the reasons they were able to do this was that they were latecomers
on the industrial scene and were pushed into modernizing by the desire
to prevent being colonized. The Meiji elite sought to maintain what
was truly Japanese, to restore the status of the emperor, and at the
same time to become an industrial power. The United States was for-
tunate in having the right combination of a different set of traditional
values to make efficient use of its economic resources. It is important
to note that the great Japanese postwar reforms (e.g., land reform,
democratization, demilitarization, the elimination of the peerage) were
legitimated by the same mechanism as in the Meiji Restoration, the
emperor's approval. Those most upset by the changes were the most
bound to the emperor. General MacArthur played out the classic role
of a controlling shogun standing behind the emperor, but by doing so
he helped preserve much of the older traditions. More than a quarter
of a century earlier Winston Churchill had urged a similar role for the
German Kaiser, arguing that by retaining him the Allies would avoid
the alienation of the right wing and the military from the new German
democracy.
From a perspective of the diverse indicators of “traditionalism” dis-
cussed here, Japan and America appear more traditional than most
West European and Australasian cultures, despite being as or more
modern or developed technologically. If the ability to maintain tradi-
tionalism is linked to or identified with conservatism, then both are
also conservative cultures.
“Conservatism” tends to be a political term, and from a political per-
spective both are conservative. As we have seen, America is excep-
tional in its lack of an important labor or socialist party. Japan does
have a viable socialist party, which as of 1995 is part of a governing
coalition with the much larger Liberal Democrats. The prime minister,
Tomiichi Murayama, is a Socialist. In 1985, the Socialists explicitly
gave up adherence to Marxism and the doctrine of class struggle, a
change typical of many of the world’s left parties, a position they have
enlarged in the mid-nineties. Class solidarity, as reflected in trade
 252 American Exceptionalism

union strength as of 1995, is also weaker in both countries than else-

where, albeit with a much smaller percentage of the non-agricultural
labor force organized in the United States, 16, than in Japan, 25."
Membership is declining in both. In recent years, commentators have
been wont to emphasize the fact that 90 percent of the Japanese iden-
tify themselves as “middle class,” rather than “upper” or “lower,” as evi-
dence that the country has become uniquely classless. The interpreta-
tion is wrong. Americans and Europeans distribute themselves
similarly when responding to this question. All these answers mean is
that few people will choose to say they are sufficiently privileged to be
in the upper class, or that they belong to the invidiously labeled “lower
class.” When faced with further choices which include “working class,”
53 percent select this option in Japan, compared to 45 percent in the
United States; only 29 percent of the former put themselves in the
“middle,” again less than the 38 percent of Americans who do the
same. |?
The meaning of “conservatism,” of course, is quite different in the
two societies. In America, it involves support of laissez-faire, anti-sta-
tist doctrines, which correspond to bourgeois-linked classical liberal-
ism. In Jefferson’s words, “that government governs best which governs
least.” In Japan, as in postfeudal Europe, conservatives have been asso-
ciated with the defense of the alliance between state and religion (i.e.,
throne and altar), the maintenance of elitist values, and extensive
reliance on government to further economic and social purposes. Aris-
tocratic monarchical conservatives (Tories) have favored a strong state.
From Meiji onwards, this meant a powerful state bureaucracy and
politicians who consciously planned the use of national resources to
enhance growth and, in prewar times, military power. The business
community, insofar as it took independent stances, was more classi-
cally liberal, more supportive of laissez-faire, and less militaristic than
the aristocracy, but it was weak politically.
In Europe, aristocratic, agrarian-based conservatism, which favored
a strong state, fostered the noblesse oblige communitarian values of the
nobility, disliked the competitive, materialistic values and behavior of
the capitalists, and introduced the welfare state into Germany and
Britain. The socialists, when they emerged, also favored a powerful
state and extensive welfare programs, as well as democratization of the
polity. In Japan, the conservative postfeudal impulse led, as we have
seen, to state guidance of the economy; but, unlike Europe, the
emphasis on noblesse oblige and communitarianism has been expressed
more within the confines of private institutions, in the obligations of
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 253

firms for their employees (lifetime employment, company-provided

annuity payments), what Ronald Dore calls “welfare corporatism,” than
in state institutions.'? Hence, direct state payments for welfare have
been lower in Japan than anywhere else in the developed world.
America and Japan have made important moves in the extension of
the welfare benefits, but they remain at the bottom on the international
list of Organization for Economic Development (OECD) nations for
levels of taxation generally and spending for welfare purposes particu-
larly. In 1992, Japan and the United States ranked last in a six-nation
comparison of ratios of social security benefits (medical care, pensions,
other) to national income: Japan (15%), United States (16.6%), United
Kingdom (21.9%), West Germany (27.5%), France (34.1%), and Swe-
den (46.5%).'%* It should be noted that Japan uses the private sector in
ways that do not occur in the United States, for example, to provide
universal health insurance or benefit packages. Hence, there is much
more private communitarianism in Japan than in America, even though
a comparison of public welfare supports would suggest otherwise. Still,
when presented in 1990 by the World Values Survey with a choice
between the classical liberal or Tory-socialist positions in the form of a
ten-point scale, running from “Individuals should take more responsi-
bility for providing for themselves” to “The state should take more
responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for,” the two coun-
tries were outliers among the developed countries. Over half, 55 per-
cent, of the Japanese placed themselves on the Tory-statist side of the
scale, while only 17 percent chose individual responsibility. Con-
versely, fully 70 percent of the Americans, inheritors of an anti-statist,
individualistic value system, favored individualism, while 14 percent
answered that the state should be responsible. Although both countries
have private insurance rather than state coverage for health care, their
employee benefit systems differ greatly, reflecting these differences in
national values. As Tomoni Kodama of the Japanese Ministry of Health
notes:

The U.S. structure of employee benefits seems to be based on diversity and

individualism. Companies have a real choice in selecting and planning
their employee benefit system. .. .
[T]he structure of Japanese employee benefits is equity and uniformity
for everyone. The Japanese priority has been to assure equal access to ben-
efits for everyone. .. . [I]n order to provide equal access to all employees,
health insurance is strictly regulated across the board by Japanese govern-
ment. In other words, employees of a small company on the verge of bank-
 254 American Excepiionalism

ruptcy are provided basically the same coverage as employees of a well-

known big company such as Honda or Toyota. . . . The same type of equity
and uniformity is more or less a common feature among other Japanese
employee benefits such as pension plans and health care.
As a result ... it is not the companies but the central government that
has consistently taken the key role in planning and implementing the
employee benefit system.’”

Until 1993, Japan had a conservative government throughout its

postwar decades of economic growth and prosperity, one, however,
whose business-related Liberal Democratic administration
responded quite differently to the recession of the early nineties than
the American Republican one under George Bush. The former tried
to improve the economy by Keynesian pump-priming policies,
including “more public investments to boost the economy . . . public
works and housing. ... [A]n additional ¥1.12 trillion will be allo-
cated to public funds for investment in stocks. This is separated from
the ¥10.7 trillion stimulus . . . [most of which] will be spent on pub-
lic works and housing. ... Economic Planning Agency officials
[announced] ... ‘the package will fill the gap between demand and
supply in the economy. ...’”!%° The Republican regimes of the
1980s and early 1990s, and even the subsequent Democratic Clinton
administration, would oppose comparable policies for the United
States as too leftist. As of 1995, the Japanese government remains
centralized; its bureaucracy and politicians continue, as under Meiji,
to strongly influence general economic policies, although its new
Socialist-led but predominantly LDP coalition government has
announced it will relax controls a bit. The American rejects proposals
for a state-coordinated “industrial policy,” although the Clinton
Democrats use the term in suggesting a much more moderate version
than the Japanese one. In Japan, the big business sector is still trying
to adhere to a noblesse oblige sense of obligation to employees, but
the recession of the early nineties forced companies to press employ-
ees to take early retirement. Feudal or postfeudal values continue to
penetrate Japanese life and economy in ways that are largely absent
from the American.
Japan has a relatively strong Socialist Party, a much weaker, more
moderate (social democratic) Democratic Socialist Party, and a fairly
radical small Communist Party. Their combined vote has ranged up
and down between 36 percent in 1958 and 32 percent in 1990, while
such tendencies have almost no electoral support in the United States.
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 255

Further evidence that the variations in political orientation and social

policies between Japan and America are linked to basic differences in
orientation toward individualism and equality, which occur even when
class position is held constant, may be found in the first 1981-82
World Values Survey, which asked respondents to choose between two
statements:

Q—Here are two opinions about conditions existing in our country. Which
one do you happen to agree with?
A—There is too much emphasis upon the principle of equality. People
should be given the opportunity to choose their own economic and social
life according to their individual abilities.
B—Too much liberalism has been producing increasingly wide differences
in people’s economic and social life. People should live more equally.

The Japanese have been very much more disposed to favor equality
than individual competition, as reiterated by the data reported in Table
7-4, Commitment to meritocracy presumes a competitive race for posi-
tion and great reward for the successful.
The second World Values Survey did not include the individualism-
equality question, but it repeated one requesting respondents to
choose between statements emphasizing freedom or equality. As might
be expected, in both years Americans were more likely than Japanese
to opt for freedom over equality.'%”’
TABLE 7-4. ATTITUDES TOWARD INDIVIDUALISM AND EQUALITY IN JAPAN
AND THE UNITED STATES (PERCENT)

JAPAN AMERICA

Individualism Equality Individualism Equality

TOTAL 25 71 56 32
SOCIAL CLAss
High 47 53 62 33
Upper middle 38 59 61 26
Middle 25 We 58 31
Lower middle 22 75 49 43
Low 13 80 56 20

Source: Adapted from Elizabeth H. Hastings and Philip K. Hastings, eds., Index to International
Public Opinion, 1980-1981 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 519; “Survey in Thirteen
Countries of Human Values,” Leisure Development Center, Tokyo, October 1-5, 1980.
 256 American Exceptionalism

TABLE 7-5. ATTITUDES TOWARD FREEDOM AND EQUALITY IN JAPAN AND

THE UNITED STATES (PERCENT)

JAPAN AMERICA

1980-81 1990-91 1980-8 | 1990-9]

Agree with Freedom 44 46 74 70.5

Agree with Equality 39 38 23 24

ee IE SE Aeea Te Em SPN ee Se Ne SETTER En
Source: Adapted from Ronald Inglehart, 1991 World Values Survey (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research, 1991).

The data in Table 7-5 point up the greater emphasis in American

culture than in Japanese on individual freedom. Seemingly there was
little change in Japan over the decade of the eighties, while the very
high commitment in the United States for the “freedom” choice may
have moved down slightly, though it remained the opinion of the large
majority.

CONCLUSION
=

The United States and Japan follow different organizing principles.

National traditions continue to inform the cultures, economies, and
the politics of both countries in very dissimilar ways. One, the United
States, follows the individualistic essence of bourgeois liberalism and
evangelical sectarian Christianity; the other, Japan, reflects the group-
oriented norms of the postfeudal, aristocratic Meiji era. The former
still stresses equal respect across stratification lines; the latter still
emphasizes hierarchy in interpersonal relations. The United States
continues to suspect the state; Japan places heavy reliance on its
directing role. They are both among the world’s most successful soci-
eties as measured by levels of productivity. Clearly, nations which have
reached the same high point of technological development and eco-
nomic success can still be very different culturally and can continue to
be anomalies, outliers, among the developed countries, exceptional or
unique compared to most others.
But while American economic patterns have been exceptional,
Japanese patterns resemble those in Europe, particularly Northern
Europe. Japanese and European corporations have shown a propensity
to cooperate with each other and with the government. Americans rank
low with respect to both orientations.'*8 Efforts to introduce quality cir-
cles and worker involvement in industrial production have succeeded
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 257

in Japan, Sweden, and other Northern European countries. They have

failed in the United States.'%
There is a body of literature which concludes that Japan will do bet-
ter than the United States in the future, considerations of industrial
policy apart, because its group-oriented culture is better suited to the
economic structure of a postindustrial society. The argument is that
engineering innovations, the key to economic growth, are more suc-
cessfully fostered by groups, while scientific discoveries, yet-to-be-
applied basic research, are more likely to occur in societies that stress
individual initiative. The latter lead to Nobel prizes, but the contention
is that they are less likely to have a direct impact in the postindustrial
marketplace. This hypothesis is far from the only one presented to
account for Japanese economic success. Others stress the impact of
group-solidarity values on the willingness of Japanese, including corpo-
rate business executives, stockholders, and employees, to earn less
than comparably placed Americans or Europeans, while the gap
between those who run companies and ordinary workers is also much
smaller in Japan.2° Sony Corporation chairman Akio Morita has
“described in detail the corporate management style of Japan—thin
profit margins, low dividends to stockholders, overwork [by and low pay
to] .. . employees, seizing market share above all... .”2°!
The comparative evidence indicates that

[T]he employees of the Japanese company share more equally in the cash
benefits available from the company than is the case in other countries
[particularly the United States]... . Surveys of executive attitudes indicate
that Japanese executive pay levels are set with a conscious awareness of the
need to stay within reasonable ranges with regard to other levels of com-
pensation. . . . Organizational pressures work to limit executive pay at least
as much as do self-sacrificing impulses by the executives themselves.”

Survey data bear out the generalization that Japanese executives

place the goal of increasing market shares, one which benefits workers,
ahead of profits and short-term gains for stockholders. A 1980 cross-
national poll of 291 Japanese and 227 American top corporate execu-
tives found the Americans giving first and second place to return on
investment and increasing the value of company shares, while the
Japanese put enlarging market shares first, and placed enhancing the
worth of shares at the bottom, ninth.2°? The Hampden-Turner and
Trompenaars worldwide study of managers conducted in the late eight-
ies and early nineties asked them to choose between two statements:
 258 American Exceptionalism

(a) “The only real goal of a company is making profit,” and (b) “A com-
pany, besides making profit, has a goal of attaining the well-being of
various stakeholders, such as employees, customers, etc.” Only 8 per-
cent of the Japanese executives replied, “profit only,” compared to 40
percent of the Americans.”
The answers to various other questions posed in this survey reiter-
ated the differences presented in the qualitative and case study litera-
ture. The Japanese reported close relationships with “distributors, cus-
tomers, suppliers, and subcontractors,” and “somewhat cooperative
relationships with competitors,” while the Americans noted “remote
relationships” and “rivalry” with the two groups. The Americans fol-
lowed a pattern of “head-on competition stressing cost efficiency,”
while the Japanese emphasized “coexistence with competitors stressing
‘niche’ and differentiation.” The Japanese sought “information-oriented
leadership” and generalists; the American preference was for “task-ori-
ented leadership” and specialists. The American executives were
inclined “toward innovation and risk-taking,” the Japanese toward
“interpersonal skills.” The responses indicated that American managers
were disposed to handle “conflict resolution by confrontation . . . [and]
decision-making [by] stressing individual initiative,” while the Japanese
engaged in “group-oriented consensual decision-making.”
The Japanese postwar success, when contrasted to the much slower
growth rate and the loss or decline in markets in major industries by
American business, led various analysts prior to the recession of the
nineties to argue that the United States should adopt comparable poli-
cies to those followed across the Pacific. Assuming that various specific
Japanese ways were responsible for higher productivity increases, the
fact remains that these developed in a very different context. “The liter-
ature on Japanese development is generally pessimistic regarding the
transfer of Japanese organization. It suggests that Japanese organiza-
tions derive from cultural factors such as homogeneity, familism, and
group loyalty. . . .”2°° Yet a comprehensive study by Richard Florida and
Martin Kenney of Japanese “transplants” in the automobile industry in
America indicates both that they have done well economically and that
they “have been successful in implanting the Japanese system of work
organization in the U.S. environment. The basic form of Japanese work
organization has been transferred with little if any modifications.”2°”
These do not involve major practices like lifetime employment or the
emphasis on seniority, but include a very much lower number of job
classifications, more job rotation, greater emphasis on worker initiative,
and quality circles. Seemingly, Japanese management can secure an
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 259

acceptance of practices that failed when sponsored by Americans.

(Quality circles, as noted earlier, were originally an American idea,
which ironically did not take hold in their native land.)
The Japanese are bound together by a common history, by a long-
time desire to remain distinct from foreign culture. From the start of
the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth, they maintained barri-
ers against contact with other societies and economies. They had to be
forced by Commodore Perry and the American Navy to recognize the
greater power of the West and to open the door to outside influences.
But even though open to intellectual, commercial, and physical con-
tact with the rest of the world, they have insisted on preserving their
separateness. As a nation, Japan emphasizes ancestral purity. As James
Fallows notes: “Rather than talking about race ... the Japanese talk
about ‘purity.’ Their society is different from others in being pure. . . .”
The system is closed, unlike the United States, where “in theory any-
one can become an American. A place in Japanese society is given only
to those who are born Japanese.”? Legal immigration is close to
impossible. The more than a half million Koreans, left over from the
period when Korea was ruled by Japan, do not have citizenship even
though most of them were born in Japan. For a long time, the Japanese
government refused to accept a quota of Vietnamese boat people on
the grounds that the Japanese people would not treat them well. It
finally reluctantly agreed to take in ten thousand. The traditional con-
cern for “purity” has not declined. If anything, the “discrimination
against the Korean, Chinese, and other minority people who perma-
nently reside in Japan” has been increasing rather than decreasing
since the seventies.”°? The protectionist zeal of the country, the barri-
ers to the import of foreign goods, is a related form of behavior.
The United States, on the other hand, has welcomed foreigners to
enter and join up. It is an immigrant, multicultural, multi-racial soci-
ety. From a comparative, particularly Japanese, perspective, the United
States has been an open society, to imports as well as people. The
1980s witnessed more newcomers to the United States than during
any past decade. And the immigrants now are overwhelmingly from the
Third World, not from Europe. As during other downturns, the reces-
sion of the 1990s has produced xenophobic immigration-restriction
reactions. Still, it may be reiterated that as of 1990, the World Values
Survey data indicate that only 12 percent of Japanese disagreed with
the statement: “When jobs are scarce, employers should give priority
to Japanese.” A much larger percentage of Americans, 42 percent,
rejected the statement as applied to their society.
 260 American Exceptionalism

The American emphasis on individualism and competition has, as

noted in chapter Two, resulted in a “star” system in all areas of Ameri-
can life with enormous rewards to those on top—business executives,
scholars, professionals, entertainers, athletes. The income spread from
the top to the bottom is much higher in the United States than else-
where in the developed world, particularly Japan.
Indeed, wage and income distribution in the United States is not as
equitable as found in other nations; the difference between high and
low wage earners is larger. Comparisons of male workers show that
those whose earnings fall into the lowest decile of earnings distribution
earn only 38 percent of the median in the United States, 61 percent in
Japan, 68 percent in Europe; at the top of the earnings range, in the
highest decile, workers in the United States earn 214 percent of the
median, while in Japan it is 173 percent, and in Europe it is 178 per-
cent.?!° This is true in spite of the fact that formal hierarchical distinc-
tions and family background are of greater importance in Japan and to
a lesser extent in other postfeudal nations as well. In Japan, the empha-
sis is on the group winning, on the individual, whether athlete, execu-
tive, or worker, subordinating his/her concerns to those of the larger
unit. Such behavior even occurs at the summit of politics. Prime minis-
ters tend to be prosaic figures who hold office for two years, very occa-
sionally a year or two more.”!' This pattern stands in sharp contrast to
the American system, where elections focus on the individual rather
than the party, and emphasize the role of the president, even though he
must rely on influence, not authority, when dealing with Congress.
Eamonn Fingleton suggests the key to Japan’s economic future lies
with the Ministry of Finance, a low-profile agency that centrally con-
trols fiscal policy and growth—with power that extends far beyond that
of elected officials and is analogous to the combined powers of all U.S.
taxing, spending, and defense agencies.?!”
My stress here on the continued distinctions between the two most
economically powerful Pacific Rim societies is not intended to deny
that both have changed greatly. Obviously, as they moved from being
primarily agrarian societies to industrial giants, with the bulk of their
populations living in cities, they changed greatly in norms and behav-
iors. Their family systems are now nuclear, their birth rates are low,
they are more meritocratic than in their nineteenth-century formats.
Both have become more postindustrial or postmaterialist, to use Daniel
Bell’s or Ronald Inglehart’s terms (they do not mean the same).
Reflecting worldwide changes in the developed nations, their young
people are more permissive with respect to traditional morality. They
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 261

are more concerned about protecting the environment, they are more
interested in the “quality” of life. But their organizing principles remain
different. They vary from each other in much the same way as they did
a century ago. The value and behavioral differences reported here are
much greater than have been found in any other comparison of indus-
trialized nations. Each maintains much of its unique or exceptional
character. To adapt an analogy I first used in discussing Canada and
the United States: the two are like ships that have sailed thousands of
miles along parallel routes. They are far from where they started, but
they are still separated.?!3

American individualism won the major international competitions in

the twentieth century. Will it continue to be number one in the
twenty-first? The American economy is still the more productive of the
two, as documented in chapter Two. “Japan’s per capita income was
still only 83 percent of the United States” as of 1992.?!4 Prior to the
recession of the nineties, the Japanese had moved ahead, to become
seemingly more efficient than the United States in industrial organiza-
tion in major areas such as automobile and electronics production. As a
result, some observers contended that their systems—which are leaner
in the scope of management, more egalitarian in economic reward, and
place more emphasis on worker participation in quality control—are
more “modern” than the American, that the United States should mod-
emnize, learn from a more efficient system, much as the Japanese did
for a century. But much of American industry responded to Japanese
competition and the recession by becoming “leaner” and “meaner.”
And faced with evidence that the United States is doing better, the
Japanese have taken to reading books about American business.
Reengineering Capitalism (1994) by Michael Hammer and James
Champy has been a best-seller in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kobe.
Cross-national analyses now place American economic efficiency as
equal to or ahead of Japan’s. In October 1994, The Economist noted:

A new survey of 594 manufacturing companies in Europe, the United

States and Japan ... [conducted jointly by Insead, a European business
school, Boston University and Waseda University ... shows that Euro-
peans and Americans have closed or eliminated the managerial gap in areas
once seen as quintessentially “Japanese.”
The companies to emerge best from the survey are American. They
excel at the act of mixing production with services. ... Surprisingly, per-
 262 American Exceptionalism

haps, they were also found to think further ahead than most of their com-
petitors on matters such as investing in human capital . .. [and] focusing
on quality, service and reliability. ... [The Japanese, conversely,] are con-
centrating on forcing down costs. . . .7!°

Similarly, in September 1994, Time magazine reported that the

Swiss-based World Economic Forum, which comes close to proclaim-
ing a world champion in the business world every year, “made the
announcement: after eight years of Japanese domination, the U.S. in
1993 had the world’s most competitive industrial economy.” American
business was now beating its “Japanese, German, South Korean, Tai-
wanese ... rivals ... in products like autos, machine tools, and com-
puter chips.”?!¢ At the end of 1994, the economist Paul Krugman also
reports that “the era of miraculous Japanese growth now lies well in the
past .. . that the Japanese economists generally believe that their coun-
try's rate of growth of potential output .. . is now no more than three
percent. ... When one takes into account the growing evidence of at
least a modest acceleration of U.S. productivity growth in the last few
years, one ends up with the probable conclusion that Japanese effi-
ciency is gaining on that of the United States at a snail’s pace, if at all,
and there is the distinct possibility that per capita income in Japan may
never overtake that in America.”?"”
Findings recently reported by economists Jerry Jasinowski and
Robert Hamrin in Making It in America support the World Economic
Forum’s conclusions. In that book, they describe as “sunrise for manu-
facturing,” the gains the American manufacturing sector has made in
the past decade. In dispelling the myth of American deindustrializa-
tion, the authors cite industrial productivity increases of 3 percent plus
in the 1980s and the creation of 5.5 million new jobs between 1992
and mid-1994. Jasinowski and Hamrin also report that “U.S. manufac-
turing exports from 1985 to 1993 grew at nearly 9 percent annually
compared with a 2.3 percent rate for Japan and 1.7 percent for Ger-
many.”2!8
Finally, The Economist has sought to quantify the answer to the
question: “Which industrial countries are best placed to respond to the
coming challenge of a new international division of labour?” as various
major Third World countries move into competitive positions. The
magazine ranks “the six biggest industrial economies on the basis of
five factors”: labor market flexibility, proportion employed in manufac-
turing (lower is better), percent with upper secondary education,
strength in high-tech exports, and pension fund assets. The United
 American Exceptionalism—Japanese Uniqueness 263

States comes out far in the lead at 10, Japan and Britain have a score of
6, and Germany, France, and Italy are “a long way behind.”?!°
Although public opinion will obviously not determine which country
turns out to be world leader, the results of an international poll con-
ducted for CNN by a Canadian pollster, Angus Reid, in 1992 are
worth reporting here. The citizens of 16 countries were asked: “Think-
ing of all countries, including your own this time, which one country
do you think will be known as the world leader at the end of the cen-
tury?” The United States led all others with a weighted country average
of 42 percent. Japan was second at 20 percent, while Germany was
third with but 8 percent. America led within all nations, except among
Koreans, who alone placed Japan first. Close to three-fifths of the
Japanese chose the United States; only 31 percent said Japan would
lead. The American results were almost identical with the Japanese, 57
percent placed their country in the lead, while 20 percent said Japan.
The issue of which system will come out ahead economically is still
unresolved, but in the mid-1990s, the prospects for the United States
look good. In any case, with highly disparate value systems both it and
Japan have done well as cultural outliers. Their records demonstrate
that such varied societies can still absorb and/or develop comparable
technological systems.
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 | CHAPTER 8
A Double-Edged Sword!

The belief that the traditional values which underlie American excep-
tionalism will continue to determine American behavior at the end of
the twentieth century has been challenged by those who call for a fun-
damental change in our national values to stop a moral decline. These
critics do not see that what they find fault with is the dark side of
American exceptionalism; developments which, like many of the posi-
tive features, derive from the country’s organizing principles. These
include rising crime rates, increased drug use, the dissolution of the
traditional family, sexual promiscuity, and excessive litigiousness.
Public opinion data over the past thirty years reveal a consistently
pessimistic outlook regarding the ethical stock of America. The Gallup
organization has measured this sentiment in polls over three decades.
Even in 1963, only 34 percent responded affirmatively to the question
whether they were “satisfied with the honesty and standards of behav-
ior of people in the country today?” while 59 percent were dissatisfied.
In 1973, 22 percent were satisfied and 72 percent were not; by 1992,
the gap widened to 20 percent and 78 percent.* Americans have always
yearned for the “good old days.” Yet, as the statistics show, the trend
over the past few decades is toward great pessimism about the
country.’ People are more negative with regard to moral prospects than
before. In mid-1994, three quarters of Americans told pollsters that the
country is in moral and spiritual decline. Over two thirds believe it is
seriously off track.*
Though some of these social trends are recent and disturbing, others
have surprisingly longstanding roots in American society. The critics
have exaggerated many of the problems in the quest to demonstrate
decay. There is, however, no denying that the impression of a change
in basic values exists, and to dismiss public perception as somehow
wrong or misinformed is to deny the reality of individual experience.
The most forceful and well-intentioned attempts to address these per-
ceptions have sought to hold the emphasis on individualism and com-
 268 American Exceptionalism

petitiveness as being responsible for the rending of the nation’s social

and political fabric, and the corresponding decline in adherence to tra-
ditional norms.’ And to be sure, as I have noted throughout this book,
these values are significant forces in American culture, with wide-
spread impact on Americans’ views of their social obligations.
American values are quite complex, particularly because of para-
doxes within our culture that permit pernicious and beneficial social
phenomena to arise simultaneously from the same basic beliefs. The
American Creed is something of a double-edged sword: it fosters a
high sense of personal responsibility, independent initiative, and volun-
tarism even as it also encourages self-serving behavior, atomism, and a
disregard for communal good. More specifically, its emphasis on indi-
vidualism threatens traditional forms of community morality, and thus
has historically promoted a particularly virulent strain of greedy behav-
ior. At the same time, it represents a tremendous asset, encouraging
the self-reflection necessary for responsible judgment, for fostering the
strength of voluntary communal and civic bonds, for principled opposi-
tion to wars, and for patriotism.

Mora DECLINE, OR MORE OF THE SAME

To some degree, perceptions of American moral decline result from a

persistent value strain within our culture that, as I have emphasized,
leads Americans to evaluate their nation and society according to pure
ideals. No country could ever measure up to our ideological and reli-
gious standards. The combination of revolutionary ideology and sectar-
ian beliefs implying the perfectibility of humanity has forged a continu-
ing national search for utopia. Flooded with reports of rapid social,
economic, and political changes, we seek an overarching explanation
for the failure to live up to our own goals.
Though historically ideological, America’s egalitarian and merito-
cratic foundations tend to undercut just those institutions that sustain
the values that so concern us. The United States, as we know, was
born out of a revolution that sharply weakened the hierarchically
rooted community values of the European Old World, and enormously
strengthened individualistic, egalitarian, and anti-statist ones. In the
Old World, an aristocratic upper class dictated social and economic
norms to the lower classes. America, however, has not had a stable rul-
ing class to promote such standards of moral conduct and fair play.
Social problems have, therefore, been ascribed to the lack of stable
ethical standards. Consider that 18 percent of the respondents to a
 A Double-Edged Sword 269

July 1993 Gallup Poll believed the midwestern floods of that year to be
an admonishment by God for the sins of the people who live along the
Mississippi. The readiness of Americans to cite a spiritual or moral
explanation for a natural disaster is similar in many ways to ascribing
the perceived dissolution of the social fabric to moral decline. A num-
ber of trends seem to provide evidence of this dissolution.

THE MORALITY OF CRIME AND WORK

ta

Rising crime rates are frequently implicated in the so-called decline of

morality. Louise Shelley's detailed study of comparative crime rates in
developed countries, presented earlier, states that “rates for all cate-
gories of crime are approximately three times higher [in America] than
in other developed nations.” Between 1960 and 1992, homicides per
100,000 of the American population rose from 5.1 to 10.5, while larce-
nies increased from 1,726 to 3,103 per 100,000. Charles Derber
posits the cyclical recurrence of periods of what he terms “wilding,” in
which lawlessness, disorder, and immorality threaten the stability of
society. According to Derber, “Wilding is American individualism run-
ning amok.” In recent years, Americans’ perceptions of increasing law-
lessness have fed fears that civil society is collapsing.
High crime rates, as I have noted, are a problem to which distinctive
American cultural traits have certainly contributed.’ The increased
rates of crime in post-World War II America can be seen in part as a
result of the refurbishment of classical liberal values during this period,
including individualism and achievement orientation. Interestingly,
though the United States is anomalous in its quantity of crime, it is
similar to other developed countries in terms of the types of crime
committed. That is, violent offenses (homicide, rape, robbery, and
aggravated assault) comprise 10 percent of the crimes perpetrated in
the United States, while 90 percent are property crimes, a pattern con-
sistent with other industrialized societies. Thus, crime is comparatively
widespread in America, but the impression that it is a society of excep-
tional brutality and violence is misleading. Though crime has recently
burgeoned, it is important to understand the full relationship of crime,
morality, and individualism in the American context. As Robert Merton
and Daniel Bell have both stressed, the country’s cultural values from
its inception have pressed people to succeed “by fair means if possible
and by foul means if necessary.”
 270 American Exceptionalism

Paradoxically, though various forms of illegality thrive in this coun-

try, America remains a society profoundly rooted in law. A potent ori-
entation toward individual rights continues to shape the attitudes of
the population. The complaint that Americans go to court at the drop
of a hat has become commonplace, and the American eagerness for
legal settlements to disputes has led many to question the reliance on
litigation as “our basic form of government.”!° As noted, the country
has more lawyers per capita, more malpractice, and more environmen-
tal and occupational safety suits than anywhere else in the world. Is
this excessive litigiousness indicative of our inability to deliberate and
form amicable agreements among ourselves?
As with crime, however, if American legal habits represent a crisis of
morality, it is one we have been experiencing for over two hundred
years. Tocqueville noted the contractual and litigious character of
Americans in the 1830s, as have countless other observers throughout
history.
To describe the tendency to commit illegal acts for socioeconomic
advancement as, in Merton’s words, a “moral mandate” is seemingly
oxymoronic. But in America, work and economic success have been
heavily imbued with such themes. The concept of work in America is
enshrined in the country’s Protestant traditions. The myths surround-
ing the “Protestant work ethic” demonstrate the conjunction of the
concepts of work and morality.!' Alan Wolfe sums up this foundational
belief: “In making things, they [Americans] came to believe, people
made themselves.”!? Concern about a reduction in moral standards is
directly tied to questions about the supposed economic decline of the
United States. The latter involves a lessening of America’s lead over
other industrial nations, not its absolute level of production, which
continues to increase. The problem is seen as a lack of saving and
investment, which, in value terms, means an unwillingness to forgo
consumption, a refusal to adopt an ethic of self-denial, and an aversion
to hard work and risk taking. These assessments are drawn directly
from the classic mold of the Protestant work ethic. Thus, when the
American economy is suffering, widespread immorality is ascribed as
both the cause and the effect of the downturn; a decline in morality is
a cause of economic stagnation due to individual failings such as indo-
lence, but it is also an effect of recession because people who do not
work become morally depraved. Paradoxically, morality is also per-
ceived to be threatened during prosperous times when wealth is
increasing and Americans are overworking. The prosperity of the 1980s
has become infamous as the decade of greed.
 A Double-Edged Sword 271

ILLEGALITY IN A LEGAL SOCIETY

a

Drug use is another social and, in some cases, criminal problem that
many attribute to moral failure, but which, in different forms, has exten-
sive historical roots in the American experience. Daniel Patrick Moyni-
han has noted that the second law passed by the first U.S. Congress was
a tariff on Jamaican rum, an act intended to promote consumption of
American whiskey. Moynihan points out, “[dlistilled spirits in early
America appeared as a font of national unity, easy money, manly
strength, and all-round good cheer. ... It became routine to drink
whiskey at breakfast and to go on drinking all day.”!3 The historical
record bears out this observation. Annual per capita consumption of dis-
tilled spirits was five gallons in 1830—almost five times what the aver-
age American consumes today. This pattern and the consequent social
ills accompanying it eventually encouraged the temperance movement
of 1820 to 1850, reducing the per capita consumption rate to two gal-
lons by 1840.'* More surprising is the testimony of St. John de Créve-
coeur, who, in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782) remarks on
the adoption by the women of Nantucket of “the Asiatic custom of tak-
ing a dose of opium every morning.” In fact, between 1840 and 1870
opium imports to the United States increased seven times faster than
the population growth.'® Reminiscent of the role of the media today in
raising public concern about drug use, in the 1870s and 1880s the press
shocked the public with exposés on the widespread use of opiates and
other narcotics for both medicinal and recreational purposes.
Americans’ inclination to use drugs is historically and, in part, cul-
turally based. As technology gives modern society more sophisticated
and different narcotics—from morphine during the Civil War to
cocaine in the late nineteenth century to “free-base” cocaine in the
1980s—some Americans have always used them. There is no doubt
that the connection between crime and the ever more violent drug
trade presents serious social problems for the country, particularly in
urban centers, but whether these depressing developments indicate a
declining state of societal morality is questionable. Rather, current pat-
terns of drug use reflect new manifestations of cultural strains brought
on by the development of new and sometimes pernicious technologies.
I am not denying the importance or urgency of this societal problem.
My argument is merely that its basic roots do not lie in any recent
change in values.
 272 American Exceptionalism

The moral state of young Americans, as evidenced by media reports

of spreading drug abuse in the nation’s schools, particularly in inner
cities, has been of especial concern, and a recent study shows that the
proportion of today’s youth who report using illicit drugs appears to be
increasing. National survey data on drug use by eighth, tenth, and
twelfth graders from 1975 to 1994 gathered by the Institute for Social
Research at the University of Michigan reveal that marijuana use is on
the rise after a period of decline beginning in the late 1970s. The per-
centage of twelfth graders who said they had used any illicit drug,
which had dropped steadily from a peak of 66 percent in 1981 to 41
percent in 1992, went back up to. 50 percent in 1994. However, alco-
hol consumption by high school seniors is on a downward slope, with
daily use falling from 4.8 percent in 1987 to 3.4 percent in 1992, and
down to 2.9 percent in 1994.!”
The common stereotype of American youth as lacking a moral com-
pass is contradicted not only by the lower proportion trying drugs but
also by the increased disapproval high schoolers express toward virtu-
ally all types of drug use. These trends are even more striking because
they shatter common misconceptions about race and drugs—by almost
every measure (use of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, stimulants, barbitu-
rates, crack, alcohol, and cigarettes), blacks are consistently less prone
to use illicit substances than either whites or Hispanics. And strikingly,
their usage has continued to fall off in 1992 and 1993, while white
rates have started to increase.'®
Similar results are reported with respect to cheating on school
exams. The percentage reporting that “not very much” cheating goes on
has increased from 18 percent in 1959 to 44 percent in 1992. The
numbers for reporting that they themselves “have cheated” have fallen
from 62 percent in 1978 to 46 percent in 1992.'° The latter number
may require more careful examination, since “not very much” could
have meant something different in 1959 than in 1992.

THE FAMILY AND SEX

Luana

The family has been regarded as a vital source of morality in traditional

and modern societies alike. James Q. Wilson argues that it is “a contin-
uous locus of reciprocal obligations that constitute an unending school
for moral instruction.”*° However, the United States, as we have seen, ~
is exceptional in its high rates of divorce and the prevalence of single-
parent families. But familial fragmentation in America is not a recent
 A Double-Edged Sword 273

development in comparative terms. The lead of the United States in

divorce rates goes back to the nineteenth century.! This may not only
reflect the power of individualism but the phenomenon discussed ear-
lier of the greater propensity of white American Protestants to marry
when a pregnancy occurs, and to separate and remarry with a different
spouse later.
The so-called crisis of the family is not historically unusual, nor is it
comparatively atypical in terms of the pattern of these changes. As
David Popenoe has noted, “The general direction of family change in
contemporary America ...-seems little different from what it is in
other wealthy nations.””? In Britain, for instance, “[u]Jnmarried mothers
are by far the fastest growing group of one-parent families. .. .””3
Catholic Quebec has experienced “a profound social shift.” Nearly
half, “48 percent of all first-born Quebec children are born to unmar-
ried parents. . . ."** In Sweden, the numbers are comparable.?> Why? In
almost every advanced industrial society, marriage occurs less fre-
quently and later in life, and cohabitation among unmarried couples is
increasing. America has been similar in the rates of the growth of these
social trends.
Not surprisingly, warnings of the extinction of the traditional family
have been widespread. Yet the cherished 1950s-style nuclear family
has not been as pervasive throughout history as many believe. In
reviewing the current literature on the American family, Ann Hulbert
argues that alternatives to the traditional family have always existed.
But though they are important, she notes, they “have never beckoned
for long as a competing ideal.”*° She states that “The two-parent
nuclear family norm, alternately revered and distrusted as a homoge-
neous standard, is not ready for replacement. ... [T]he two-parent
family continues to prevail, though neither widely nor simply.”’
Though voluminous and often confusing, the data support this
assessment. In 1993, 82 percent of white families, 69 percent of His-
panic units, and almost half of all black families, 48 percent, were
headed by married couples.”* Statistics on the state of the black family
have been especially misleading. For instance, as I noted in chapter
Four, Christopher Jencks has shown that the startling growth of illegiti-
mate births as a percentage of all black births—from one fifth in the
early 1960s to over three fifths in the 1990s—is not so much a func-
tion of a growth in births among the unmarried as a great decline
among the married, a point reiterated in a 1995 Census Bureau report.
Only 8.1 percent of all African-American teenage women are single
mothers.”
 274 American Exceptionalism

For both black and white America, the family structure remains rel-
atively traditional. Compared to citizens of other developed countries,
Americans are considerably more likely to marry at some point in their
lives, tend to wed at earlier ages, and have larger families. They are also
more prone to divorce or separate, and then remarry. Recent changes
to the modern American family have not so much threatened its disso-
lution as they have shaped its internal dynamics, which are now
defined by the fact of two working parents. The nuclear family remains
intact even as it undergoes fundamental and complex internal change.
The high divorce and illegitimacy rates have led to an exaggerated
concern about the “disintegration of the family.” Similar cries were
heard earlier in American history. A declining birth rate, a rising
divorce rate, and evidence that younger women were no longer content
to remain in the domestic sphere—all of these repeatedly contributed
to perceptions of societal crisis in the century before the Great Depres-
sion. Between 1870 and 1920, the birth rate fell 40 percent overall,
even more sharply among the middle class. The divorce rate jumped
from 0.5 per 1,000 population in 1887 to 1.6 in 1920; by 1940 there
were 2.0 couples divorced per 1,000 population.®° The 1950s brought a
respite from such developments. In reaction to the stresses of the
Great Depression and World War II, the divorce rate slowed, birth
rates increased, and couples married earlier. Yet the evidence suggests
that this idealized period was an anomaly in the context of the coun-
try’s long-term modernization trend, and not—as popular imagination
would have it—the way America always was.
Related to concerns over the family as a value anchor in our society
are worries over the loosening of sexual mores. Those who believe in a
current moral decline view the sexual revolution of the 1960s and
1970s as a nightmare of teen pregnancies and lascivious sexual prac-
tices. This perception is much exaggerated, as a definitive new national
study documents.*! In critically reviewing new research, Andrew Gree-
ley cites survey data that argue against notions of waning sexual moral-
ity. The National Opinion Research Center reports no change in the
overwhelming rejection of marital infidelity since it first started polling
on the subject in the early seventies. Still three quarters of respondents
believe that most Americans engage in extramarital affairs, but an
almost unbelievable six out of seven married Americans tell the poll-
sters that they “have been faithful to their spouse(s).”32 Greeley con-
cludes that “Americans think that sexual behavior has in general turned
permissive, even though they . . . generally engage in behavior which is
in most respects not incompatible with traditional morality.”33
 A Double-Edged Sword 275

INDIVIDUALISM, AWARENESS, AND MORALITY

a)

The standard evidence marshaled to argue that America is experienc-

ing a value crisis is unconvincing. However, it is difficult to make the
opposite case that morality in America is waxing. There is indeed a
widespread perception that traditional values are threatened by recent
social, political, and economic developments. In some respects this
view is heightened precisely because of moral advances of recent
decades, such as the recognition that throughout American history
women, homosexuals, and minorities have faced political, economic,
and social inequalities. Americanism has clearly not weakened, but the
issues that it must address in a modern pluralist society are recogniz-
ably more difficult. It is no solution to explain away the real concerns
of citizens as mere “hyper-sensitization.” The fact that we have strong
moral frameworks, rooted in ideals of equality and liberty, around
which certain new issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and the
older and continuing concern for the impoverished have coalesced,
presents a challenge to American society. Some observers have sug-
gested that an emphasis on communitarian norms is the best way to
meet this challenge. This may be true for Canada, Japan, or Europe.
The American tradition, however, calls for a different alternative,
which may be described as “moral individualism.” An emphasis on
individual morality is an elemental component of the American polity.
As political theorist James Rutherford notes: “The free and equal indi-
vidual with moral responsibility is the basis of communal solidarity.”*
This is an important assertion—that community in democratic pluralis-
tic America is grounded in the individual as a thinking, moral actor, not
in group solidarity.
Oftentimes, the idea of a normative community is contrasted with
self-interested atomism (read individualism). But to reiterate individu-
alism is not necessarily a force grinding against the bonds of morality; it
is, rather, an integral part of American values. Our national ideology—
Americanism—is not merely a context, an environment that bounds or
guides individual action; it is a set of values that requires reasoning and
reflection in order to produce responsible consequences. The idea that
we can be better moral agents by passively soaking up the values of the
social context in which we find ourselves is antithetical to the princi-
ples of our democratic culture. In the modern environment of individ-
ual mobility and societal pluralism, the stability that marked traditional
 276 American Exceptionalism

communal contexts is rare. Individuals need to be capable of retaining

their ideological engagements even as the world around them changes.
A morality grounded in a recognition of individual autonomy is there-
fore vitally flexible.*

INDIVIDUALS IN CIVIL SOCIETY

pes)

The moral content of Americanism is only meaningful insofar as it is

expressed within a social context, and that context is civil society.
Commentaries, derived from Tocqueville, on the importance of civil
associations permeate classically liberal (i.e., libertarian) treatments of
democratic life, which argue that an idealized individualism is more
attractive and more readily attainable than any idealized collectivism.
Central to this American conception of individualism is the impor-
tance of civil society and voluntary associations. Zbigniew Rau com-
ments: “Civil society is an association of rational agents who decide for
themselves whether to join it and how to act in it. ... Therefore, the
creation of and participation in civil society is caused by and further
promotes the reassertion of its members as fully rational and moral
agents.”° These associations—including churches, civic organizations,
school boards, and philanthropic volunteer groups—are lifelong train-
ing grounds of citizenship and leadership, and create communication
networks, conclusions Tocqueville drew from American practice. They
strengthen moral bonds and facilitate the understanding of democracy.
But taking part in civil society does not simply mean belonging to
collective entities and thereby embedding oneself within a social iden-
tity. Rather, it is a dynamic and sometimes problematic process of
engagement between the individual and associations linked to interests
and ideas. Nor is civil society a gentle, comfortable sphere of activity. It
can be rough and challenging. From a critical perspective, David Pope-
noe correctly analyzes this dimension of civil society: “Outside the
moral realm of the family is the world of voluntary friendships, a sphere
governed by a marketplace for acceptance. In this outside world,
acceptance is a scarce commodity that is allocated through competi-
tion; it must be strived for, earned, and maintained, and, hence, is
highly conditional.” Yet, Popenoe’s analogy of civil society to a market
is not entirely appropriate. There is nothing inherently common in
these two spheres of liberal society, and ‘it is a mistake to ascribe mar-
ket forces to anything that requires effort and sacrifice, such as volun-
tarism or church membership.°’
 A Double-Edged Sword 277

Alasdair MaclIntyre’s notion of civil society as “simply an arena in

which individuals each pursue their own self-chosen conception of the
good life” hardly seems capable of providing a moral context for democ-
racy.** Surprisingly, however, the evidence regarding contemporary
America suggests that it is. Individuals continue to take an active role
in their local religious communities and to do volunteer work, while
seven out of ten give money to charity. Though the impression of a nar-
cissistic and materialistic society has been promoted by many com-
mentators, Aileen Ross’s assessment, discussed earlier, that philan-
thropy is more extensivein America “than in any other part of the
world” helps discount such a view.??
It is important to recognize that in America, individualism strength-
ens the bonds of civil society rather than weakens them. In his book
Acts of Compassion, Robert Wuthnow examines national survey data
and reports that they reveal a “positive relationship between self-ori-
ented values and placing importance on charitable activities. In other
words, people who were the most individualistic were also the most
likely to value doing things to help others.”#° This conclusion is signifi-
cant in light of Gallup surveys taken between 1977 and 1994 which
show an increase from 27 to 48 percent in the proportion of respon-
dents reporting having been “involved in any charity or social service
activities, such as helping the poor, the sick or the elderly.”*!
Other students of American society have argued, as Tocqueville did,
that individualism is related to the continuing vitality of religion and
religious organizations. Since most of the country’s sects are congrega-
tional, not hierarchical, they have fostered individualistic, egalitarian,
and populist values, the moral order. And voluntary religion fostered
the myriad of voluntary associations in America that so impressed Toc-
queville, Bryce, Weber, and other foreign observers. These associations
of what has come to be known as civil society create networks of com-
munication among people with common positions and interests help-
ing to sustain the moral order, political parties, and participation.
Americans not only remain the most religious and most devout people
in Christendom; they also are still the most participatory, the most dis-
posed to belong to and be active in voluntary associations.
The nature and sources of the difference have been summed up by
Peter Drucker:

In the United States, where there is a long volunteer tradition because of

the old independence of the churches, almost every other adult in the
1990s is working at least three—and others five—hours a week as a volun-
 278 American Exceptionalism

teer in a social-sector organization. Outside the English-speaking countries

there is not much of a voluntary tradition. In fact, the modern state in
Europe and Japan has been openly hostile to anything that smacks of vol-
untarism.*””

The 1990 World Values Survey, which examined membership and

degree of activity in fifteen categories of voluntary organizations, plus
“other groups,” found that 82 percent of Americans belong to at least
one organization. Japan, together with Italy, rank at the bottom among
the league of developed countries, with 64 percent of their survey
respondents saying they do not belong to any such groups. France is
close to them at 61 percent; while Great Britain, Canada and West
Germany are in the middle (see Table 8-1). The United States leads
also in the proportion who are active in, do unpaid work for, voluntary
associations. Fully three fifths of Americans report so doing, compared

TABLE 8-1. MEMBERSHIP IN VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS (PERCENT)

West Great
U.S.A. Canada France Germany Britain Italy Japan

None 18 35 61 32 47 64 64
Social Welfare services 9 8 7 7 7 4 2
Religious, churchs, organizations 49 25 6 16 17 8 7
Education, cultural activities 20 18 9 12 9 5 6

Trade unions 9 12 5 16 14 6 i
Political parties 14 vA 3 8 5 5 2
Local community action 5 5 3 2 3 2 0
Third World, human rights Z 5 3 2 2 1 0
Conservation, the environment 8 8 2 5 5 3 1

Professional associations 15 16 5 9 10 4 4
Youth work 13 10 3 4 5 4 1
Sports or recreation 20 23 16 32 17 11 9
Women’s groups 8 il 1 6 5 0 3
Peace movement 2 2 0 2 1 1 ]
Animal rights 6 3 2 5 2 2 0
Health organizations 7 9 3 4 4 3 1
Other groups 1] 13 45 2 a 2 5
Si
e ae
Source: Tables 8-1 and 8-2 are computed from the data tapes of the 1990 World Values Survey. I
am indebted to Ronald Inglehart for access to these materials.
 A Double-Edged Sword 279

to one quarter, 26-27 percent, of British, Italians, and Japanese (see

Table 8-2). Americans are ahead in most categories—religious organi-
zations, political parties or groups, social welfare services, education
and culture, environment, youth groups, women’s associations, and
animal rights. They are close to the top in all others, except for trade
unions.*3

TABLE 8-2. DOING UNPAID WORK FOR VOLUNTARY

ORGANIZATIONS (PERCENT)

West Great
U.S.A. Canada France Germany Britain Italy Japan

None 40 53 65 69 74 73 fla!
Social Welfare services 6 6 5 3 5 3 2
Religious, churchs, organizations 29 15 5 ui 6 6 2
Education, cultural activities 10 9 5 4 3 3 3
Trade unions 2 4 2 2 1 3 ]
Political parties 5 4 2 3 2 3 1
Local community action 3 4 3 1 1 1 0
Third World, human rights 1 3 1 ] 1 1 0
Conservation, the environment 3 3 1 1 2 2 |
Professional associations 5 5 3 2 2 1 1

Youth work 10 1p 2 2 4 3 ]

Sports or recreation 8 12 6 1] 3 7 3

Women’s groups 4 4 1 3 2 0 1

Peace movement 1 2 0 1 0 1 1

Animal rights 2 1 ] 2 0 ] 0

Health organizations 5 7 2 ] 3 2 1

Other groups 6 9 4 4 4 ?) 4

The strength of American religion shows no sign of diminishing.

Polls by Gallup and others, as we saw earlier, indicate that Americans
are the most churchgoing in Protestantism and the most fundamental-
ist in Christendom. Commenting on the continuity of religious practice
in America as revealed in opinion surveys, the political scientist
William Mayer concludes that “[w]hen the late 1980s are compared
with the late 1930s, church membership may have declined by about
five percent, while church attendance may actually be higher today
than it was fifty years ago.” In 1991, 68 percent of the adult popula-
 280 American Exceptionalism

tion belonged to a church and 42 percent attended services weekly,

much higher ratios than in any other industrialized nation.” Americans
still bear out Tocqueville’s observation that they are among the most
devout people in Christendom.

THE DECLINE OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

be

Although civil society, association life, is, as Tocqueville also noted,

stronger here than elsewhere, the American data, much of which has
been assembled by Robert Putnam, indicate that “civic engagement,”
to use his term, and political commitment have declined in the past
three decades. He notes that “participation in many types of civic asso-
ciations from religious groups to labor unions, from women’s clubs to
fraternal clubs and from neighborhood gatherings to bowling leagues
has fallen off.”*°
Most, but not all, of the available evidence bears out these general-
izations. A Roper survey taken in August 1993 indicates that the per-
centage of people who have “attended a public meeting on town or
school affairs” has dropped by more than a third, from 23 percent in
1973 to 16 percent in 1993. NORC data indicate that the proportion
who attended a political rally or speech, who served on a committee, or
who were officers of a club or organization also fell off over this twenty-
year period. All told, those reporting involvement in at least one of six
civic activities declined from 50 to 43 percent.
One of the most critical forms of community participation in the
United States has been in parent-teacher associations (PTA), reflecting
Americans’ high commitment to education. Putnam reports a very sig-
nificant dropoff in membership in the PTA from the 1960s to the pre-
sent, from 12 million in 1964 to 5 million in 1982, though there is
some indication that membership may have rebounded somewhat to 7
million in recent years.” Survey data gathered by NORC from 1974 to
1993 indicate that fraternal organizations have experienced a steady
decline.
There are some contradictory trends. As noted above, Gallup Polls
find that the proportion of people indicating that they have volunteered
for charitable, “social service,” or “non-profit” organizations has dou-
bled between 1977 and the 1990s. Ethnic organizations have increased
their total membership in percentage\ terms. And Putnam reports a
type of civic organization that has grown in membership in recent
years, groups like the National Organization of Women, the Sierra
 A Double-Edged Sword 281

Club, and the American Association of Retired People (AARP).** The

latter increased from 400,000 dues-paying members in 1960 to 33 mil-
lion in 1993, But these Putnam sees as essentially checkbook organiza-
tions, which do not promote “civic engagement.” Their members pay
dues, but rarely attend any meetings and seldom, if ever, knowingly
encounter other members. They are not mechanisms for communica-
tion or the learning of politically relevant skills. In any case, looking at
the international data, Putnam reaffirms the conclusion that Ameri-
cans are “more trusting and civicly engaged than most other people in
the world.”*?
Putnam discusses various possible causes for the falloff in activity,
including the movement of women into the labor force, the decline in
the size and stability of the family, and high rates of geographic mobil-
ity, and finds good reason to reject these hypotheses. He notes the
importance of television in helping to individualize the use of leisure
time and points to various time-budget studies documenting the steady
increase in time devoted to television, which has “dwarfed all of the
changes in the way Americans spend their days and nights.” NORC
finds that the percentage of the population who watch television for
only an hour a day or less decreased from 37 in 1964, to 27 in 1978, to
22 in 1989, and then went up to 25 in 1993. Those looking at the tube
for four hours or more a day climbed from 19 percent in 1964 to 28
percent in 1993. Conversely, the proportion reading newspapers every
day fell from 73 percent in 1967 to 46 percent in 1993. Other techno-
logical developments have had similar effects. For example, the growth
in the technology for listening to music—the cassette tape, compact
disc, and the Walkman—has helped privatize Americans and reduced
their interpersonal contacts outside work.

THE GROWTH OF CYNICISM

aa

Popular involvement in civil society apart, the evidence has been grow-
ing that all is not well with the American polity. Over the past three
decades, opinion polls show that the citizenry is increasingly distrustful
of its political leaders and institutions. When asked about their “confi-
dence” in government, large majorities, here as in almost every country,
report that they have “none,” “little,” or “a fair amount” of trust in the
president and the legislative bodies. Those who are strongly positive are
minorities, usually small ones.
 282 American Exceptionalism

The United States provides a striking example of this breakdown of

respect for authority. Confidence in all United States institutions
inquired about in the opinion surveys declined precipitously and
steadily from the mid-1960s, though the greatest part of the fall
occurred early in that decade. The Louis Harris Poll, which has investi-
gated the subject since 1966, reported in 1994 the lowest level of con-
fidence in government institutions ever. Those expressing a “great deal”
of confidence in the executive branch of government constituted only
12 percent of a national sample in 1994, as compared to 24 percent in
1981, and 41 percent in 1966. Trust in Congress was even lower—8
percent in 1994, contrasted with 16 percent in 1981, and 42 percent
in 1966. Daniel Yankelovich reports a drastic shift for the worse in
response to the question, “How much of the time can you trust the
government to do what’s right?” In 1964, 76 percent said “always” or
“most of the time.” The proportion so answering fell to 44 percent in
1984, and then to an all-time low of 19 percent in 1994, a finding
reported in the latest Luntz Poll for the Hudson Institute as well.
The University of Michigan Survey Research Center's national elec-
tion study has been asking: “Would you say the government is pretty
much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is
run for the benefit of all the people?” In 1964, 29 percent said it was
run for a few big interests. By 1980, the proportion so replying had
moved up to 70 percent; in 1992, fully four fifths, 80 percent,
expressed this cynical view. A Gallup Poll conducted for the Times-
Mirror organization in 1994 found that 66 percent of a national sample
agreed that the “Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient.”
A similar percentage said that “most elected officials don’t care what
people like me think.” Again, the data show steady increases in disdain
for officeholders. In response to this question, just under half, 47 per-
cent, agreed in 1987, compared to 33 percent in the 1960s.
These doubts manifest themselves in numerous ways, including a
decline in voter participation and erosion of the two-party system. The
United States, which could once boast that the overwhelming majority
of eligible voters cast their ballots, lost that record after 1914 and is
experiencing a new pattern of decline. In fact, a much smaller propor-
tion take part in American national elections than in any of the other
older democracies, except Switzerland. The percentage voting has
fallen from a postwar high point of around two thirds at the beginning
of the 1960s to little more than one half in presidential elections today.
Considerably fewer take part in lower-level contests, state and city
elections, and even the presidential primaries. In reporting on the mid-
 A Double-Edged Sword 283

term primaries in 1994, the Committee for the Study of the American
Electorate noted that only 18 percent of the voting age population cast
ballots, compared to 24 percent in 1974 and 33 percent in 1966. The
November election produced a turnout of 39 percent, up 2 percent
from 1990, but still among the lowest reported.
The lack of faith in the traditional American political system also is
strikingly revealed by declining regard for the two-party system. In
1994, for the first time in polling history, a majority of those inter-
viewed, 53 percent, told Gallup that they would like to see a third
major party, up to 60 percent in 1995. Evidence that this sentiment is
not simply symbolic is provided by the support which Ross Perot
obtained in the 1992 election and continues to receive in opinion polls
in 1994-95. Perot secured the highest percentage of the vote ever
attained by a third-party candidate, with the limited exception of
Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Roosevelt, however, was a dissident
Republican preferred in the twelve primaries of that year by most of his
party's supporters. The 1995 opinion polls show that Perot continues
to be endorsed by a fifth of the electorate. And the 1994 election
results, like the 1992 ones, are seemingly the consequence of this dis-
trust. The Perot voters, who disliked Bush the incumbent more than
Clinton the outsider, turned in overwhelming numbers to support
Republican congressional and state candidates in 1994. But the Times-
Mirror Poll reports continued distrust of Congress and both parties, as
of the fall of 1995.

THE LEGACY OF THE 1960S

ee

This erosion of trust in American government is troubling. President

Jimmy Carter characterized it in a July 1979 television address to the
American people as a “fundamental threat to American democracy.”
That threat, he said, was a “crisis of confidence ... that strikes at the
very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.” He pointed to “a
growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools,
the news media and other institutions,” and emphasized that “the gap
between our citizens and our government has never been so wide.”” If
anything, that gap has now widened. In a report on a 1994 poll evaluat-
ing “The New Political Landscape,” the Times-Mirror Center finds that
“Voters’ frustration with the political system continues to grow, as does
animosity toward the media. .. . The Clinton Administration and the
economic recovery have failed to stem the tide of political cynicism.
 284 American Exceptionalism

The discontent with Washington that gained momentum in the late

1980s is even greater now than it was in 1992.””!
Other opinion polls, cited above, indicate that this severe decline in
confidence began even earlier, during the mid-1960s, a period charac-
terized by widespread protest, and has continued to the present. The
catalysts for this dramatic loss of faith in institutions are a combination
of reactions to the Vietnam War and the discontent represented by var-
ious social movements, initially linked to the anti-war struggles, which
severely criticized America for not living up to its democratic and egali-
tarian promise. These were primarily concerned with race relations, the
status of women, and the environment. Previously, alienation or orga-
nized protest in Western democratic society had been based largely on
the traditionally underprivileged strata; but the movements of the
1960s stemmed mostly from the more affluent classes, university stu-
dents, professionals, and middle-class women. The one important
protest wave that reflected the problems of the underprivileged was, of
course, the civil rights campaigns led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mass protest declined, seemingly almost vanished, with the end of
the Vietnam War and the passage of important civil rights legislation,
but as noted, public opinion research and electoral behavior indicated
that a large percentage of Americans continued to feel frustrated with
their political leaders and institutions. Events in the next decade,
including the economic downswing of the early 1970s and the Water-
gate scandal, intensified the disdain for political leadership. The Carter
years, marked by economic stagnation, high rates of inflation and
unemployment, and finally the Iran hostage crisis, did not help.
A partial hiatus in the falloff in public confidence occurred in the
1980s. Ironically, given his antagonism to government, Ronald Rea-
gan’s administration produced an increase in confidence in government
in reaction to economic growth and prosperity during most of his term
in office. This improvement, however, was relatively minor and did not
affect attitudes toward other major institutions, such as business and
labor. Frustration continued to dominate. In any case, the Reagan blip
ended with the Iran-Contra scandal in November 1986. The basically
downward trend has continued under Presidents Bush and Clinton,
although there was an upswing that proved to be very short-lived after
the Gulf War in early 1991. By the summer, it was gone.
b
\
 A Double-Edged Sword 285

TELEVISION’S DISTORTING PICTURE

Ss

Why is there so much malaise, so much unrest about the workings of

American democracy? The discontent generated in the 1960s does not
explain why these feelings have continued or what has sustained them.
Politicians tend to blame the media for the lack of trust. I suspect that
to some degree they are right. American presidents since George
Washington have complained about the way the press covered them.
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin
Roosevelt all felt, correctly, that much of the press was antagonistic.
Those on the left, from Jefferson to Roosevelt and Truman, felt that
the owners of the press were conservatives and controlled the way their
papers wrote about them. Since Lyndon Johnson, presidents have
identified media bias as reflecting the views of journalists, not owners,
and as leftist or liberal. There can be little doubt that the predomi-
nantly left views of reporters affect the way the news is presented. But
the political views or interests of those who dominate the media are not
the main sources of their emphasis on the failings of elites and institu-
tions. The fact is that good news is not news; bad news is. Planes that
land do not constitute a story; planes that crash do. Politicians charac-
terized by honesty, personal integrity, and a good family life are dull,
sexually promiscuous, corrupt political figures are interesting. The
press looks for failings. The desire to locate and exaggerate scandals
among the political, social, and economic elites has always character-
ized open democratic societies.
The effect of the media is illustrated by the public’s concern over
the increased risk of criminal victim rates when, “according to the most
reliable measure available, total levels of crime in America have fallen,
not risen, over the past two decades.”** A comprehensive review by The
Economist of the problems involved in evaluating crime statistics deal-
ing with many countries indicates that police reports “often quoted by
politicians and given prominence in the media” considerably exaggerate
the extent of crime reported in crime-victimization surveys. In polls
conducted regularly by Gallup since 1971, “some 50% of Americans
have usually thought crime to have risen in the preceding year in their
area. Only around 15% believed—often correctly, in all probability—
that crime had fallen locally.”
There has been a change in the nature of the media, which I think is
responsible for perpetuating and extending the loss in trust: the shift
 286 American Exceptionalism

from print to television as the major source of news. Television pre-

sents the news, conveys the message, in much stronger terms, in much
more convincing fashion than newspapers or magazines. The massive
transition from print to televised media occurred during the 1960s.
The Vietnam War was the first televised war; for the first time, the
public could watch the spilling of blood from their living rooms. The
impact of the prolonged war on American opinion was to a consider-
able extent a function of pictorial reportage. And the domination of the
camera has continued to grow. All problems of society now reach peo-
ple almost immediately and in what appears to be an unbiased manner,
because the viewer thinks he sees what is happening for himself. And
in 1994, the United States led the ownership of television sets, with 81
for every 100 people. The corresponding figure for the European Union
was 44, while for Japan it was 62.”
There have been other notable changes as well. Norman Ornstein
has noted that the increase in reportage on scandals and corruption in
government and other institutions is linked to greater disclosure.
Sweeping reform of the political process has resulted in a drastic
increase in information made possible by the computer, which has
been grist for investigative journalism. As important in undermining
trust in leaders has been the enormous growth in “prosecutorial zeal,”
flowing in part from “the reform-era creation of a Public Integrity Sec-
tion in the Justice Department, which defines its success by the vol-
ume of prosecution of public officials.” As a result, Ornstein reports,
between 1975 and 1989 “the number of federal officials indicted on
charges of public corruption increased by a staggering 1,211 percent,
whereas the number of non-federal public officials indicted doubled
during the same period.”* There has clearly been more bad news to
report about politics, as well as a more effective medium to transmit it.
Paradoxically, the increase in the malaise about politics and the dis-
dain for government may also reflect the growth of dependence on gov-
ernment since the 1930s. Most people in the West, even those in the
less statist United States, have come to rely on the state to solve most
problems and to provide jobs, security for the aged, and medical care,
as well as good schools. Socialism and communism may have col-
lapsed, but heavy reliance on what Robert Dahl describes as an
increasingly complex and incomprehensible government has not. We
expect much from the state, and we turn against elected officials
because of their failure to accomplish what we want them to do. Ironi-
cally, the decline in confidence in government in a nation which sus-
pects government, which does not want to rely on it, makes it more dif-
 A Double-Edged Sword 287

ficult for the political leaders to enact new programs and deal with
problems that the public would like to see resolved, such as health
care.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

a

Given the anger about politics in the United States, what accounts for
the continued stability of the American system? Why do we not wit-
ness grievous forms of mass unrest? Why is the major protest move-
ment, led by Ross Perot, basically centrist, even conservative with
respect to economic and social policy? Part of the answer to the conun-
drum is that most Americans are not unhappy about their personal
lives or prospects; if anything, the opposite is true. They still view the
United States as a country that rewards personal integrity and hard
work, as one that, government and politics apart, still works. The
American Dream is still alive, even if the government and other institu-
tions are seen as corrupt and inefficient. A 1994 survey-based study of
“The American Dream” conducted for the Hudson Institute finds that
over four fifths, 81 percent, agree with the statement, “I am optimistic
about my personal future,” while about two thirds, 64 percent, are
“optimistic about America’s future.” Three quarters, 74 percent, agreed
that “In America, if you work hard, you can be anything you want to
be.” And almost 72 percent felt that “As Americans, we can always find
a way to solve our problems and get what we want.” And not surpris-
ingly, when asked to choose between “having the opportunity to suc-
ceed and having security from failing,” over three quarters, 76 percent,
opt for the former; only a fifth, 20 percent, prefer the security option.®
Gallup polling for Times-Mirror in 1994 presents similar results.
Over two thirds, 67 percent, expect their financial situation to improve
a lot or some; only 14 percent say it will get worse. Large majorities
reject the statement that “Success in life is pretty much determined by
forces outside our control.” Most affirm the traditional American lais-
sez-faire ideology, with its emphasis on individualism, with 88 percent
agreeing with the statement, “I admire people who get rich by working
hard,” and 85 percent agreeing that “Poor people have become too
dependent on government assistance programs.” More significantly,
perhaps, 78 percent endorse the view: “The strength of this country
today is mostly based on the success of American business.”
The American political system, though distrusted and ineffective in
dealing with major social issues, is clearly not in danger. Most Ameri-
 288 American Exceptionalism

cans remain highly patriotic and religious, believe they are living in the
best society in the world, and think that their country and economy, in
spite of problems, still offer them opportunity and economic security.
Although the depression of the 1930s was worse here than in most of
Europe, America came out of it with its party system, state institutions,
and material values intact. The country will probably do the same
today, although it must be acknowledged that the major parties appear
somewhat more vulnerable than at any time since the Civil War.

CONCLUSION
pa

To what extent is it still possible to speak of American exceptionalism?

It is obvious that America and the rest of the Western world have
changed greatly over the past two centuries. From a nation of thirteen
states hugging the Atlantic seaboard with a population of 4 million,
America has grown to a continent-spanning federation of fifty states
and, as of the 1990 Census, 250 million people. Close to 30 million
live in California, a state nonexistent in 1789. The country began as an
overwhelmingly agrarian society, with more than 90 percent of its work
force on the land, many as subsistence farmers. As the country
approaches the twenty-first century, only 2 percent are farmers, and
the great majority of the population live in sprawling metropolitan
regions. From an underdeveloped rural economy which largely relied
on Britain for its manufactured goods, it became in the latter decades
of the nineteenth century the most prosperous power on earth. In real
consumer income terms, it still holds this position, although the emer-
gence of other industrial countries and the reexpansion of Europe has
reduced its proportion of the world’s production from two fifths after
World War II to a quarter in the nineties. The character of its labor
force has changed, first with the decline of agriculture and the expan-
sion of industry, and more recently with the decrease in manual jobs
and the growth of high-tech and scientific activities accompanied by an
increase in white-collar and service jobs and in positions requiring col-
lege education. The resultant gap in demand for the growing popula-
tion of well-educated people and the declining need for unskilled peo-
ple is producing a sizable income difference, with the share going to
the lowest strata falling. Other Western nations have also changed,
becoming industrialized, urbanized, better educated. The postfeudal
elements that characterized many European countries have declined
enormously, although Britain, while also changing, still contains more
 A Double-Edged Sword 289

of these elements than others. In social-structural terms, these coun-

tries are becoming Americanized.*’
The changes that have occurred around the developed world, how-
ever, still leave many differences. In comparative terms, the United
States remains more religious, more patriotic, more populist and anti-
elitist (the number of elective positions increased between 1987 and
1992 by over ten thousand, while direct involvement of the electorate
in the candidate nomination process continues to grow), more commit-
ted to higher education for the majority, hence to meritocracy, more
socially egalitarian, more prone to divorce, less law-abiding, wealthier
in real income (purchasing power) terms, markedly more job-creating,
and significantly less disposed to save, than other developed countries.
To reiterate, the United States is a “welfare laggard.” It remains the
least statist Western nation in terms of public effort, benefits, and
employment.” It is “(t]he reluctant bride of the welfare state, institut-
ing national programs later than most countries ... and spending a
lower share of its national income on social welfare than most. . . .”°°
According to the OECD, the United States provides single-parent fam-
ilies with a much lower level:-of income support, 37 percent of the aver-
age production worker’s wage, than any of seven other countries listed
in a recent report—Sweden (82%), Canada (69%), Finland (67%), Hol-
land (68%), Austria (53%), Britain (53%), and Australia (52%).© Con-
versely, Americans show a marked preference for private efforts in wel-
fare as in business; they lead the world in philanthropic giving. As
Nathan Glazer reports, “non-public resources in American welfare are
greater than is found in any other major nation.”
However, major changes have occurred which have modified the
original American Creed, with its suspicion of the state and its empha-
sis on individual rights.*? These include the introduction of a plan-
ning—welfare state emphasis in the 1930s, accompanied initially by
greater class-consciousness and trade union growth, and the focus on
ethnic, racial, and gender group rights which emerged in the 1960s.
The first has had a continuing impact in the form of a much expanded
government that remains committed to many welfare and regulatory
objectives. But, as I noted earlier, the increase has been slowed, in
some aspects reversed. Popular sentiment in the mid-1990s seeks to
limit welfare and opposes some types of state involvement in the econ-
omy that once had considerable support. Election results from 1968 to
1994 indicate Americans want to reduce the role of the state. The
Republicans are the most anti-statist major party in the West, but the
Clinton New Democrats are not far behind. Trade union membership,
 290 American Exceptionalism

as we have seen, has fallen greatly as a share of the labor force, and the
significance of class as a variable related to partisan support is much
reduced. The economic role of government remains weaker in the
United States than in any other industrialized economy. On the other
hand, the focus on non-class forms of group rights which came to a
head in the 1960s, though still a dynamic force, is under sharper criti-
cism than any time since the Johnson era. These developments appear
to be reaffirming the basic emphases on individual success, on equality
of opportunity rather than of results.
Finally, it is worth reiterating that various seemingly contradictory
aspects of American society are intimately related. The lack of respect
for authority, anti-elitism, and populism contribute to higher crime
rates, school indiscipline, and low electoral turnouts. The emphasis on
achievement, on meritocracy, is also tied to higher levels of deviant
behavior and less support for the underprivileged. Intense religiosity is
linked to less reliance on contraception in premarital sexual relation-
ships by young people. The same moralistic factors which make for
patriotism help to produce opposition to war. Concern for the legal
rights of accused persons and civil liberties in general is tied to opposi-
tion to gun control and difficulty in applying crime-control measures.
The stress on individualism both weakens social control mechanisms,
which rely on strong ties to groups, and facilitates diverse forms of
deviant behavior.
I would like to conclude with some thoughts derived from an Ameri-
can political scientist, Samuel Huntington; a Canadian scholar who
was named after two executed Italian American anarchists, Sacvan
Bercovitch; and a communist theorist, Antonio Gramsci. Huntington
and Bercovitch both note that an emphasis on a national consensus, a
national myth, which some mistakenly see as the meaning of excep-
tionalism, is not an alternative to a stress on conflict. The consensual
myth fosters bitter controversy. Huntington notes periods of creedal
passion in American history, intense conflicts seeking to bring “institu-
tions and practices in accord with these values and beliefs. ... In a
political system produced by a major revolution ... efforts may be
made from time to time to renew or reaffirm revolutionary values.”
Such conflicts and patterns of change can only occur “in a society with
an overwhelming consensus” on “values.” They could not occur “in soci-
eties with traditional ideological pluralism, such as most of those of
western Europe” and Canada.“ ‘
Americans fight each other in their efforts to defend or expand the
American Creed. Pre—Civil War leaders of the anti-slavery struggle,
 A Double-Edged Sword 291

such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, or the

founder of American feminism, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, like mid-
twentieth-century American radicals, demanded changes in order, in
Douglass’s words, to live up to “the genius of American institutions, to
help fulfill its [the nation’s] sacred mission.”® Bercovitch, who cites
these radical exponents of the Creed, first entered the United States
during the conflict-ridden 1960s. Expressing his reaction to the creedal
passions of the era, he wrote:

My first encounter with American consensus was in the late sixties, when I
crossed the border into the United States and found myself inside the myth
of America. Not of North America, for the myth stopped short of the Cana-
dian and Mexican borders, but of a country that despite its arbitrary fron-
tiers, despite its bewildering mix of race and creed, could believe in some-
thing called the True America, and could invest that patent fiction with all
the moral and emotional appeal of a religious symbol. ... Here was the
Jewish anarchist Paul Goodman berating the Midwest for abandoning the
promise; here, the descendant of American slaves, Martin Luther King,
denouncing injustice as a violation of the American way; here, an endless
debate about national destiny ... conservatives scavenging for un-Ameri-
cans, New Left historians recalling the country to its sacred mission.
Nothing in my Canadian background had prepared me for that specta-
cle. .. . It gave me something of an anthropologist’s sense of wonder at the
symbol of the tribe. . . . To a Canadian skeptic, a gentile in God’s country
... [here was] a pluralistic, pragmatic people . . . bound together by an ide-
ological consensus.
Let me repeat that mundane phrase: ideological consensus. For it wasn't
the idea of exceptionalism that I discovered in 68. ... It was a hundred
sects and factions, each apparently different from the others, yet all cele-
brating the same mission. . . .°

Gramsci, who also believed that America has a national ideology,

wrote in the 1920s that before Italy could become socialist, it had to
Americanize socially as well as economically, a development he viewed
positively. Like earlier Marxists, he saw the United States as the epit-
ome of a bourgeois democratic society, one that lacked the traditional
precapitalist elements which were still to be found in Italy and other
European cultures.®’ Of course, the industrialized European countries
have begun to resemble the United States economically, as more afflu-
ent, and socially, as less status-conscious. In the process, their socialist
movements (and the Italian Communist Party, now renamed the Party
of the Democratic Left) have redefined their objectives. Not only do
 292 American Exceptionalism

their conservatives, like Margaret Thatcher, increasingly advocate clas-

sical (Jeffersonian/Jacksonian) liberal doctrines, but as I have docu-
mented elsewhere, this ideology is also strongly affecting their left.°* In
line with Marx’s anticipation in Das Kapital that “the more developed
country shows the less developed the image of their future,” the United
States is less exceptional as other nations develop and “Americanize.”
But, given the structural convergences in economy and ecology, the
extent to which it is still unique is astonishing.
 Appendix: Individualism and
Group Obligation
Responses of 15,000 Managers and Executives, 1986-1993
(percent) *

“While you are talking and sharing a bottle of beer with a friend who was
officially on duty as a safety controller in the company you both work for,
an accident occurs, injuring a shift worker. An investigation is launched by
the national safety commission and you are asked for your evidence. There
are no other witnesses. What right has your friend to expect you to protect
him?”

(a) A definite right? (b) Some right? (c) No right?

(C) No Right USA CAN UK GER _ FRA JAP
94 91 82. 90 BS « m Of

“You run a department of a division of a large company. One of your subordi-

nates, whom you know has trouble at home, is frequently coming in signifi-
cantly late. What right has this colleague to be protected by you from others in
the department?”

(a) A definite right? (b) Some right? (c) No right?

(C) No Right USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP
95 81 84 94 43 56

The Dilemmas Methodology:

(a) “A company is a system designed to perform functions and tasks in an eff-
cient way. People are hired to fulfill these functions with the help of machines
and other equipment. They are paid for the tasks they perform.”

*SourcE: Data taken from Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars, The Seven Cul-
tures of Capitalism (New York: Doubleday, 1993), pp. 22, 23, 31-32, 56-57, 60, 71, 90, 111, 165,
and 279-280.

293
 294 Appendix: Individualism and Group Obligation

(b) “A company is a group of people working together. The people have social
relations with other people and with the organization. The functioning is
dependent on these relations.”
(A) COMPANY
AS A SYSTEM
USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP
74 69 55 4] 35 vena?

Proper Goals of a Company:

(a) “The only real goal of a company is making profit.”
(b) “A company, besides making profit, has a goal of attaining the well-being of
various stakeholders, such as employees, stakeholders, etc.”
(A) Profit Only USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP
40 34 = 33 24 16 8

“Suppose you, as a manager, are in the process of hiring a new employee to

work in your department. Which of the two following considerations are more
important to you:

(a) The new employee must fit into the group or team in which he/she is to work.
(b) The new employee must have the skills, the knowledge, and a record to
success in a previous job.”
(B) Individual USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP
Capacity 92 91 71 #487 57 49
Preferences for Two Different Kinds ofJobs:
(a) “Jobs in which no one is singled out for personal honor, but in which every-
one works together.”
(b) “Jobs in which personal initiatives are encouraged and individual initiatives
are achieved.”

(B) Personal USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP

Initiatives 97 96 90 84 69 49
Encouraged

Limited Commitment to Organizations:

“If I apply for a job in a company,
(a) I will most certainly work there for the rest of my life.
(b) I am almost sure that the relationship will have a limited duration.”
(B) Limited USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP
Duration 99 96 84 83 79 41
 Appendix: Individualism and Group Obligation 295

Competition as Antidote to Collusion:

“Two friends were discussing the way businesses interact.
One said: ‘If you allow businesses to cooperate with each other, they will usu-
ally collude against consumers and the larger society by agreeing to raise
prices and/or restrain trade. They will do this for the obvious reason that it is
in their self-interests to do so. Competition and still more competition is the
only answer to this tendency.’
The other said: ‘If you allow businesses to cooperate with each other they will
usually pass on to their customers any enhanced effectiveness and economies
of operations in the form of expanded trade. They will do this for the obvious
reason that it is in their own and their customers group interests for this to
happen. Cooperating in order to compete with the wider world is the only
answer.”

Competition USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP

and still more 68 64 65 41 45 24
Competition

Pro-achievement, Anti-ascription (Based on Age):

“Becoming successful and respected is a matter of hard work. It is important

for a manager to be older than his subordinates. Older people should be more
respected than younger people.”

Status by USA CAN UK GER FRA _ JAP

Hard Work 63:46:61.5 60 58 57 42

“Does job skill or power legitimize the boss?”

Job skill USA CAN UK GER _ FRA JAP

W858 64.2 of DT gs Pode 26u0

“A man had a fire in his shop and lost most of his merchandise. His store was
partly destroyed by the fire. He and his family had to have some help from
someone to rebuild the shop as fast as possible. There are different ways of
getting help.
(a) It would be best if he depended mostly on his brothers and sisters, or
other relatives, to help him.
(b) It would be best to borrow some money on his own in order to get some
construction people to rebuild his store.”

(B) On one’s USA CAN UK GER FRA _ JAP

own hey 80 74 67 68 50
 296 Appendix: Individualism and Group Obligation

Consensual vs. Adversarial Democracy:

(a) “It is better that all people meet and discuss things until almost everyone
agrees on the same person.”
(b) “It is better that all people meet, names be put up, a vote be taken, and
then the person who gets the majority of the votes sent, even if there are sev-
eral people who are still against this person.”
(A) Extended USA CAN UK GER FRA JAP
Discussions 37.7 — 58.7 69.0 61.9 84.6
 Notes

FoREWorRD (pp. 13-15)

. No one needs to elaborate on the roles of Lincoln and Roosevelt. Washington is their equal,
as I tried to document in The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Compar-
ative Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1963; expanded ed., W. W. Norton, 1979).
. Seymour Martin Lipset, Agrarian Socialism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1950; Garden City, NY: Doubleday-Anchor, 1968; rev. and expanded ed., Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1971).
. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Why No Socialism in the United States?” in S. Bialer and S.
Sluzar, eds., Sources of Contemporary Radicalism, | (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977),
pp. 30-149 and 346-363.
. Seymour Martin Lipset and Reinhard Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1961; expanded ed., New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Books, 1991).
. See Lipset, The First New Nation.
. Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States
and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990).
. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1995).
. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, expanded ed. 1981).

INTRODUCTION (pp. 17-28)

. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Vols. I and II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1948).
. Ibid., II, pp. 36-37. For a sophisticated critique which emphasizes external influences on
America, see Ian Tyrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,”
American Historical Review, 96 (October 1991), pp. 1031-1055. For a detailed reply, see
Michael McGerr, “The Price of the ‘New Transnational History,” American Historical
Review, 98 (October 1991), pp. 1056-1067.
. George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (Gloucester, MA: Peter
Smith, 1969).
. Quoted in Michael Kazin, “The Right’s Unsung Prophet,” The Nation, 248 (February 20,
1989), p. 242.
. For a brilliant analysis of the religious background of the United States, see David Fischer,
Albion's Seed. Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
. See Seymour Martin Lipset, Rebellion in the University (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1971), pp. 12-14.
. See Fischer, Albion's Seed, passim.
. Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures of Capitalism (New
York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 245.

oe Ws
 298 Notes (pp. 22-33)

. “The European Union,” The Economist, October 22, 1994, Survey, p. 4.

. Mary Ann Glendon, “Rights in Twentieth Century Constitutions,” in Geoffrey R. Stone,
Richard A. Epstein, and Cass R. Sunstein, eds., The Bill of Rights in the Modern State
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 521.
. Ibid., pp. 524-525. See also Gerhard Casper, “Changing Concepts of Constitutionalism:
18th to 20th Century,” Supreme Court Review, 311 (1989), pp. 318-319.
. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1949),
pp. 182-185.
. See Frank Underhill, The Image of Confederation (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corpora-
tion, 1964), passim.
. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, Seven Cultures, p. 48.
. See Seymour Martin Lipset, Consensus and Conflict: Essays in Political Sociology (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985).
. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957),
pp. 168-170.
. See Tables 8-1 and 8-2 in chapter Eight, pp. 00-00.
. Suzanne Garment, “Newt’s Law,’ The New York Times, November 20, 1994, p. 15.

1, IDEOLOGY, PoLiTics, AND DEVIANCE (pp. 31-52)

. For an earlier version of chapters One and Two, see S. M. Lipset, “American Exceptionalism
Reaffirmed,” in Byron E. Shafer, ed., Is America Different? A New Look at American Excep-
tionalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 1-45. For a more elaborate effort to
place American exceptionalism in theoretical and historical perspectives, see S. M. Lipset,
The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New
York: Basic Books, 1963; expanded paperback ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).
. G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1922), p. 7.
. See Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1955), pp. 6, 234. The word “liberal,” it should be noted, did not come into existence until
the early nineteenth century and probably did not take on this meaning until the middle of
that century. See Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, Part Two: The Classi-
cal Issue (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1987), pp. 370-371.
. H. G. Wells, The Future in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1906), pp. 72-76. For
an excellent analysis of liberal party politics in Britain, Canada, and the United States, see
Robert Kelley, The Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of
Gladstone (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969).
. See Lipset, The First New Nation, pp. 249-252, 257-259.
. For a critique of this focus, see Sean Wilentz, “Against Exceptionalism: Class Conscious-
ness and the American Labor Movement, 1790-1940,” International Labor and Working
Class History, 26 (Fall 1984), pp. 1-24. Also see Richard Oestreicher, “Urban Working-
Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Politics,” Journal of American
History, 74 (March 1988), pp. 1257-1286, Aristide R. Zolberg, “How Many Exception-
alisms?” in Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formation. Nine-
teenth Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1986), pp. 397-455; and Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptional-
ism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
. See “Unpublished Letters of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Americans,” Science and
Society, 2 (1938), pp. 368, 375; Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Alexander Trachtenberg,
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Letters to Americans, 1848~1895 (New York: International
Publishers, 1953), p. 239; Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence,
1846-1895, trans. Donna Torr (New York: International Publishers, 1942), p. 449.
Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (White Plains, NY: Inter-
national Arts & Sciences Press, 1976; first published in German in 1906).
. Wells, The Future in America.
 Notes (pp. 33-38) 299

10. Karl Marx, Capital, I (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), pp. 8-9.
ik For a discussion of the problems this question poses, see Carl N. Degler, “In Pursuit of
American History,” American Historical Review, 92 (February 1987), pp. 1-12.
12. For an analysis of nineteenth-century academic writing, see Dorothy Ross, “Historical Con-
sciousness in Nineteenth-Century America,” American Historical Review, 89 (October
1984), pp. 909-928.
3: Edmund Burke, Selected Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), pp. 180-181.
14, J. Hector St. John Crévecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (New York: Dolphin Books,
1963), pp. 46-47.
15, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, II, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), pp.
104, 113, 129-135.
16. See, among others, C. Vann Woodward, The Old World's New World (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1991); Max Berger, The British Traveller in America, 1836-1860 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1943); Oscar Handlin, ed., This Was America (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1949); Henry Steele Commager, America in Perspective (New York:
Random House, 1947); J. G. Brooks, As Others See Us (New York: Macmillan, 1908); Jane L.
Mesick, The English Traveller in America, 1785-1835 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1922); Robert W. Smuts, European Impressions of the American Worker (New York:
King’s Crown Press, 1953); Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London:
Whitaker, Treacher, 1832); Anthony Trollope, North America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1951); James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (New York: Macmillan, 1912); Lipset,
The First New Nation, pp. 101-137; Lee Coleman, “What Is America? A Study of Alleged
American Traits,” Social Forces, 19 (May 1941), pp. 492-499; and Everett Carll Ladd, The
American Ideology. An Exploration of the Origins, Meaning, and Role of American Political
Ideas (Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 1994), pp. 18-21.
. Cited in George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (Gloucester, MA:
Peter Smith, 1969), p. 271.
18. Harriet Martineau, Society in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981).
19, For documentation, see Lipset, The First New Nation, pp. 101-137; Coleman, “What Is
America?” pp. 492-499,
20. See S. M. Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and
Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990), and Seymour Martin Lipset, “Historical Traditions
and National Characteristics: A Comparative Analysis of Canada and the United States,”
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 11 (Summer 1986), pp. 113-155.
. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Anglo-American Society,” in David Sills, ed., International Ency-
clopedia of the Social Sciences, | (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 289-302.
. Lipset, The First New Nation, pp. 248-273.
. See Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1964).
. Private conversation.
. Max Beloff, “Of Lords, Senators, & Plain Misters,” Encounter, 68 (April 1987), pp. 69-71; “An
Exchange Between Max Beloff and Irving Kristol,” Encounter, 69 (June 1987), pp. 69-71.
. George Grant, Lament foraNation (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1965), pp. 64-65.
. See, e.g., Michael Elliott, “What's Left?” Newsweek, International ed., October 10, 1994,
pp. 10-15; Allan Winkler, “Centre of Attention,” The Times (London), April 15, 1994; Ami-
tai Etzioni, “Who Should Pay for Care?” Sunday Times (London), October 9, 1994, p. 7;
“The Ties That Bind,” The Economist, October 8, 1994, p. 58.
28. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1972), p. 308.
29, Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Random House,
1966), p. 38.
30. Quoted in Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, p. 308.
. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Roosevelt and the Protest of the 1930's,” Minnesota Law Review,
68 (December 1983), pp. 173-198.
 300 Notes (pp. 38-47)

32: Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 3rd ed., 1965),
. 55-68,
33, Karlyn H. Keene and Everett Carll Ladd, “America: A Unique Outlook?” The American
Enterprise, 1 (March-April 1990), p. 120.
34. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958), p. 13.
Sih For background, see Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who
Made It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), pp. 8-15.
36. J. P. Nettl, “The State as a Conceptual Variable,” World Politics, 20 (July 1968), pp. 561,
574, 585.
Sue E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1942), pp. 65-98.
38. See Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1967), p. 116; Seymour Martin Lipset, “Socialism in America,” in Paul Kurtz, ed.,
Sidney Hook: Philosopher of Democracy and Humanism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books,
1983), pp. 55-59.
39) Allan Gotlieb, I'll Be With You in a Minute, Mr. Ambassador (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1991).
40. Sven Steinmo, “Rethinking American Exceptionalism.” Unpublished paper, Department of
Political Science, University of Colorado, 1992.
41, Byron Shafer, “‘Exceptionalism’ in American Politics?” PS, 22 (September 1989), pp.
588-594; Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap: Business,
Labor, and Government in the Public Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
expanded and updated ed., 1987), pp. 379-380.
42. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Government: Popularly Elected Officials (Washington,
D.C.; U.S. Department of Commerce, 1994); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical
Abstract of the United States, 1994 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce,
1994), p. 287.
43. Austin Ranney, “Referendums,” Public Opinion, 11 (January—February 1989), p. 15. For
similar comments, see Ivor Crewe, “Electoral Participation,” in David Butler, Howard Pen-
niman, and Austin Ranney, eds., Democracy at the Polls: A Comparative Study of Competitive
National Elections (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), p. 232, and
Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller, “Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies Dur-
ing the 1980s,” Comparative Political Studies, 27 (January 1995), pp. 482-483.
44, Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press and MIT Press, 1963), p. 1.
45. Actually, the percentage should be 1-2 points higher if aliens are excluded from the base;
see Walter Dean Burnham, “The 1980 Earthquake: Realignment, Reaction, or What?” in
Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds., The Hidden Election (New York: Pantheon Books,
1981), p. 101,
46. Walter Dean Burnham, “The Appearance and Disappearance of the American Voter,” in
Richard Rose, ed., Electoral Participation: A Comparative Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
Publications, 1980), pp. 35-73.
47. B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (New York: Macmillan, 1976), p. 188; Seymour Martin Lipset,
“Why Americans Refuse to Vote,” in Insight, 10 (February 7, 1994), pp. 24-26.
48. See Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven Rosenstone, Who Votes? (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1980), and Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Why Americans Don't
Vote (New York: Pantheon, 1988).
49. Louise I. Shelley, “American Crime: An International Anomaly?” Comparative Social
Research, 8 (1985), p. 81; see also Leon Radzinowicz and Joan King, The Growth of Crime:
The International Experience (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 6-7.
50. Shelley, “American Crime,” pp. 81, 88-89. ;
Dk “The European Union,” The Economist, October 22, }994, Survey, p. 4.
52. Steven A. Holmes, “Ranks of Inmates Reach One Million in a 2-Decade Rise,” New York
Times, October 28, 1994, p. Al.
 Notes (pp. 47-53) 301

53. Shelley, “American Crime,” p. 91.

54. I have drawn here on my earlier discussion in The First New Nation, pp. 173-177.
Ze Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957),
pp. 167-169. Merton reports considerable evidence documenting the thesis that pecuniary
success is the dominant American value.
56. Ibid.
Ds Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960), pp. 116-117. A
sophisticated discussion of the “malignant forms of ‘achievement,’” with reference to sci-
ence as well as business, may be found in Janet T. Spence, “Achievement American Style.
The Rewards and Costs of Individualism,” The American Psychologist, 40 (December 1985),
pp. 1291-1292.
58. For a somewhat different critical analysis of dysfunctional consequences of the American
emphasis on individual rights, its lack of concern for the needs of others, see Mary Ann
Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, discussed and summarized
in Ladd, The American Ideology, pp. 21-22.
59, Herbert Packer, “Two Models of the Criminal Process,” University of Pennsylvania Law
Review, 113 (November 1964), pp. 1-68.
60. Stephen Cole, “Crime as the Cost of American Creativity,” Newsday, August 24, 1983,
Viewpoint Section.
61. Fred Barbash, “Alarmed by Crime Surge, Britain Narrows Rights,” The Washington Post,
November 11, 1994, pp. 1, 41.
62. Alan F. Westin, “The United States Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter: A Socio-Politi-
cal Analysis,” in William R. McKercher, ed., The U.S. Bill of Rights and the Canadian Char-
ter of Rights and Freedoms (Toronto: Ontario Economic Council, 1983), p. 33.
63. David Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies (New
York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988), p. 287.
64. William J. Goode, The World Changes in Divorce Patterns (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1993), p. 153. For recent statistics, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical
Abstract of the United States, 1994, p. 858.
65. Goode, The World Changes in Divorce Patterns, p. 154.
66. Ibid., p. 156.
67. Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest, p. 288.
68. Ibid., p. 289; Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1985), pp. 32-35, 48-50, 89, 101-102.
69. Elise F. Jones, Teenage Pregnancy in Industrialized Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1986), pp. 36, 8-11.
70. Ibid., pp. 89, 223.
TA Richard Rose, “National Pride in Cross-National Perspective,” International Social Science
Journal, 37/1 (1985), pp. 86, 93-95; Russell V. Dalton, Citizen Politics in Western Democra-
cies (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1988), p. 237; Marjorie Hyer, “Poll Finds
Americans Most Proud,” International Herald Tribune, May 20, 1982, p. 3.
72. Elizabeth Hawn Hastings and Phillip K. Hastings, Index to International Public Opinion,
1988-89 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), p. 612.
Ths Ibid.
74. Alex C. Michalos, “Optimism in Thirty Countries Over a Decade,” Social Indicators
Research, 20 (1988), pp. 178-179.

2. ECONOMY, RELIGION, AND WELFARE (pp. 53-76)

. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 51.
2. Analyzing America in the 1880s, James Bryce reiterated Tocqueville's description. Bryce,
The American Commonwealth, 11 (New York: Macmillan, 1912), pp. 817-818, 873.
_ Everett Carll Ladd, The American Ideology: An Exploration of the Origins, Meaning, and Role
 302 Notes (pp. 53-58)

of American Political Ideas (Storrs, CT: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 1994), p.
10. See also Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1954), p. 186.
_ Martin Trow, “American Higher Education: Past, Present and Future”, Educational
Researcher, 17 (April 1988), p. 15.
. Henry Rosovsky, The University: An Owner's Manual (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), pp.
31-32.
. Samuel Huntington, “The U.S.—Decline or Renewal?,” Foreign Affairs, 67 (Winter
1988-89), p. 89.
. Philip Schaff, America: A Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United
States of North America (New York: C. Scribner, 1855), p. 259.
. For Engels, see Engels to Sorge (February 8, 1890) in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
Selected Correspondence, 1846-1895, trans. Donna Torr (New York: International Publish-
ers, 1942), p. 467.
. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner's, 1935;
first published in German, 1905), pp. 55ff.
10. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers,
1971), pp. 21-22, 272, 318.
1]. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 155-183, and Max Weber, “The Protestant Sects and the
Spirit of Capitalism,” in Essays in Sociology, trans. by Hans Gerth and C. W. Mills (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 309, 313.
. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994 (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1994), p. 864.
. Quoted in ibid. For documentation, see Alan Heston and Robert Summers, “What We Have
Learned about Prices and Quantities from International Comparisons: 1987,” American
Economic Review, 78 (May 1988), pp. 467-473.
. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Peter
Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: Harper Business, 1993). For an earlier state-
ment, see Nelson Foote and Paul Hatt, “Social Mobility and Economic Advancement,”
American Economic Review, S43 (May 1953), pp. 364-378.
. Richard Freeman, “Labor Studies,” NBER Reporter (Fall 1994), p. 2.
. For a detailed early analysis of these shifts, see Colin Clark, The Conditions of Economic
Progress (London: Macmillan and Co., 1940).
. See Louis Uchitelle, “Election Placing Focus on the Issue of Jobs vs. Wages,” The New York
Times, September 4, 1988, pp. 1, 14; Joanna Moy, “Recent Trends in Unemployment and
the Labor Force, 10 Countries,” Monthly Labor Review, 108 (August 1985), p. 11.
. Huntington, “The U.S.—Decline or Renewal?,” pp. 82-83; Karen Elliot House, “The 90's
and Beyond: For All Its Difficulties, U.S. Stands to Retain Its Global Leadership,” Wall
Street Journal, January 23, 1989, p. A8.
. Peter T. Kilborn, “A Fight to Win the Middle Class,” The New York Times, September 4,
1988, p. 5, Business Section.
20. “Business Outlook,” BusinessWeek, August 22, 1994, p. 21.
2\t Paul Blustein, “The Great Jobs Debate,” The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, Sep-
tember 5~11, 1988, p. 20; M. W. Horrigan and S. E. Haugen, “The Declining Middle-Class
Thesis: A Sensitivity Analysis,” Monthly Labor Review, 111 (May 1988), pp. 3-13.
pie Sylvia Nasar, “Statistics Reveal Bulk of New Jobs Pay Over Average,” New York Times, Octo-
ber 17, 1994, p. Al.
23. Paul Krugman, “Technology's Revenge,” The Wilson Quarterly, 18 (Autumn 1994), pp.
56-64.
24. Nasar, “Statistics Reveal Bulk... ,” p. D4.
25. Robert J. Samuelson, “Psycho-Facts Revisited,” The Washington Post, June 8, 1994, p. A23.
26. Statistical Abstract, 1994, pp. 103, 91, 87.
27, Robert S. Reich, The Work of Nations. Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 34-35.
 Notes (pp. 58-63) 303

28. See, e.g., Michael L. Dertouzos, Richard K. Lester, Robert M. Solow, and the MIT Com-
mission on Industrial Productivity, Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (New
York: HarperCollins, 1990), p. 26.
23; Richard Rosecrance, America’s Economic Resurgence. A Bold New Strategy (New York:
Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 44-45.
30. Statistical Abstract, 1994, p. 801; James J. Cramer, “Heavy Metal,” The New Republic, April
27, 1992, pp. 23-27. See also various short articles in “Is America on the Way Down?
(Round Two),” Commentary, 93 (May 1992), pp. 19-29, and “Trade Gap Narrowest in 9
Years,” The Washington Post, April 17, 1992, p. D1.
. Cramer, “Heavy Metal,” pp. 23-27.
. Reported in George V. Church, “And It Hurts,” Time, October 24, 1994, p. 51.
. “The Fading of Japanophobia,” The Economist, August 6, 1994, p. 21.
. See chapter One, p. 33. For an elaboration, see Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant:
American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), pp. 36-60, and
Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1985), pp. 28-41, 219-225.
35: Edmund Burke, Selected Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), pp. 180-181.
36. See Weber, “The Protestant Sects and The Spirit of Capitalism.”
Bie Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 175.
38. Ibid., pp. 55-56.
39, Ibid., pp. 48-50.
40. “Workaholics Anonymous,” The Economist, October 22, 1994, p. 20.
41. Linda Bell and Richard Freeman, Why Do Americans and Germans Work Differing Hours?
Working Paper No. 4808 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1994),
pp. 2, 14-15. ,
42. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I, p. 36.
43. Ladd, The American Ideology, pp. 12-15.
44. Code of 1650, Being a Compilation of the Earliest Laws and Orders of the General Court of
Connecticut (Hartford, CT: S. Andrus and Son, c. 1822), pp. 90-91. Cited in Ladd, The
American Ideology, pp. 12-13. Ladd continues: “The Code goes on [to] require the establish-
ment of schools in every township ‘after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty
howshoulders’ and obliges the inhabitants of each township to support them.”
45. For comparative efforts, see David Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and
Decline in Modern Societies (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988), p. 284, and Ronald Ingle-
hart and David Apple, “The Rise of Post-Materialist Values and Changing Religious Orien-
tations, Gender Roles and Sexual Norms,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research,
1 (Spring 1989), pp. 45-75. See also Ladd, The American Ideology, pp. 71-73.
46. Andrew Greeley, Religion Around the World: A Preliminary Report (Chicago: National Opin-
ion Research Center, 1991), p. 39.
47. Ibid., p. 38.
48. Ronald Inglehart, 1990 World Values Survey (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research,
1990), question 37 D.
49. Ibid., question 3 F.
50. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776~—1990: Winners and Losers
in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 15-16.
51. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I, p. 314. For an excellent current overview, see Edward
A. Tiryakian, “American Religious Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration,” Annals of the Ameri-
can Academy of Political and Social Science, 527 (May 1993), pp. 40-54.
52. Kenneth D. Wald, Religion and Politics in the United States (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1987), p. 6. For comparable findings, see Walter Dean Burnham, “The 1980 Earthquake:
Realignment, Reaction, or What?” in Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds., The Hidden
Election (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), p. 132.
Sy Wald, Religion and Politics, pp. 6-7; see also pp. 8-12.
54. Ladd, The American Ideology, p. 15 (emphasis in original).
 304 Notes (pp. 63-70)

55. Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, MA: Belk-
nap Press, 1981), p. 154. For documentation, see pp. 8, 31-32, 84-104.
56. Bellah, The Broken Covenant, p. 48. See also Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), pp. 20, 94.
Mh See also chapter Seven, p. 226-7.
58. See George Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966),
pp. 3-50; Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 182-183.
59. Huntington, American Politics, pp. 158-159.
60. Bellah, Beyond Belief, p. 175; Wald, Religion and Politics, pp. 48-55.
61. Ladd, The American Ideology, p. 5 (emphasis added).
62. R.L. Bruckberger, “The American Catholics as a Minority,” in Thomas T. McAvoy, ed.,
Roman Catholicism and the American Way of Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1960), pp. 45-47. See also Bruckberger, Image of America (New York: Viking
Press, 1959).
63. Bellah, The Broken Covenant, p. 60.
64. Sol Tax, “War and the Draft,” in Morton Fried, Marvin Harris, and Robert Francis Murphy,
eds., War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Natural History Press, 1968), pp. 199-203.
65. See, for example, Samuel Eliot Morison, “Dissent in the War of 1812,” in Morison, Freder-
ick Merk, and Frank Freidel, Dissent in Three American Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1970), pp. 3-31; Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment (New York: Harper,
Torchbooks, 1962), p. 407; Frederick Merk, “Dissent in the Mexican War,” in Morison, et
al., Dissent in Three American Wars, pp. 33-63; Edward S. Wallace, “Notes and Com-
ment—Deserters in the Mexican War,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 15 (1935), p.
374; David Donald, “Died of Democracy,” in David Donald, ed., Why the North Won the
Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1960), pp. 85-89; James
McCague, The Second Rebellion: The Story of The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (New
York: Dial, 1968); Basil L. Lee, Discontent in New York City, 1861-65 (Washington, D.C..:
Catholic University of America Press, 1943); Frank Freidel, “Dissent in the Spanish-Ameri-
can War and the Philippine Insurrection,” in Morison, et al, Dissent in Three American
Wars, pp. 65-95, esp. p. 77; and H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War,
1917-1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1957), pp. 39, 123-135, 234.
66. See Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy.
67. Aileen D. Ross, “Philanthropy,” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, XII (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1968), p. 76.
68. “An American Gentleman” (Calvin Colton), A Voice from America to England (London:
Henry Colburn, 1839), pp. 87-88.
69. Arnoud C. Marts, The Generosity of Americans: Its Source, Its Achievements (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 4-82.
70. Merle Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1963), p. 625.
TN. Ross, “Philanthropy,” p. 76. See essays in Teresa Odendahl, ed., America’s Wealthy and the
Future of Foundations (Washington, D.C.: Foundation Center, 1987).
Ue, Quoted in Robert H. Bremner, American Philanthropy (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988), p. 138.
WES David Deitch, “Libertarians Unite in Drive to Reduce Tax Burdens,” Boston Globe, April 10,
1971, p. 7. See also “What's This?” Dissent, 18 (August 1971), p. 395.
74. Cited in Martin Green, The Problem of Boston (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), p. 4.
Tae Ibid., p. 56.
76. Ben Whitaker, The Foundations: An Anatomy of Philanthropy and Society (London: Eyre
Methuen, 1974), p. 53.
77. Quoted in Joseph C. Goulden, The Money Givers (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 47.
78. Ibid., p. 28. See also Whitaker, The Foundations, pp. 64-66; Bremner, American Philan-
thropy, p. 106.
 Notes (pp. 70-76) 305

SE Giving and Volunteering in the United States: Findings from A National Survey (Washington,
D.C.: Independent Sector, 1992), p. 29.
80. Ibid., p. 40. See also Edward C. Jenkins, Philanthropy in America (New York: Association
Press, 1950), p. 91; William S. Vickrey, “One Economist’s View of Philanthropy,” in Frank
Dickinson, ed., Philanthropy and Public Policy (New York: National Bureau of Economic
Research, 1962), p. 33; George G. Kirstein, Better Giving (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1975), pp. 59-71. For detailed statistics, see the annual reports, Giving USA, published
each year by the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, Inc., begun in 1954.
. Vickrey, “One Economist’s View of Philanthropy,” p. 45.
. Merrimon Cuninggim, Private Money and Public Service (New York; McGraw-Hill, 1972),
pp. 169-170.
. Ross, “Philanthropy,” p. 78.
. Giving and Volunteering in the United States, p. 36.
. Barringer, “In the Worst of Times,” p. E6. Data are from Independent Sector, a Washington-
based group representing the nation’s non-profit institutions, and Giving USA.
. Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest, p. 285.
. Robert T. Kudrle and Theodore R. Marmor, “The Development of Welfare States in North
America,” in P. Flora and A. J. Heidenheimer, eds., The Development of Welfare States in
Europe and North America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), p. 83.
88. J. Palmer, T. Smeeding, and B. B. Torrey, eds., The Vulnerable (Washington, D.C.: Urban
Institute, 1988).
89. See Stephanie G. Gould and John L. Palmer, “Outcomes, Interpretations, and Policy Impli-
cations,” in ibid., p. 428.
90. Inglehart, 1990 World Values Survey.
OT. International Social Survey Program (ISSP) (Chicago: NORC, biannual, 1990, 1992).
92. Ibid., 1992.
93: Ibid.
94. Ibid. See also Benjamin J. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of
Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 128.
OS: Tomés Kolosi, “Beliefs About Inequality in Cross-National Perspective.” Paper prepared for
1987 conference on “The Welfare State in Transition,” p. 33.
96. Alvin Rabushka, Ten Myths About Higher Taxes (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Working
Paper, 1993), p. 15.
HE “Inequality for Richer, for Poorer,” The Economist, November 5, 1994, pp. 19-20. The mag-
azine presents a chart constructed for thirteen OECD countries from data drawn from
diverse sources.
98. Keith Bradsher, “Gap in Wealth in U.S. Called Widest in West,” New York Times, April 17,
1995, p. Al, D4.
99. Michael F, Férster, Comparing Poverty in 13 OECD Countries—Traditional and Synthetic
Approaches, Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper No. 100 (Syracuse, NY: Maxwell
School, Syracuse University, 1994), pp. 61-63.
100. Bradsher, “Gap in Wealth,” p. D4.
101. Timothy M. Smeeding and John Coder, Income Inequality in Rich Countries During the
1980s. Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper No. 88 (Syracuse, NY: Maxwell School,
Syracuse University, 1993), pp. 1-2, 10-12.
102. Anthony King, “Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: A Comparative Analy-
sis: Parts I and II,” British Journal of Political Science, 3 (July 1973), p. 300.
103. Ladd, The American Ideology, p. 35.
104, Brigitte Buhmann, et al., “Equivalence Scales, Well Being, Inequality, and Poverty: Sensitiv-
ity Estimates Across Ten Countries Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database,”
Review of Income and Wealth, 34 (June 1988), pp. 126-133; Timothy M. Smeeding and
Barbara Boyld Torrey, “Poor Children in Rich Countries,” Science, 242 (November 11,
1988), pp. 873-877.
 306 Notes (pp. 76-80)

105. Sidney Verba et al., Elites and the Idea of Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1987).

3. SOCIALISM AND UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA (pp. 77-109)
1 My most detailed analysis of the weakness of Socialist parties in America is “Why No Social-
ism in the United States?” in S. Bialer and S. Sluzar, eds., Sources of Contemporary Radical-
ism, 1 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), pp. 31-149 and 346-363. A discussion of the
decline of the American trade union movement which has been subsumed in this chapter is
“Trade Union Exceptionalism: The United States and Canada,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 538 (March 1995), pp. 115-130.
. See, for example, Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia (New York:
Viking Press, 1960), pp. 268-272; Michael Shalev and Walter Korpi, “Working Class Mobi-
lization and American Exceptionalism,” Economic and Industrial Democracy, 1 (February
1990), pp. 31-61; and Alan Wolfe, “Cultural Sources of the Reagan Revolution: The Anti-
modern Legacy,” in B. B. Kymlicka and Jean V. Matthews, eds., The Reagan Revolution?
(Chicago: The Dorsey Press, 1988).
. Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1993).
. For comments and references, see Lipset, “Why No Socialism in the United States?”, pp.
31-149 and 346-363.
. Karl Marx, Capital, |(Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), pp. 8-9.
. Lipset, “Why No Socialism in the United States?”, pp. 32-33.
. See ibid., pp. 45-61, for references.
. David L. Sills and Robert King Merton, eds., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sci-
ences: Social Science Quotations (New York: Macmillan, 1991), p. 229.
. Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (White Plains, NY: Inter-
national Arts and Sciences Press, 1976).
. On Marx's views, see Lewis S. Feuer, Marx and the Intellectuals (Garden City, NY: Doubleday-
Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 198-209. On the Workingmen’s parties, see Nathan Fine, Labor
and Farmer Parties in the United States, 1828-1928 (New York: Rand School of Social Sci-
ence, 1928), pp. 13-14; Edward Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians (Albany, NY: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1967), pp. 183-189; Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the
Working Class (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 13, 18-20, 132-134.
Ms Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers,
1960), p. 123.
12. Engels to Sorge, February 8, 1890, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspon-
dence, 1846-1895, trans. Donna Torr (New York: International Publishers, 1942), p. 467.
Tey Engels to Sorge, December 31, 1892, in ibid., p. 501.
. Engels to Weydemeyer, August 7, 1851, in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Alexander Tra-
chtenberg, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Letters to Americans, 1848-1895 (New York:
International Publishers, 1953), p. 26.
\IBy, See Lipset, “Why No Socialism in the United States?”, pp. 32-47.
16. Engels to Sorge, June 29, 1883, “Unpublished Letters of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to
Americans,” Science and Society, 2 (1938), p. 231.
WA Quoted in Sidney Hook, Marx and the Marxists (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1955), p. 64.
18. Engels to Sorge, September 16, 1886, “Unpublished Letters,” p. 358.
19, Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works.
Vol. III (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), p. 151 (emphasis in original).
20. Ibid., p. 155 (emphases in original).
21. See Daniel Bell, “The Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United
States,” in Donald D. Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialism and American Life, I (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1952); Martin Diamond, “The Problems of the Socialist
Party: After World War One,” in John H. M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Fail-
 Notes (pp. 80-89) 307

ure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday-
Anchor Books, 1974), pp. 362-379; Bernard Johnpoll, Pacifist's Progress (Chicago: Quadran-
gle Books, 1970); R. Laurence Moore, European Socialists and the American Promised Land
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of Amer-
ica (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967).
. Engels to Sorge, October 24, 1891, in Letters to Americans, p. 237.
. Engels to Sorge, December 2, 1893, “Unpublished Letters,” p. 375.
. Harvey Klehr, “Marxist Theory in Search of America,” The Journal of Politics, 35 (1973), p.
S18
. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Selected Works. Vol. Il (Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Work-
ers in the USSR, 1936), p. 324.
26. Engels to Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky, June 3, 1886, in Selected Correspondence,
1846-1895, p. 449.
Bihe See Marx as quoted in Michael Harrington, Socialism (New York: Saturday Review Press,
1972),
p.115.
28. For a discussion of the writings of later socialists on the subject, see Lipset, “Why No
Socialism in the United States?”, pp. 75-83.
29) Karlyn H. Keene and Everett Carll Ladd, “America: A Unique Outlook?” The American
Enterprise, 1 (March-April 1990), p. 118.
30. Ronald Inglehart, 1990 World Values Survey (data reports).
3h See Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians, pp. 183-189; and Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy,
pp. 13, 18-20, 132-134.
32. Benjamin J. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Ameri-
cans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 128.
33) Tom W. Smith, “Social Inequality in Cross-National Perspective,” in J. W. Becker, et al.,
eds., Attitudes to Inequality and the Role of Government (Rijswijk, The Netherlands: The
Social and Cultural Bureau, 1990), p. 24.
34. Keene and Ladd, “America: A Unique Outlook?,” p. 117.
She The American Enterprise, 4:3 (May—June), p. 85.
36. Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?, p. 106.
Shs John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: NAL/Dutton, 1963); see also Gal-
braith, The Culture of Contentment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992).
38. Selig Perlman, Theory of the Labor Movement (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949), p. 167.
Ce. See Leon Samson, Toward a United Front (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1935); H. G.
Wells, The Future in America (New York: Harper & Bros., 1906), pp. 72-76; Louis Hartz,
The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955); Louis Hartz,
The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964); and Harring-
ton, Socialism.
40. Antonio Gramsci, “The Intellectuals,” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York:
International Publishers, 1971), pp. 21-22.
41. Ibid., pp. 281, 285, 305.
42. See Hermann Keyserling, America Set Free (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929), pp.
237-239, 244-252; Samson, Toward a United Front, pp. 1-90; Sidney Hook, “The Philo-
sophical Basis of Marxian Socialism in the United States,” in Egbert and Persons, eds.,
Socialism and American Life, 1, pp. 450-451; Harrington, Socialism; Carl N. Degler, Out of
Our Past (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 271-272.
43. Harrington, Socialism, p. 118.
44, For my previous efforts, see Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and
Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990); see also Lipset,
The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1979).
45. It is not generally known that the Parti Québécois applied for membership in the Socialist
International, but was rejected because the NDP would not agree.
 308 Notes (pp. 89-97)

46. Christopher Huxley, David Kettler, and James Struthers, “Is Canada’s Experience ‘Espe-
cially Instructive?’” in Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., Unions in Transition: Entering the Sec-
ond Century (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1986), pp. 113-133; George Sayers Bain and
Robert Price, Profiles of Union Growth: A Comparative Statistical Portrait of Eight Countries
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).
47. Noah M. Meltz, Unionism in the Private Service Sector: A Canada-U.S. Comparison
(Toronto: Centre for Industrial Relations, University of Toronto, 1990).
48. For analysis and bibliography, see Lipset, Continental Divide; see also Lipset, The First New
Nation.
49, Lipset, Continental Divide, pp. 1-18; Seymour Martin Lipset, Revolution and Counterrevo-
lution (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, revised ed., 1988), pp. 37-75; Lipset, “His-
torical Traditions and National Characteristics: A Comparative Analysis of Canada and the
United States,” Canadian Journal of Sociology, 11 (Summer 1986), pp. 114-115, 117-118.
50. Gad Horowitz, Canadian Labour in Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968),
pp. 6-9.
oul. Lipset, The First New Nation, pp. 88, 160.
SPs Northrop Frye, Divisions on a Ground: Essays on Canadian Culture (Toronto: Anansi, 1982),
p. 66.
53% Robert Kudrle and Theodore Marmor, “The Development of Welfare States in North Amer-
ica,” in Peter Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer, eds., The Development of Welfare States in
Europe and America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981), pp. 91-93; Lipset,
Continental Divide, pp. 128-134.
54. Ibid., pp. 142-149.
Day Robert Presthus, Elites in the Policy Process (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p.
463.
56. Harold Innis, Essays in Canadian Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1956), p. 385.
Sic Henry Phelps Brown, The Origins of Union Power (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 249.
58. William Christian and Colin Campbell, Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada (Toronto:
McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1983), p. 36. ‘
Do Herschel Hardin, A Nation Unaware. The Canadian Economic Culture (Vancouver, BC: J. J.
Douglas, 1974), pp. 62, 140.
60. J. T. McLeod, “The Free Enterprise Dodo Is No Phoenix,” The Canadian Forum, 56 (August
1976), pp. 6, 9.
61. Marsha A. Chandler, “The Politics of Public Enterprise,” in J. Robert S. Pritchard, ed.,
Crown Corporations in Canada (Toronto: Butterworth, 1983), p. 187.
62. Kudrle and Marmor, “The Development of Welfare States,” p. 110.
63. Anne Swardson, “Canada Weighs Political, Financial Costs of Welfare Reform,” The Wash-
ington Post, October 27, 1994, p. A20.
64. See Lipset, Continental Divide.
65. Jeffrey G. Reitz and Raymond Breton, The Illusion of Differences. Realities of Ethnicity in
Canada and the United States (Toronto: C. D. Howe Institute, 1994), p. 33.
66. Wells, The Future in America, pp. 72-76; Hartz, The Founding of New Societies, p. 35;
Horowitz, Canadian Labour in Politics, p. 52; Brown, The Origins of Union Power, p. 240.
67. Gad Horowitz, “Tories, Socialists and the Demise of Canada,” Canadian Dimension, 2
(May-June 1956), p. 2.
68. William E. Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 10.
69. Mark A. Thompson and Albert H. Blum, “International Unionism in Canada: The Move to
Local Control,” Industrial Relations, 22 (Winter 1983), p. 83.
70. Horowitz, Canadian Labour in Politics, p. 59. 5
“Als Ibid., p. 184.
. Brown, The Origins of Union Power, p. 240.
 Notes (pp. 97-103) 309

tse pals Lubell, “Post-Mortem: Who Elected Roosevelt?” Saturday Evening Post, January 25,
941, p. 9.
74, Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor and
Government in the Public Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp.
134-135, 149-150, 386, 410-411.
they Seymour Martin Lipset, “North American Labor Movements: A Comparative Perspective,”
in Lipset, ed., Unions in Transition, pp. 438-442.
76. See Lipset, Continental Divide, p. 140.
hes Brian Bergman, “The Crusader,” Maclean's, October 25, 1993, pris
78. Paul Weiler, The Representation Gap in the North American Workplace (Toronto:
Woodsworth College, University of Toronto, 1989), p. 7.
ie: Leo Troy, “The Futures of American Unions,” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy,
5 (Winter 1990) pp.37—-45.
80. Ibid, p. 26.; John Richards, “A Tangled Tale: Unions in Canada and the United States,” in
David Thomas, ed., Canada and the United States: Differences That Count (Peterborough,
Ont: Broadview Press, 1993), p. 68.
81. Noah Meltz, “Developments in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Policies in
Canada,” in Richard Locke, Thomas Kochan, and Michael Piore, eds., Employment Rela-
tions in a Changing Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
82. Richards, “A Tangled Tale,” p. 68.
83. W. Craig Riddell, Unionization in Canada and the United States: A Tale of Two Countries.
Working Paper Series QPIR 1993-1 (Kingston, Ont.: Industrial Relations Center, Queen’s
University, 1993), p. 26.
84. Jelle Visser, “The Strength of Union Movements in Advanced Capitalist Democracies:
Social and Organizational Variations,” in Marino Regini, ed., The Future of Labour Move-
ments (London: Sage, 1992), p. 18 (emphasis in original).
85. Noah M. Meltz, “Unionism in the Private Sector: A Canada-U.S. Comparison,” in Jane
Jensen and Rianne Mahon, eds., Canadian and American Labor Respond: Economic Restruc-
turing and Union Strategies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 207-225.
86. For evidence relevant to a critique of the political and employer policy arguments, see
Lipset, “North American Labor Movements,” pp. 427-438.
87. Gary Bowden, “Labor Unions in the Public Mind: The Canadian Case,” Canadian Review of
Sociology and Anthropology, 26/5 (1989), pp. 735-739; Lipset, Continental Divide, p. 69.
88. In line with this hypothesis, I would note that in October 1975, when the Labour Party was
in power in Britain, and there were 11 million union members, MORI (Market Opinion
Research International) found that three quarters, 75 percent, of a national sample agreed
with the statement: “Trade Unions have too much power in Britain today.” Opinion seemed
to be anti-union, but by the late eighties and early nineties after the Conservatives had held
power for a decade or more, and union membership had fallen to 7 million, the percentage
holding such views had declined to around two fifths, 38 to 41 percent. Those disagreeing
had risen from one seventh, 16-17 percent in the seventies, to around half, 45 to 54 per-
cent, in the beginning of the nineties.
89. International Labour Office, Year Book of Labour Statistics (Geneva: ILO, 1988), pp. 1048,
1050.
90. Bowden, “Labor Unions in the Public Mind,” p. 734.
91. “Canadian Public Opinion Regarding the Organized Labour Movement: A Tracking Fea-
ture,” The Reid Report, 4 (June 1989), p. 1.
92. Bowden, “Labor Unions in the Public Mind,” p. 43.; Peter Bruce, “Political Parties and the
Evolution of Labor Law in Canada and the United States.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department
of Political Science, MIT, 1988; Weiler, The Representation Gap.
355 Huxley, Kettler, and Struthers, “Is Canada’s Experience ‘Especially Instructive’?”, p. 131
(emphases in original).
94. Unlike the situation in the United States, labor relations are largely under provincial juris-
 310 Notes (pp. 103-106)

diction in Canada. Between 1984 and 1992, a vote was required in British Columbia for cer-
tification. This provision was abolished by the NDP government in January 1993. The Con-
servative government elected in Ontario in 1995 is committed to requiring elections.
95. Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (New York: Basic Books,
1984), p. 239. For an earlier comprehensive review, see Herbert G. Heneman III and Mar-
cus H. Sandver, “Predicting the Outcome of Union Certification Elections: A Review of the
Literature,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 36 (July 1983), pp. 537-559; see also
William T. Dickens, “The Effect of Company Campaigns on Certification Elections: Law
and Reality Once Again,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 36 (July 1983), pp.
560-575.
96. Paul Weiler, “Promises to Keep: Securing Worker's Rights to Self-Organization Under the
NLRA,” Harvard Law Review, 96 (June 1983), pp. 1769-1827; “Striking a New Balance:
Freedom of Contract and Prospects for Union Representation,” Harvard Law Review, 98
(December 1984), pp. 351-420; and Governing the Workplace. The Future of Labor and
Employment Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 254-255. Peter
Bruce, “Political Parties and Labor Legislation in Canada and the U.S.,” Industrial Relations,
28 (Spring 1989), pp. 115-141.
Oye "Transformation: Declining and Shifting Union Membership,” The Public Perspective, 4
(July/August 1994), p. 9.
98. Derek Bok, “Reflections on the Distinctive Character of American Labor Laws,” Harvard
Law Review, 84 (April 1971), p. 1426.
99. Brown, The Origins of Union Power, p. 215.
100. Everett Kassalow, “The Closed and Union Shop in Western Europe: An American Perspec-
tive,” Journal of Labor Research, | (Fall 1980), p. 328.
101. Weiler, “Promises to Keep,” p. 1820.
102. Henry S. Farber and Alan B. Krueger, Union Membership in the United States: The Decline
Continues. Working Paper No. 4216 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic
Research, 1992), pp. 17-18 and 32.
103. Ibid., Table 1.
104. Henry S. Farber, “The Decline of Unionization in the United States: What Can Be Learned
from Recent Experience?” Journal of Labor Economics, 8, no. 1 (1990), pp. S97, S94—-S95.
105. Ibid., p. S100.
106. “Canadian Public Opinion,” p. 15. A survey by Gallup Canada Inc. on attitudes toward
unionization among non-union private sector employees in Montreal and Toronto indicates
that 40 percent of the non-managerial employees would like to be unionized. Jean-Guy
Bergeron, “Unionization in the Private Sector.” Ph.D. Thesis, Centre for Industrial Rela-
tions, University of Toronto, 1993, pp. 101-102.
107. See Farber and Krueger, “Union Membership” and Riddell, “Unionization in Canada and
the United States,” pp. 28-30.
108. Noah M. Meltz, “Inter-State versus Inter-Provincial Differences in Union Density,” Indus-
trial Relations, 28 (Spring 1989), p. 149.
109. John Calvert, “The Divergent Paths of the Canadian and American Labour Movements,”
The Round Table, 303 (July 1987), p. 383.
110. Bowden, “Labor Unions in the Public Mind,” p. 740.
I Lipset, Continental Divide, pp. 140-141.
NPY Visser, “The Strength of Union Movements,” p. 40.
113. David Moberg, “Union Busting, Past and Present,” Dissent, 39 (Winter 1992), pp. 73-74
(emphasis in the original). Moberg draws heavily on the more detailed and documented arti-
cle by Sanford M. Jacoby, “American Exceptionalism Revisited: The Importance of Manage-
ment,” in Jacoby, ed., Masters to Managers. Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Amer-
ican Employers (New York: Columbia University Rress, 1991), pp. 173-200. ;
114. Brown, The Origins of Union Power, p. 235.
115. Harvey Krahn and Graham S. Lowe, “Public Attitudes Towards Unions: Some Canadian
Evidence,” Journal of Labor Research, 5 (Spring 1984), pp. 160-161.
 Notes (pp. 107-116) 311

116. Donald Swartz, “Capitalist Restructuring and the Canadian Labour Movement.” Unpub-
lished paper, School of Public Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa, 1989.
LW Harry C. Katz and Noah M. Meltz, “Profit Sharing and Auto Workers’ Earnings. The United
States vs. Canada,” Relations industrielles, 46, no. 3 (1991), pp. 515-530.
118. Swartz, “Capitalist Restructuring.”
119. Richard B. Freeman, “What Does the Future Hold for U.S. Unionism?” Relations indus-
trielles, 44, no 1 (1989), pp. 40-41.
120. For a discussion and reference to the literature, see Lipset, Continental Divide, pp.
140-141.
t205 Meltz, “Labor Movements in Canada and the United States,” in Thomas A. Kochan, ed.,
Challenges and Choices Facing American Labor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), pp.
327-328.
122% Charles McDonald, “U.S. Union Membership in Future Decades: A Trade Unionist’s Per-
spective,” Industrial Relations, 31 (Winter 1992), pp. 19-23; John Judis, “Can Labor Come
Back?” The New Republic, May 23, 1994, p. 32.
123. Judis “Can Labor Come Back?” p. 32.
124. Peter G. Bruce, “Unfair Labor Practice Cases,” in Jane Jenson and Rianne Mahon, eds., The
Challenge of Restructuring: North American Labor Movements Respond (Philadelphia: Tem-
ple University Press, 1993), p. 192.
125. Robertson Davies, “Dark Hamlet with the Features of Horatio: Canada’s Myths and Reali-
ties,” in Judith Webster, ed., Voices of Canada. An Introduction to Canadian Culture
(Burlington, VT: Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, 1977), p. 43.
126. Support for the idea of socialism in the opinion polls, membership in trade unions, and the
correlations between class position and voting all declined greatly during the period of post-
war prosperity and increased social mobility that lasted through most of the 1970s. See
Lipset and Schneider, The Confidence Gap, pp. 282-284, 353; Seymour Martin Lipset,
Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
expanded ed., 1981), pp. 503-521; and “The Re-Unionization of America,” The Economist,
October 29, 1993, p. 71.
127. For a discussion which seeks to apply some of these factors to an explanation of the differ-
ent patterns of working-class politics in Europe and Australasia, see Seymour Martin Lipset,
Consensus and Conflict: Essays in Political Sociology (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Books, 1985), pp. 219-253.
128. Walter Dean Burnham, “The United States: The Politics of Heterogeneity,” in Richard
Rose, ed., Electoral Behavior (New York: The Free Press, 1974), pp. 718-719.

4. Two Americas, Two VALUE SysTEMS: BLACKS AND WHITES (pp. 113-150)
. Ihave written a number of papers on this subject. The most recent, much of which is incor-
porated here, is “Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites,” The Tocqueville
Review, 13, no. 1 (1992), pp. 137-177.
. Edward Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Move-
ment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1967), pp. 183-189; and Walter
Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Working-
man’s Movement 1829-1837 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 13,
18-20, 132-134.
. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957),
p. 169.
4, Mark Whitaker, et al., “A Crisis of Shattered Dreams,” Newsweek, May 6, 1991, pp. 28-31.
. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p.
156.
. James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (New York: New American
Library, 1984), pp. 389-390.
. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 462-466.
 312 Notes (pp. 116-122)

_ Generalizations such as these are inherently comparative, in this case with other countries,
and are clearly not meant as absolute judgments. Obviously, Americans have distinguished
and discriminated by group characteristics, as is evident in nativist anti-immigrant policies,
quota restrictions against Jews, and the like. But, as compared to others, they have been
more individualistic.
. Robert Y. Shapiro and John T. Young, “Public Opinion and the Welfare State: The United
States in Comparative Perspective,” Political Science Quarterly, 104 (Spring 1989), pp.
59-89.
. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Social Expenditure 1960-1990
(Paris: OECD, 1985), pp. 21, 24.
. Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators
(Paris: OECD, 1993), p. 69.
. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 1990 (Washington,
D.C.; Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvements, 1991),
p. 380.
. Lawrence H. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity and the Civic Culture
(Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1990), pp. 165-168.
. It should be noted that proposals for special preference or equality of results actually sur-
faced among blacks as early as 1871, soon after emancipation, when black leader Martin
Delany argued that the way to counter discrimination was to establish quotas for blacks,
mulattoes, and other minorities. See Martin Delany, Homes for the Freedman (Charleston,
SC, 1871); Dorothy Sterling, The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robinson Delany
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 288-290; and Frederick Douglass, “Letter to
Major Delany,” in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, TV (New
York: International Publishers, 1955), pp. 280-281.
Debates over the need for “special efforts” and welfare programs for blacks occurred dur-
ing the Reconstruction period. Many of the current arguments criticizing “ ‘class legisla-
tion’—singling out one group of citizens for special government favors,’—and their sup-
posed invidious effect on black morale and encouragement of dependency were made then
by Frederick Douglass and other black leaders. See Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s
Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 67-68, 237,
308-309. For a detailed recent account by two Republicans of the GOP role, see Paul Craig
Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton, Jr., “Color Code,” National Review, March 20, 1995,
especially p. 48.
. Gary C. Bryner, “Affirmative Action Minority Rights or Reverse Discrimination?” in Ray-
mond Tatalovich and Byron W. Daynes, eds., Social Regulatory Policy: Moral Controversies
in American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), pp. 159-160.
16. Hugh David Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 326-331. Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard
Nixon and the American Dream (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 522-523.
. Lawrence H. Silberman, “The Road to Racial Quotas,” Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1977,
p. 14.
18. Graham, The Civil Rights Era, p. 331.
19% Congressional Quarterly, Congress and the Nation, III (Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Quarterly, 1973), p. 711.
20. David E. Rosenbaum, “Shultz Appeals to House on Jobs,” The New York Times, December
21, 1969, p. 39.
PAN Graham, The Civil Rights Era, pp. 339-340.
22: Congressional Quarterly, Congress and the Nation, p. 711.
. Rosenbaum, “Shultz Appeals to House,” p. 39.
24. Congressional Quarterly, Congress and the Nation, p. 711.
25. Jefferson Morley, “Bush and the Blacks: An Unknown Story,” New York Review of Books,
‘January 16, 1992, p. 25.
26. Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman, “Elite Dissensus and Its Origins,”
 Notes (pp. 122-133) 313

Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 18 (Summer 1990), pp. 25-39, See also Roberts
and Stratton, “Color Code,” pp. 45-46.
Bile Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: William Morrow, 1967), pp.
3-10.
28. There have, of course, been many examples of state support for group economic objectives,
€.g., protective tariffs, guaranteed farm prices, and minimum wages.
Pei Connie Leslie, “A Rich Legacy of Preference: Alumni Kids Get a Big Break on Admissions,”
Newsweek, June 24, 1991, p. 59.
30.: Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Compara-
tive Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1963; expanded paperback ed., New York: W. W.
Norton, 1979), p. 331 (emphasis in original).
3E Barry R. Chiswick, “Is the New Immigration Less Skilled Than the Old?” Journal of Labor
Economics, 9 (April 1986) pp. 168-192.
32. Benjamin J. Wattenberg, The First Universal Nation: Leading Indicators and Ideas About the
Surge of America in the 1990s (New York: The Free Press, 1991), pp. 59-61.
33. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope, pp. 451-452.
34. For reviews of findings, see James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality:
American's Views of What Is and What Ought to Be (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986), pp.
200-203; John H. Bunzel, “Affirmative Re-actions,” Public Opinion, 9 (February-March,
1989), pp. 45-49; Frederick R. Lynch, The Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of
Affirmative Action (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), pp. 17-20; and Everett Carll Ladd,
The American Ideology: An Exploration of the Origins, Meanings, and Role of American Politi-
cal Ideas (Storrs, CT: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 1994), pp. 56-58.
aon Gallup Poll, Gallup Poll Monthly, no. 291 (December 1989), p. 18.
36. These breakdowns are from the 1987 sample. The 1990 results are similar.
32: Peter Skerry, Mexican Americans. The Ambivalent Minority (New York: The Free Press,
1993), pp. 288-293.
38. See “Proposed Anti-Affirmative Action Initiative Generating High Awareness and Initial
Support,” The Field Poll, March 7, 1995, pp. 1-2.
a9; Skerry, Mexican Americans, p. 285.
40. Ibid., p. 287.
41. For poll data bearing on these points, see Bryner, “Affirmative Action Minority Rights,” pp.
173-174.
42. Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, and Lawrence Bobo, Racial Attitudes in America (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
43. The General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center, taken every two years
since 1972, indicates steady eee ene on attitudes toward racial equality in many areas
through 1993.
44, Whitaker, et al., “A Crisis of Shattered Dreams,” pp. 30-31.
. Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, “The Bakke Case: How Would It Be
Decided at the Bar of Public Opinion?” Public Opinion, 1(March—April 1978), pp. 38-44.
46. See Seymour Martin Lipset, “No Third Way: A Comparative Perspective on the Left,”
Daniel Chirot, ed., The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1991), pp. 205-207.
47. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “The Black Leadership Myth,” The New Yorker, October 24, 1994,
. 7-8.
48. sand F. Drucker, “The Age of Social Transformation,” Atlantic Monthly, 274 (November
1994), p. 62.
49, Linda S. Lichter, “Who Speaks for Black America?” Public Opinion, 8 (August-September,
1985), pp. 41-44, 58.
50. Tom Morganthau, “Losing Ground,” Newsweek, April 6, 1992, p. 21.
Sin Gates, “The Black Leadership Myth,” p. 8 (emphasis S.M.L.).
. Diane Colasanto, “Public Wants Civil Rights Widened for Some Groups, Not for Others,”
Gallup Poll Monthly, no. 291 (December 1989), p. 15 (emphasis SML).
 314 Notes (pp. 134-137)

53: William J. Wilson, “Public Policy Research and the Truly Disadvantaged,” in Christopher
Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 1991), pp. 463-464.
54. William J. Wilson, “The Poor Image of Black Men,” New Perspectives Quarterly, 8 (Summer
1991), pp. 26~29.
By Ronald B. Mincy, Isabel V. Sawhill, and Douglas A. Wolf, “The Underclass: Definition and
Measurement,” Science, 248 (April 27, 1990), p. 451.
56. Paul A. Jargowsky and Mary Jo Bane, “Ghetto Poverty in the United States,” in Jencks and
Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass, p. 252.
By Paul E. Peterson, “The Urban Underclass and the Poverty Paradox,” in Jencks and Peterson,
eds., The Urban Underclass, p. 22.
58. Isabel V. Sawhill, “The Underclass: An Overview,” The Public Interest, 96 (Summer 1989),
pp. 6-11.
59, Richard Harwood, “The Focus on Blacks,” The Washington Post, March 8, 1992, p. C6.
60. William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and Public Pol-
icy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 8-10; William J. Wilson, “Studying
Inner-City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research,” American Socio-
logical Review, 56 (February 1991), pp. 8-10.
61. Richard P. Nathan, “Will the Underclass Always Be With Us?” Society, 24 (March-April
1987), p. 58.
62. William P. O'Hare, et al., “African Americans in the 1990s,” Population Review, 46 (June
1991), p. 8.
63. Quoted in Karen De Witt, “Wave of Suburban Growth Is Being Fed by Minorities,” The
New York Times, August 15, 1994, pp. Al, 12.
64. U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Black Population in the United States: March 1994 and
1993 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics, and Statistical
Administration, 1994), p. 9.
65. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Brief for Congress, Black Children in America: 1993
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics, and Statistical Administra-
tion, 1994), p. 3.
66. U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Black Population in the United States, p. 9. Between the
years 1980 and 1994, the percentage of college-educated blacks increased from 8 to 13 per-
cent, while the proportion of whites grew from 18 to 23 percent (see note 64).
67. James P. Smith and Finis R. Welch, Closing the Gap: Forty Years of Economic Progress for
Blacks (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1986), p. ix.
68. Gerald D. Jaynes and Robin M. Williams, Jr., eds., A Common Destiny: Blacks in American
Society (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989), p. 275.
69. Ibid., pp. 275-276.
70. William J. Wilson, “Race, Class and Public Policy,” The American Sociologist, 16 (1981), pp.
126-127; Jaynes and Williams, A Common Destiny, pp. 279-286.
Yt Jaynes and Williams, A Common Destiny, p. 87; James P. Scanlan, “The Perils of Provoca-
tive Statistics,” The Public Interest, 102 (Winter 1991), pp. 5-8.
[ee Wattenberg, The Birth Dearth, p. 77; Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great
Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 203;
O'Hare, et al., “African Americans in the 1990s,” p. 11.
13: David Ellwood, and Jonathan Crane, “Family Change Among Black Americans: What Do
We Know?” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4 (Fall 1990), p. 70.
74, Victor R. Fuchs, The Feminization of Poverty? (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Eco-
nomic Research, 1986), pp. 10-11.
x Quoted in Steven A. Holmes, “Income Gap ahi for Blacks and Whites,” New York
Times, February 23, 1995, p. A21.
76. Ibid. See also U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Black soto in the United States.
77. Jencks, “Is the American Underclass Growing?” in Jencks and Peterson, eds., The Urban
Underclass, pp. 86-89.
 Notes (pp. 137-145) 315

78. Holmes, “Income Gap Persists for Blacks and Whites,” p. A21. See also The Black Popula-
tion in the United States.
79. Soo In Son, Suzanne W. Model, and Gene A. Fisher, “Polarization and Progress in the Black
Community: Earnings and Status Gains for Young Black Males in the Era of Affirmative
Action,” Sociological Forum, 4 (Winter 1989), p. 323. Jencks, “Is the American Underclass
Growing?”, pp. 53-55.
80. Similar class differences have been reported with respect to the effects of affirmative action
on women’s opportunities in James P. Smith and Michael Wood, “Women in the Labor
Market and the Family,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3 (Winter 1989), pp. 9-23.
81. Jonathan S. Leonard, “The Impact of Affirmative Action Regulation and Equal Employment
Law on Black Employment,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4 (Fall 1990) pp. 53, 60.
O'Hare, et al., “African Americans in the 1990s,” p. 24.
82, William Julius Wilson, “Race, Class and Public Policy,” pp. 127, 129.
83. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, p. 115; William J. Wilson, The Declining Significance of
Race: Blacks and Changing American Institution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978), pp. 18-19, 152-153. See also James Fishkin, Justice, Equal Opportunity and the
Family (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 92.
84. In Son, et al., “Polarization and Progress,” p. 323; Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope, pp.
442-444; Leonard, “The Impact of Affirmative Action Regulation,” pp. 50, 52, 61.
85. O'Hare, et al., “African Americans in the 1990s,” p. 28.
86. Henry Aaron, “Symposium on the Economic Status of African Americans,” Journal of Eco-
nomic Perspectives, 4 (Fall 1990), p. 5.
87. Margery Turner, Michael Fix, and Raymond Struik, Opportunities Denied, Opportunities
Diminished: Discrimination in Hiring (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1991). See also
Michael Fix and Raymond J. Struyk, eds., Clear and Convincing Evidence (Washington,
D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1993), and Joleen Kirschenman and Katherine Neckerman,
“We'd Love to Hire Them, But ... : The Meaning of Race for Employers,” in Christopher
Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings
Institution, 1991).
88. For an excellent review of the changing issues and partisan stances surrounding affirmative
action, see William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, “The Changing Culture of Affirma-
tive Action,” Research in Political Science, 3 (1987), pp. 137-177.
89. Lemann, The Promised Land, p. 183.
. For reports of studies and an excellent analysis, see Thomas B. Edsall, “In Louisiana, Whites
Often Feel Ignored,” The Washington Post, March 12, 1991, p. A5; and “Rights Drive Said
to Lose Underpinnings,” The Washington Post, March 9, 1991, p. A6.
on Lynch, The Invisible Victims, p. 3.
92; Cited in Edsall, “In Louisiana Whites Often Feel Ignored.”
93. See John Judis, “The Old Democrat,” New Republic, February 22, 1993, pp. 18-21.
94. Thomas B. Edsall, “Revolt of the Discontented,” The Washington Post, November 11, 1994,
p. A31. See also “Affirmative Action, Welfare, and the Individual,” The Public Perspective,
6 (June/July 1995), especially pp. 31-39.
By, Richard Lucayo, “A New Push for Blind Justice,” Time, February 20, 1995, p. 39.
. Edsall, “Revolt of the Discontented,” p. A31.
97. William Raspberry, “Why Civil Rights Isn't Selling,” The Washington Post, March 13, 1991,
tA,
98. SieLouis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1964).
99. Ladd, The American Ideology, p. 76.
100. Tom Smith, “Social Inequality in Cross-National Perspective,” in J. W. Becker, James A.
Davis, Paul Ester, and Peter B. Mohles, eds., Attitudes to Inequality and the Role of Govern-
ment (The Hague: CIP Gegevens Koninklije Bibliotheek, 1990).
101. Ibid., p. 24.
102. From the results of the World Values Survey 1981-82, 1990, supplied by Ronald Inglehart.
 316 Notes (pp. 146-152)

For U.S.-Canada comparisons, see Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values
and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 157.
103, The International Social Survey Program coordinated by the National Opinion Research
Center. For published reports, see Smith, “Social Inequality in Cross-National Perspective,”
and Ladd, The American Ideology, pp. 75-76. See also “Affirmative Action, Welfare, and the
Individual,” pp. 28-29.
104. Ladd, The American Ideology, p. 79.
105. Ibid., pp. 61-62.
106. Howard Schuman and Lawrence Bobo, “Survey-Based Experiments on White Racial Atti-
tudes Toward Residential Integration,” American Journal of Sociology, 94 (September 1988),
pp. 283-289.
107, Ibid. The question about Christians referred to their right to “move into a house in an all-
Jewish neighborhood.”
108. For a discussion of the various multi-ethnic countries which give preference to deprived
groups, sometimes to underprivileged majorities, see Thomas Sowell, “Affirmative Action’: A
Worldwide Disaster,” Commentary, 88 (December 1989), pp. 21-44.
109, Lipset, Continental Divide, p. 181.
110. Bryner, “Affirmative Action Minority Rights,” p. 173.
111. Ibid.
112. Frederick Douglass, “Letter to Major Delany,” pp. 280-281.
lis? Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 67-68.
114. Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 13.
115. Ibid., pp. 115-118.
116. Charles Moskos, “How Do They Do It?” The New Republic, August 5, 1991, pp. 16-20.

5. A UNIQUE PEOPLE IN AN EXCEPTIONAL Country (pp. 151-175)

. This chapter draws on Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American
Scene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). See also S. M. Lipset, “A Unique
People in an Exceptional Country,” in Lipset, ed., American Pluralism and the Jewish Com-
munity (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989).
. Calvin Goldscheider and Alan S. Zuckerman, The Transformation of the Jews (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 183.
. Steven M. Cohen, The Dimensions ofAmerican Jewish Liberalism (New York: American Jew-
ish Committee, 1989); Andrew M. Greeley, Ethnicity, Denomination and Inequality (Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1976), p. 39.
. Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman, One Nation Under God. Religion in Contempo-
rary American Society (New York: Harmony Books, 1993), p. 260.
. Data from Gerald Bubis as reported in Barry A. Kosmin, “The Dimensions of Contemporary
Jewish Philanthropy,” in Kosmin and Paul Ritterband, eds., Contemporary Jewish Philan-
thropy in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), p. 24.
. The data for leading intellectuals are from Charles Kadushin, The American Intellectual
Elite (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 23-24, 35-36. Those for professors are from Sey-
mour Martin Lipset and Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., “Jewish Academics in the United States:
Their Achievements, Culture and Politics,” American Jewish Year Book, 72 (New York:
American Jewish Committee, 1971), pp. 89-128. For the other elite groups, see Stanley
Rothman, Robert Lichter, and Linda Lichter, Elites in Conflict: Social Change in America
Today (forthcoming).
. In 1987, close to two fifths of the Jewish House members served on the Middle East Sub-
committee of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Peter Y. Medding, The Transformation of Amer- _
ican Jewish Politics (New York: American Jewish ‘Committee, 1989); Michael Kahan, “Elec-
tion 94: The Great Realignment,” Congress Monthly, 62 (January-February 1995), pp. 3-5.
. Jewish data are from the 1990 National Jewish Population Study. For the United States gen-
 Notes (pp. 152-158) 317

erally, see Mark S. Hoffman, ed., World Almanac and Book of Facts 1992 (New York: Pharos
Books 1991), p. 218.
. The references for these findings are in Lipset and Ladd, “Jewish Academics in the United
States,” p. 99.
. Park quoted in Henry L. Feingold, A Midrash on American Jewish History (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1982), p. 189. For excellent discussions of this congruence, see
Arnold M. Eisen, The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religion Ideology (Bloom-
ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 25-52, and Joseph L. Blau, Judaism in Amer-
ica from Curiosity to Third Faith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 7-20.
Ml; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1930; Cambridge, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 48-50, 54-55.
12. Hillel Levine, personal communication. Anita Libman Lebeson, Pilgrim People (New York:
Minerva Press, 1975), p. 178; Blau, Judaism in America, p. 113; Nissan Waxman, “A
Neglected Book,” (Hebrew) in Shana Beshana: Yearbook of Heichal Shlomo (Jerusalem:
1969), pp. 303-315.
iis: Max Weber, Economy and Society, | (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978),
pp. 622-623. For an elaboration of the links between Puritanism and Judaism, particularly
in America, see Edward A. Tiryakian, “American Religious Exceptionalism: A Reconsidera-
tion,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 527 (May 1993), pp. 51-52.
. Frederick Cople Jaher, A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1994), p. 24. For a general discussion of the acceptance of Jews, see pp. 119-129.
15. See Anthony Blond, “The Jews and Mrs. Thatcher,” Sunday Telegraph, December 11, 1988,
pp. 14-15.
16. Tiryakian, “American Religious Exceptionalism,” pp. 51—52.
iis “Washington’s Reply to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island,” Publications
of the American Jewish Historical Society, 3 (1895), pp. 91-92.
18. Quoted in John A. Hardon, American Judaism (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971), pp.
32-33.
hey See Lucy S. Dawidowicz, On Equal Terms: Jews in America 1881-1981 (New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1982), pp. 68-69; Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and
The Jews (New York: Columbia University, 1968), p. 360; Charles E. Silberman, A Certain
People: American Jews and Their Lives Today (New York: Summit Books, 1985), pp. 39-41.
20. Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Compara-
tive Perspective (2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), pp. 164-165; for the report, see
Richard Mentor Johnson, “Sunday Observance and the Mail,” in George E. Probst, ed., The
Happy Republic (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1968), pp. 247-255.
21. James R. Rohrer, “The Sunday Mails and the Church-State Theme in Jacksonian America,”
Journal of the Early Republic, 7 (Spring 1987), pp. 53-115.
22. Herbert A. Gibbon, John Wanamaker, I (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1926), p. 321.
23, Manfred Jones, “The American Sabbath in the Gilded Age,” in Jahrbuch fuer Amerika Stu-
dien, 6 (Heidelberg: Karl Winter Universitaetsverlag, 1961), pp. 89-114.
24. Bertram Wallace Korn, Eventful Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century Amer-
ican Jewish History (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1954), pp. 98-99.
23: Seymour Martin Lipset, Revolution and Counterrevolution, Change and Persistence in Social
Structures, 3rd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988), pp. 141-153; Blau,
Judaism in America, pp. 51-72.
26. See Arthur A. Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community. The Kehillah Experi-
ment, 1908-1922 (New York: Columbia University, 1970).
. Quoted in ibid., p. 252.
. Jaher, A Scapegoat, p. 122.
. Henry L. Feingold, Zion in America (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1974), pp. 89-90.
. Peter Wiernik, History of the Jews in America, 3rd ed. (New York: Hermon Press, 1972), pp.
128-134.
 318 Notes (pp. 158-163)

31. Ibid., pp. 229-240.

32) Joakim Isaacs, “Ulysses S. Grant and the Jews,” in Jonathan D. Sarna, ed., The American
Jewish Experience (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), pp. 62-64; Leonard Dinnerstein,
Antisemitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 32.
33: Wiernik, History of the Jews, pp. 270-271.
34. “Our State Department and the Damascus Affair,” cited in Morris U. Schappes, ed., A Doc-
umentary History of Jews in the United States, 1654-1875 (New York: Schocken Books,
1971),
p.209.
oD Quoted in Wiernik, History of the Jews, pp. 345-346. For a detailed account of such inter-
ventions, see Cyrus Adler and Aaron M. Margalith, American Intercession on Behalf of Jews
in the Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States 1840-1938 (New York: American
Jewish Historical Society, 1943).
36. Feingold, Zion in America, pp. 239-249.
EM David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken Books, 1986),
p. 124. Bertram W. Korn, The American Reaction to the Montara Case 1858-1859 (Cincin-
nati: American Jewish Archives, 1957), pp. 88-92.
38. Jaher, A Scapegoat, pp. 1, 243-245; see also Dinnerstein, Antisemitism, p. xxviii.
33) Leo P. Ribuffo, “Henry Ford and the International Jew,” American Jewish History, 69 (June
1980), p. 437. For a review of the historical literature, see Leonard Dinnerstein, “The Histo-
riography of American Antisemitism,” in his Uneasy at Home: Antisemitism and The Ameri-
can Jewish Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 257-267.
40, Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in
America, 1790-1977, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 47-48,
89-90; Jaher, A Scapegoat, p. 246.
41. Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation, p. 166. For details, see Nathan Glazer,
“Social Characteristics of American Jews, 1654-1954,” American Jewish Year Book, 56 (New
York: American Jewish Committee, 1955), pp. 9-10; Arthur A. Goren, The American Jews
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1982), pp. 34-36.
42. Barry E. Supple, “A Business Elite: German-Jewish Financiers in Nineteenth Century New
York,” Business History Review, 31 (Summer 1957), pp. 143-178. Vincent P. Carosso, “A
Financial Elite: New York's German-Jewish Investment Bankers,” American Jewish Histori-
cal Quarterly, 66 (September 1976), pp. 67-87.
43. Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 92-95.
44. E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment (New York: Random House, 1964), p. 138.
45, John Higham, “Social Discrimination Against Jews in America, 1830-1930,” American Jew-
ish Historical Society, 47 (1957), p. 10; “Anti-Semitism in the Gilded Age: A Reinterpreta-
tion,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 43 (1957), p. 566. For these and other essays, see
Higham, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1984).
46. Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation, pp. 166-167.
47, Chaim I. Waxman, America’s Jews in Transition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1983), pp. 49-51.
48. Werner Cohn, “The Politics of American Jews,” in Marshall Sklare, ed., The Jews: Social
Patterns of an American Group (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958), pp. 615-618.
49. Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), p: 1, see also pp.
20-33; Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976),
pp. 287-324.
50. Stephen E. Isaacs, Jews and American Politics, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), pp.
151-152; Lawrence H. Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews (Glencoe, IL: Free
Press, 1956), pp. 151-169. On the heavily disproportionate support which the American
Communist Party drew from Jews, see Nathan Glaztr, The Social Basis of American Com-
munism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), pp. 130~168.
51. Nathan Glazer, American Judaism, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p.
71; Howe, World of Our Fathers, pp. 204-208.
 Notes (pp. 163-170) 319

52. Cohn, “The Politics of American Jews,” p. 621.

53. Glazer, American Judaism, p. 71; Gorey, The American Jews, pp. 57-59.
54. Dawidowicz, On Equal Terms p. 51. See also Silberman, A Certain People pp. 125-127,
132-134, and Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home, pp. 15-40.
55. Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation, p. 168.
56. Nathan Reich, “The Role of the Jews in the American Economy,” YIVO Annual, 5 (1950),
pp. 197-205; Nathan Glazer, “The American Jew and the Attainment of Middle-Class
Rank: Some Trends and Explanations,” in Sklare, ed., The Jews, pp. 138-146; Sidney
Goldstein, “Socioeconomic Differentials Among Religious Groups in the United States,”
American Journal of Sociology, 74 (May 1969), pp. 612-631; Simon Kuznets, Economic
Structure of the Jews (Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University,
1972); Marshall H. Medoff, “Note: Some Differences Between the Jewish and General
White Male Population in the United States,” Jewish Social Studies, 43 (Winter 1981),
pp. 75-80.
Die Dawidowicz, On Equal Terms, p. 51. See also Goren, The American Jews, pp. 73-76.
58. Glazer, “Social Characteristics of American Jews,” pp. 30-31. See also Silberman, A Certain
People, pp. 137-138.
52: Fred L. Strodtbeck, “Family Interaction, Values and Achievement,” in Sklare, ed., The Jews,
pp. 162-163; Lipset and Ladd, “Jewish Academics,” pp. 96-106.
60. Glazer, “Social Characteristics,” p. 31. See also Blau, Judaism in America, pp. 112-115.
61. Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 97-99.
62. See ibid, pp. 110-140, esp. p. 139, for a discussion of anti-Semitism.
63. Moshe Davis, The Emergence of Conservative Judaism. The Historical School in 19th Century
America (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963), pp. 149-228.
64. Marshall Sklare, Conservative Judaism: An American Religious Movement (New York:
Schocken Books, 1972), pp. 43-82; Hardon, American Judaism, p. 119.
65. Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 171-189. For a detailed review of opinion
polls about Jews from the 1930s to the 1960s, see Charles H. Stember, et al., Jews in the
Mind ofAmerica (New York: Basic Books, 1966), pp. 60-76, 82-85, 116-162.
66. Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 493-496.
67. Dawidowicz, On Equal Terms, pp. 131-132.
68. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Blacks and Jews: How Much Bias?” Public Opinion, 9
(July-August 1987), pp. 4-5, 57-58. For a review of findings on attitudes and behavior, see
Leonard Dinnerstein, “Antisemitism in the United States Today,” Patterns of Prejudice, 22
(Autumn 1988), pp. 3-14.
69. Roper Reports, 4-1993, p. 11.
70. Tom W. Smith, What Do Americans Think About Jews? (New York: American Jewish Com-
mittee, 1991), p. 26.
fA Kosmin, “Jewish Philanthropy,” p. 28.
72. Ariela Keysar, “Patterns of Philanthropy: New York Versus Non-New York Jewry in 1990.”
Paper for the Mandell Berman Institute—North American Jewish Data Bank, Graduate
School and University Center, CUNY, New York, 1992, p. 6.
ve) Ibid., chart 1.
74. Virginia Hodgkinson and Murray S. Weitzman, Giving and Volunteering in the United States
(Washington, D.C.: Independent Sector, 1992), pp. 76-77.
Te Table, “Portrait of the Electorate,” The New York Times, November 5, 1992, p. B9.
76. Martin Hochbaum, The Jewish Vote in the 1984 Presidential Election (New York: American
Jewish Congress, 1985), p. 6.
ie Alan Fisher, “The Myth of the Rightward Turn,” Moment, 8, no. 10 (1983), p. 25.
78. Cohen, The Dimensions of American Jewish Liberalism, pp. 42, 44.
79. Ibid., p. 34.
80. Fisher, “The Myth of the Rightward Turn,” p. 26.
81. In their study of Jewish elites, Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman find “a
distinctive political tradition that Jewish parents pass down to their offspring . . . a tradition
 320 Notes (pp. 170-177)

of political liberalism.” “Marginality and Liberals Among Jewish Elites,” Public Opinion
Quarterly, 53 (Fall 1989), p. 348.
82. Lipset and Raab, Jews and the New American Scene, pp. 12-13, 22-23. See also Stephen D.
Isaacs, Jews and American Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), pp. 149-159,
196-197; Milton Himmelfarb, The Jews of Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp.
65—116; Charles §. Liebman, The Ambivalent American Jew (Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society of America, 1973), pp. 135-173; Leonard Fein, Where Are We? The Inner Life
of America’s Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 227-235; Stephen J. Whitfield,
Voices of Jacob, Hands of Esau. Jews in American Life and Thought (Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1984), pp. 73-112; Silberman, American Jews, pp. 345-356; Fuchs, The Political
Behavior of American Jews, pp. 149-159, 196-197; and Cohn, “The Politics of American
Jews,” pp. 614-626.
83. Kosmin and Lachman, One Nation Under God, p. 196.
84. Cohen, The Dimensions of American Jewish Liberalism, p. 41.
85. Ibid.
86. Fisher, “The Myth of the Rightward Turn,” p. 26.
. Lipset and Ladd, “Jewish Academics,” and Kadushin, The American Intellectual Elite.
88, Thorstein Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order (New York: Viking Press, 1934), pp. 221,
223-234. The essay on the Jews was first published in 1919.
89. For a review of the literature and an application of this type of analysis to the politics of
intellectuals, see Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard B. Dobson, “The Intellectual as Critic
and Rebel,” Daedalus, 101 (Summer 1972), pp. 137-198.
90. Tom W. Smith, Anti-Semitism in Contemporary America (New York: American Jewish Com-
mittee, 1994), p. 84.
Se Andrew M. Greeley, That Most Distressful Nation. The Taming of the American Irish
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972), pp. 149-155. The original data were collected by
Melvin Kohn and reported on in his book, Class and Conformity (Homewood, IL: Dorsey
Press, 1969). See especially pp. 61-65. For other data on Jewish self-confidence and mental
health, see Silberman, American Jews, pp. 140-142.
ed, For the most detailed analysis by age, see Alan M. Fisher, “Where the Jewish Vote Is
Going,” Moment, 14 (March 1989), pp. 41-43. See also Lipset and Raab, Jews and the New
American Scene.
93) Fisher, “Where the Jewish Vote Is Going,” p. 42.
94. “Portrait of the Electorate: Who Voted for Whom in the House,” The New York Times,
November 13, 1994, p. 24.
95% Kosmin, “The Dimensions of Contemporary Jewish Philanthropy,” p. 16.
96. This is elaborated in Lipset and Raab, Jews and the New American Scene.
he Kosmin and Lachman, One Nation Under God, pp. 232, 248. Avis Miller, Janet Marder, and
Steven Bayme, Approaches to Intermarriage: Areas of Consensus (New York: American Jewish
Committee, 1993).
98. See Mary Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1990).
99; Drora Kass and Seymour Martin Lipset, “Jewish Immigration to the United States from
1967 to the Present,” in Marshall Sklare, ed., Understanding American Jewry (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1982), pp. 272-294.

6. AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS—MOSTLY ON THE LEFT, SOME POLITICALLY

INCORRECT (pp. 176-208)
. This chapter subsumes “Neoconservatism: Myth and Reality,” Society (July-August 1988) ’
pp. 29-37, and “The Sources of Political Correctness on American Campuses,” in Howard
Dickman, ed., The Imperiled Academy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1993),
pp. 71-96.
. Suzanne Garment, “Newt's Law,” The New York Times, November 20, 1994, p. E15.
 Notes (pp. 178-184) 321

. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Political Controversies at Harvard, 1636 to 1974,” in Lipset and
,
David Riesman, Education and Politics at Harvard (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), p. 29.
. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works ofJohn Adams, VII (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853), p.
596.
. Lionel Trilling, Beyond Culture (New York: Viking Press, 1965), pp. xii—xiii,
. “Text of a Pre-inauguration Memo from Moynihan on Problems Nixon Would Face,” The
New York Times, March 11, 1970.
. Whitelaw Reid, “The Scholar in Politics,” Scribner's Monthly, 6 (1873), pp. 613-614.
. Whitelaw Reid, American and English Studies, 1 (New York: Scribner's, 1913), pp. 241-242.
on

. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1963), p. 39. See also Richard Flacks, Making History: The American Left and the American
Mind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 116-117.
10. James Leuba, The Belief in God and Immortality (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co.,
1921), pp. 219-287; and Leuba, The Reformation of the Church (Boston: Beacon Press,
1950), pp. 50-54.
Vik Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., and Seymour Martin Lipset, The Divided Academy: Professors and
Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), pp. 27-28.
12. Gardner Murphy and Rensis Lickert, Public Opinion and the Individual (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1938), pp. 107-108.
. Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Dobson, “The Intellectual as Critic and Rebel: With
Special Reference to the United States and the Soviet Union,” in Daedalus, 101 (Summer
1972), pp. 146-147.
14. Ladd and Lipset, The Divided Academy, pp. 132-146.
15. Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” University of Chicago Law Review, 16
(Spring 1949), pp. 426-427.
. Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, Jr., The Academic Mind (Glencoe, IL: The Free
Press, 1958), pp. 14-17, 95, 104.
Lv Ladd and Lipset, The Divided Academy, pp. 125-148.
18. Thorstein Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order (New York: Viking Press, 1934), pp. 226-227.
19. The Conditions of the Professoriate. Attitudes and Trends 1989 (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1989), pp. 143-144.
20. S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter, The Media Elite (Bethesda, MD:
Adler & Adler, 1986), pp. 28-33.
Ph Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Row,
1962), p. 148; C. P. Snow, The New Men (London: Macmillan, 1954), p. 176; Lazarsfeld
and Thielens, The Academic Mind, p. 149.
225 Carl Becker, Progress and Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1936), p. 3.
23. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p. 148.
24. Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order, pp. 226-227.
25. For an elaboration of the argument and presentation of research findings, see Seymour Mar-
tin Lipset, “The Academic Mind at the Top: The Political Behavior and Values of Faculty
Elites,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 46 (Summer 1982), pp. 143-168.
26. Lazarsfeld
and Thielens, The Academic Mind, p. 104.
. Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford
Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1994); No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
28. From files of the Roper Data Center at the University of Connecticut.
jas} The Condition of the Professoriate, pp. 143-144.
30. John Patrick Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left (New York: W. W. Norton,
1992), p. 289; see pp. 288-306 and passim for the role and influence of the academic left.
See also Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 151-155.
mal Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Whose Lawn Is It, Anyway?” in Paul Berman, ed., Debating P.C.:
The Controversy Over Political Correctness on College Campuses (New York: Dell, 1992), p.
 322 Notes (pp. 184-187)

193. See also Flacks, Making History, pp. 185-186, and Roger Kimbell, Tenured Radicals
(New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. xiv—xv.
32. Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue. Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's
Future (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp. 226-227.
33% John Searle, “The Storm Over the University,” in Berman, ed., Debating P.C., pp. 105-106.
34. Bertell Ollmann and Edward Vernoff, eds., The Left Academy—Marxist Scholarship on
American Campuses, | (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), p. 1. See this volume and Vol. II,
which has a different publisher (New York: Praeger, 1984), for documentation on different
disciplines.
3m, Garry Abrams, “After the Wall: As New Era Emerges U.S. Political Thinkers Ponder Fate of
Marxism,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1989, pp. El, E6; Tony Judt, “The Rediscovery
of Central Europe,” Daedalus, 119 (Winter 1990), p. 34; Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the
American Left, pp. 296-297. For conservative views, see Peter Shaw, The War Against the
Intellect: Episodes in the Decline of Discourse (lowa City: University of lowa Press, 1989);
Paul Hollander, The Survival of the Adversary Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Books, 1988); and Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher
Education (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). For radical ones, see Ollmann and Vernoff,
eds., The Left Academy; Jonathan M. Wiener, “Radical Historians and the Crisis in Ameri-
can History, 1959-1980,” Journal of American History, 76 (September 1989), pp. 399-434;
Michael Burawoy, “Introduction: The Resurgence of Marxism in American Sociology,”
American Journal of Sociology, 88 (Supplement 1982), pp. S1-S30; Michael Denning, “ “The
Special American Conditions’: Marxism and American Studies,” American Quarterly, 38, no.
3 (1986), pp. 356-380; and Flacks, Making History, pp. 185-186, 190-191.
36. John Gray, “Fashion, Fantasy or Fiasco?” Times Literary Supplement, February 24—March 2,
1989, p. 183.
37. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Feminism Without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism (Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 150.
38. Flacks, Making History, p. 185.
3D) John Leo, “The Professors of Dogmatism,” U.S. News and World Report, January 18, 1993,
ps 25.
40. Gerald Marzorati, “Europe Is Reclaiming the Language of Liberalism,” International Herald
Tribune, July'11, 1990, p. 4.
41. M. F. Perutz, “High on Science,” New York Review of Books, August 16, 1990, p. 15.
42. Robert Alter, “Tyrants and Butterflies,” The New Republic, October 15, 1990, p. 43.
43, Quoted in Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue, pp. 224-225. For a description of an MLA con-
vention, see Leo, “The Professors of Dogmatism,” p. 25.
44. Richard Flacks, “The Sociology Liberation Movement: Some Legacies and Lessons,” Critical
Sociology, 15 (Summer 1988), p. 17.
45. Wiener, “Radical Historians and the Crisis in American History,” p. 434.
46. Jon Wiener, Professors, Politics and Pop (New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 117-118.
47. Carolyn J. Mooney, “Study Finds Professors Are Still Teaching the Classics, Sometimes in
New Ways,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6, 1991, p. A20.
48, Hollander, The Survival of the Adversary Cultures, pp. 16-18.
49. For a description of the way the latter change occurred, see Tony Judt, Marxism and the
French Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). See also Mark Kesselman, “Lyrical
Illusions or a Socialism of Governance: Whither French Socialism?” in Ralph Miliband,
John Saville, Marcel Liebman, and Leo Panitch, eds, Social Register 1985/86 (London: Mer-
lin Press, 1986), pp. 240-242.
50. Masakazu Yamazaki, “The Intellectual Community of the Showa Era,” Daedalus, 117 (Sum-
mer 1990), pp. 260-262. ‘
Si Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left, p: 294. Diggins classifies English academe
with American as arenas where Marxism is still strong. This is true in some fields, but on the
whole radicalism is weaker in British universities than American,
 Notes (pp. 188-197) 323

52: Ron Eyerman, “Intellectuals and the State: A Framework for Analysis, with Special Refer-
ence to the United States and Sweden.” Unpublished paper, University of Lund, Sweden,
1990, p. 18.
53. Flacks, Making History, p. 189.
54. Gray, “Fashion, Fantasy, or Fiasco?” pp. 183-184.
35. A striking example is John Kenneth Galbraith who, at a conference in July 1990 on economic
reforms in East Europe, railed against the “primitive ideology” of the rapid movement toward
market economics. He made “a veiled attack on the privitisation programmes planned by some
east European governments. . . .” “East Europe Warned Over Fast Economic Change,” Finan-
cial Times, July 6, 1990, p. 2. See also Galbraith’s critique of developments in Eastern Europe
in “The Rush to Capitalism,” New York Review of Books, October 25, 1990, pp. 51-52.
56. See Alan Weld, The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); William O’Neill, The Great
Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).
D7 Gillian Peele, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984), p. 23.
58. See Michael Wrezsin, A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Mac-
donald (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 412-458.
a9: Harrington for a long time denied that he had done this. In 1989, however, in a polemical
exchange, he acknowledged that the term was “in common use among Dissent editors and
other associates of mine,” though he wrote that “I don’t have the least idea who was the first
to use it.” See Ronald Radosh and Michael Harrington, “An Exchange,” Partisan Review, 55,
no. | (1989), p. 82.
60. Still, it should be noted that the neoconservatives and the traditional conservatives differed
considerably in the content of their anti-Communist ideology. As Dan Himmelfarb noted:
“Neoconservatives are anti-Communist because Communism is the enemy of freedom and
democracy, paleoconservatives [Old Right] because it is the enemy of religion, tradition and
hierarchy. For neoconservatives the relevant distinction between East and West is not the
distinction between atheism and belief (as it is for paleoconservatives), nor is it the distinc-
tion between socialism and capitalism (as it is for certain libertarians). The fundamental dif-
ference, rather, is that between totalitarianism and freedom.” Himmelfarb, “Conservative
Splits,” Commentary, 85 (May 1988), p. 57.
61. Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Why We Are Not Republicans,” Common Sense, 2, no. 3 (Fall 1979), pp.
27-35.
62. Michael Massing, “Trotsky’s Orphans: From Bolshevism to Reaganism,” The New Republic,
June 22, 1987, pp. 18-22.
63. Irving Kristol, “What Is a Neo-Conservative?” Newsweek, January 19, 1976, p. 17.
64. Irving Kristol, “America’s ‘Exceptional’ Conservatism,” The Wall Street Journal, April 18,
1995, p. A-20.
65. Kristol, “What Is a Neo-Conservative?”
66. Himmelfarb, “Conservative Splits,” p. 58.
67. Patrick Buchanan, “Crackup of the Conservatives,” The Washington Times, May 1, 1991,
pp. G1, G4.
68. Quoted in David Frum, Dead Right (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 125.
69. John Judis, “The Conservative Wars,” The New Republic, August 11 and 18, 1986, pp.
15-18; and “The Conservative Crackup,” The American Prospect, 3 (Fall 1990), p. 3.
70. E. J. Dionne, “High Tide for Conservatives, But Some Fear What Follows,” The New York
Times, October 13, 1987, p. A33. See also John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 186-188.
DAs Paul Gottfried, “A View of Contemporary Conservatism,” The Intercollegiate Review, 21
(Spring 1986), p. 19; and “Scrambling for Funds,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report (March 1991),
. 9-15.
ee Tom Bethell, “Capitol Ideas/I'm Back,” The American Spectator, 20 (October 1987), p. 15.
 324 Notes (pp. 197-205)

73. George Gilder, “Why I am Not a Neoconservative,” The National Review, March 5, 1982,
pp. 218-220. Also see Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming, The Conservative Movement
(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988).
74. “Farewell, and Hail,” The National Review, November 20, 1987, pp. 20-21.
UP: Robert Nisbet, “The Conservative Renaissance in Perspective,” The Public Interest, 81 (Fall
1985), p. 137.
76. Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism, pp. 197-204. Michael Kelly, “ ‘New Democrats’ Say
Clinton Has Veered Left and Left Them,” New York Times, May 23, 1993, p. A20.
Vir: The concept was first advanced in Robert K. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences of
Purposive Social Action,” American Sociological Review, 1 (1936), pp. 894-904. Merton,
however, had a very different approach, rejecting the notion that “unanticipated conse-
quences” justified conservative reactions. On this, see Benjamin DeMott, “Rediscovering
Complexity,” The Atlantic, 262 (September 1988), pp. 67-74.
78. Quoted in Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America’s Pol-
itics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 165.
7} Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (New York:
Basic Books, 1983), p. 76.
80. Irving Kristol, “The Missing Social Agenda,” Wall Street Journal, January 26, 1987, p. 20.
81. Michael Massing, “Contra Aides,” Mother Jones, 12 (October 1987), pp. 23-26, 40-43.
82. Percy B. Lehning, “Neo-Conservatism and the Welfare State; Justice and Retrenchment in
the Eighties: A Dutch Example,” in Rob Kroes, ed., Neo-Conservatism: Its Emergence in the
USA and Europe (Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1984), p. 37. A number of articles in
this book make the same mistake.
83. Peter A. Hall, “The Smack of Firm Government,” New York Times Book Review, October 2,
1988, p. 14.
84. Philip Resnick, “Neo-Conservatism on the Periphery: The Lessons from B.C.,” B.C. Studies,
75 (Autumn, 1987), p. 3.
85. John Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1988), p. 130.
86. See Hollander, Anti-Americanism, pp. 159-166.
87. Elaine El-Khawo, Campus Trends, 1991 (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Educa-
tion, 1991), pp. 17, 40.
88. Campus Life in Search of Community (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching, 1990), Table A-2.
89, Stanley Fish, “There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too,” Boston
Review, 17 (February 1992), pp. 3, 25 (emphases in original).
90. Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and
Herbert Marcuse, eds., A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), pp.
81-117. See also Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 7, 9,
and passim.
oN Louis Kampf, “Notes Toward a Radical Culture,” in Priscilla Long, ed., The New Left
(Boston: Porter Sargent, 1969), p. 426.
92. Cited in Paul Berman, “Introduction: The Debate and Its Origins,” in Berman, ed., Debating
iP Gipa2es
93. Ibid.
94. Eugene D. Genovese, “Heresy, Yes—Sensitivity, No,” The New Republic, April 15, 1991, p.
30.
95: Abigail Thernstrom, “Permaffirm Action,” The New Republic, July 31, 1989, pp. 17-19.
96. Jessie Bernard, Academic Women (University Park, Pa.: Peuntylvania’ State University Press,
1964), p. 62. See also Mabel Newcomer, A baie Hs of Higher Education for American
Women (New York: Harper's, 1959), p. 204.
Mle Bernard, Academic Women, p. 67.
98. Seymour Martin Lipset and Everett C. Ladd, Jr., “The Changing Social Origins of American
Academics,” in Robert K. Merton, James S. Coleman, and Peter H. Rossi, eds. Qualitative
 Notes (pp. 206-213) 325

and Quantitative Research: Papers in Honor of Paul F. Lazarsfeld (New York: The Free Press,
1979), pp. 329-336.
99. Quoted in Dinesh D'Souza, IIliberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus
(New York: The Free Press, 1991), p. 171.
100. See chapter Four, pp. 00-00.
101. Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue, pp. 245-250.
102. Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left, p. 297.
103. See Seymour Martin Lipset, Rebellion in the University, 3rd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Books, 1993), pp. 201-218.
104, Noam Chomsky, “The Function of the University in a Time of Crisis,” in Robert M.
Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler, eds., The Great Ideas Today: 1969 (Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1969), p. 59.
105. As quoted in Campus Life, p. 21.

7, AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM—JAPANESE UNIQUENESS (pp. 211-263)

. For an earlier version of the arguments presented in this chapter, see “American Exception-
alism—Japanese Uniqueness,” in Mattei Dogan and Ali Kazancigil, eds., Comparing
Nations: Concepts, Strategies, Substance (Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell’s,
1994), pp. 153-212.
. On the reasons for comparing these two countries, see V. Lee Hamilton and Joseph
Sanders, Everyday Justice: Responsibility and the Individual in Japan and the United States
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 1-3. On the serious difficulties faced by
foreigners who seek to understand Japan, see Joseph M. Kitagawa, On Understanding Japan-
ese Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 294-296.
Ww. For good examples of the first, see Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One (Cambridge, MA: Har-

vard University Press, 1979); Ronald Dore, Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective
on Leading Economic Issues (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); of the second,
Clyde V. Prestowitz, Jr., Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to
Reclaim It (New York: Basic Books, 1989); and of the third, James Fallows, More Like Us:
Making America Great Again (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), esp. pp. 28-47. See also
Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky, eds., Asia’s New Giant: How the Japanese Economy
Works (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1976), particularly the article by Nathan
Glazer, “Social and Cultural Factors in Japanese Economic Growth,” pp. 813-896; Shumpei
Kumon and Henry Rosovsky, eds., The Political Economy of Japan, Vol. 3; Cultural and
Social Dynamics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), especially Robert J.
Smith, “The Cultural Context of the Japanese Political Economy,” pp. 13-31; and Subhash
Durlabhji and Norton E. Marks, eds., Japanese Business: Cultural Perspectives (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1993),
5 See James Fallows, “The Japanese Are Different from You and Me,” Atlantic Monthly, 258
(September 1986), pp. 38-39; Chalmers Johnson, “The People Who Invented the Mechani-
cal Nightingale,” Daedalus, 119 (Summer 1990), p. 73.
wn. Peter N. Dale, The Myth ofJapanese Uniqueness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), p. 25.

For an analysis of the background of Nihonron, see Harumi Befu, “Civilization and Culture:
Japan in Search of Identity,” Senri Ethnological Studies, 16 (1984), pp. 66-74. Dale and
Befu believe the emphasis on uniqueness is exaggerated, as does Anthony Woodiwiss, Law,
Labour and Society in Japan (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 4-5. For a more recent presen-
tation of the issue on personality level, see Kiyoshi Ando, “Japanese View of Self—lIs it
Unique?” Japan Labour Bulletin, 33 (March 1994), pp. 6-8.
. Tamotsu Aoki, Nihon-Bunka-ron no Henyo (Evolutionary Japanology) (Tokyo: Chuo-Koron
Sha, 1990), p. 24. ‘
. Yoshio Sugimito and Ross Mouer, Images ofJapanese Society (London: Routledge, 1986), p. 11.
. Yohio Sakata, “The Beginning of Modernization in Japan,” in Ardath W. Burks, ed., The
Modernizers (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 69-83. See also Marius B. Jansen,
 326 Notes (pp. 213-216)

ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1965); William W. Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); Ronald P. Dore, ed., Aspects of Social
Change in Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); Robert E.
Ward, ed., Political Development In Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1968); Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); James W. Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in
Prewar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); Bernard S. Silberman and
H. D. Harootunian, eds., Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taisho Democracy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1974); and W. G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1971).
. See Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977), pp. 78-87;
Robert J. Smith, Japanese Society: Tradition, Self and the Social Order (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1983), pp. 9-36.
10. Smith, Japanese Society, pp. 12-25.
1k Cited in Michio Nagai, “The Development of Intellectuals in the Meiji and Taisho Periods,”
Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, 2 (April 1964), pp. 29-30.
12) George A. DeVos, Socialization for Achievement (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1973), pp. 173-174.
Sie David S. Landes, “Japan and Europe: Contrasts in Industrialization,” in Lockwood, ed., The
State and Economic Enterprise, pp. 100-105, 119-143. See also: on Japan, Henry Rosovsky,
Capital Formation in Japan 1868-1940 (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1961); on Germany,
Thorstein Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York: Viking Press,
1939). For reference to Japan, see Thorstein Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order (New
York: Viking Press, 1934), pp. 248-266.
14. Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order, p. 251 (emphasis added).
Ls As quoted in Carmi Schooler, “The Individual in Japanese History: Parallels to and Diver-
gences from the European Experience,” Sociological Forum, 5, no. 4 (1990), p. 569.
. Norman Jacobs, The Origins of Modern Capitalism in Eastern Asia (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 1958); Schooler, “The Individual in Japanese History”; Ken’ichi Tominaga,
“Max Weber on Chinese and Japanese Social Structure,” in Melvin L. Kohn, ed., Cross-
National Research on Sociology (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989), pp. 125-146.
ie Chalmers Johnson, MITI and The Japanese Miracle. The Growth of Industrial Policy,
1925-1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982), especially pp. 198-304;
Prestowitz, Trading Places, pp. 100-150.
18. Daniel I. Okimoto, Between MITI and the Market (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1989),
pp. 11—12.
19} Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955).
. Lester Thurow, Head to Head: Coming Economic Battles Among Japan, Europe, and America
(New York: William Morrow, 1992).
2i¢ Okimoto, Between MITI and the Market, pp. 11-12.
22. Quoted in Steven R. Weisman, “An American in Tokyo,” New York Times Magazine, July 26,
1992,
p.27.
233 Douglas Moore Kenrick, Where Communism Works: The Success of Competitive Commu-
nism in Japan (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1988).
24. Ibid., p. 3.
. Chalmers Johnson, “The Japanese Economy: A Different Kind of Capitalism,” in S. N.
Eisenstadt and Eyal Ben-Ari, eds., Japanese Models of Conflict Resolution (London: Kegan
Paul International, 1990), p. 44.
26. A recent survey account may be found in Bill Emmott, Japanophobia. The Myth of the Invin-
cible Japanese (New York: Times Books Random House, 1993).
2h Richard Beason and David Weinstein, Growth, Economies of Scale, and the Targeting in
Japan (1955-1990). Discussion Paper 1644 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute of Eco-
nomic Research, 1993),
 Notes (pp. 216-220) 327

28. See “Picking Losers in Japan,” The Economist, February 26, 1994, p. 69.
29. Dore, Taking Japan Seriously, p. 245.
30. Harumi Befu, “The Group Model of Japanese Society and an Alternative,” Rice University
Studies, 66 (Winter 1980), pp. 178-180.
3 Harumi Befu, “Four Models of Japanese Society and Their Relevance to Conflict,” in Eisen-
stadt and Ben-Ari, eds., Japanese Models pp. 213-238; Robert M. Marsh and Hiroshi Man-
neri, Organizational Change in Japanese Factories (Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 1988), pp. 8,
284-285; Woodiwiss, Law, Labour and Society, pp. 4-5.
32. Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Compara-
tive Perspective (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), pp. 209-213; Lipset, Consensus and Con-
flict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985), pp. 3-5, 11-23, 33-38.
33), See pp. 35-38.
34. Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures of Capitalism (New
York: Doubleday, 1993),
Ne), Johnson, “The People,” p. 78. For a detailed exposition of the importance of hierarchy and
seniority in Japan, see Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1972).
36. Tadashi Fukutake, The Japanese Social Structure (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1989),
pp. 44-56; Reischauer, The Japanese, pp. 127-137; Daniel Pipes, “Japan Invents the
Future,” Society, 2 (March-April 1992), p. 61.
3h A Comparison of Japanese and American High School Students’ Perceptions About What Their
Lives Would Be Like When They Will Be Thirty Years Old (Tokyo: Japan Youth Research
Institute, 1990), p. 91.
38. Nanakakoku Hikaku: Kokusai Leisure Chosa ’89 (International Leisure Survey '89: Compara-
tive Survey of Seven Countries) (Tokyo: Yoka Kaihatsu Center [Leisure Development Cen-
ter], 1989), p. 47.
3k 1990 World Values Survey coordinated by Ronald Inglehart. I am deeply indebted to Profes-
sor Inglehart for access to the data.
40. Smith, Japanese Society, pp. 45-47.
41. Janet T. Spence, “Achievement American Style. The Rewards and Costs of Individualism,”
American Psychologist, 40 (December 1985), pp. 1287-1288. For discussions of the com-
plexities involved in analyzing the Japanese concepts of self, see the essays in Nancy R.
Rosenberger, ed., Japanese Sense of Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
See also Ando, “Japanese View of Self,” pp. 6-8.
42. William A. Caudill and Carmi Schooler, “Childrearing and Personality Formation,” in
Daniel I. Okimoto and Thomas P. Rohlen, eds., Inside the Japanese System (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 16-17.
43. William A. Caudill and Carmi Schooler, “Children and Their Mothers,” in ibid., p. 19.
44. Japanese Children and Their Fathers. A Comparison with the United States and West Germany
(Tokyo: Youth Affairs Administration, Management and Coordination Agency, Prime Minis-
ter's Office, 1988), p. 31.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., p. 33.
47. Ibid., p. 38.
48. Harry C. Triandis, “Cross-Cultural Studies of Individualism and Collectivism,” in John J.
Berman, ed., Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990),
oh
49. See Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1973), pp.
40-44; Mitsuyuki Masatsugu, The Modern Samurai Society (New York: AMACOM Book Divi-
sion, 1982), pp. 88-89.
50. A Summary Report of the World Youth Survey 1989 (Tokyo: Youth Affairs Administration
Management and Coordination Agency, Prime Minister's Office, 1989), p. 74. The results
from the Youth Survey and some others reported here are also given in Elizabeth Hann
Hastings and Philip K. Hastings, eds., Index to International Public Opinion 1988-89 (New
 328 Notes (pp. 220-227)

York: Greenwood Press, 1990), and Sigeki Nihira and Christine Condominas, L’Opinion
Japonais: Société-Travail-Famille a travers (Tokyo: Sudestasie, 1991),
5k Japanese Children, p. 38.
Dee Prime Minister's Office, “International Comparisons on Youth and Family” (Tokyo: Foreign
Press Center, June 1982), p. 3.
oh, Dale, The Myth ofJapanese Uniqueness, p. 44.
54. Gigdem Kagitsibas, “Family and Socialization in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Model of
Change,” in Berman, ed., Cross Cultural Perspectives, p. 161. See C. Hayashi and T. Suzuki,
“Changes in Belief Systems, Quality of Life Issues and Social Conditions in Post-War
Japan,” Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 36 (1984), pp. 135-161.
phy. G. Trommsdorf, “Some Comparative Aspects of Socialization in Japan and Germany,” in I.
R. Lagunes and Y. H. Poortinga, eds., From a Different Perspective: Studies of Behavior Across
Culture (Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1985), p. 232.
56. Tatsuko Suzuki, “Ways of Life and Social Milieus in Japan and the United States: A Com-
parative Study,” Behaviormetrika, 15 (1984), p. 100.
57a Veblen, Essays in Our Changing Order, p. 251.
58. Research Committee on the Study of the Japanese National Character, A Study of the
Japanese National Character, Vol. 9 (Tokyo: Tokei Suri Kenkyuzyo Institute of Statistical
Mathematics, 1994), pp. 523, 525, 529; Yasumasa Kuroda, et al, “The End of Westerniza-
tion and the Beginning of New Modernization in Japan: Attitudinal Dynamics of the Japan-
ese, 1953-1983,” in Chikio Hayashi and Tatsuko Suzuki, eds., Beyond Japanese Social Val-
ues: Trends and Cross-National Perspectives (Tokyo: Institute of Statistical Mathematics,
1990), p. 253.
59. Fortune and Gallup Poll results from the files of the Roper Data Library, Storrs, Connecti-
cut.
60. Scott C. Flanagan, “Value Cleavages, Contextual Influences, and the Vote,” in Flanagan, et
al., eds., The Japanese Voter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 84-102.
61. Ibid., p. 101.
62. Hajime Nagahama, “International Comparisons of the Public Understanding of Science and
Technology Based on Opinion Surveys.” Unpublished paper, National Institute of Science
and Technology Policy, Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo, 1992, pp. 16-17.
63. Shinichi Kobayashi, Savages in a Civilized Society: Young People's Drift Away from Science
and Society (Tokyo: National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, Science and Tech-
nology Agency, 1991), pp. 4-5.
64. Mizuno, et al., A Study, pp. 528, 530; Kuroda, et al., “The End of Westernization,” pp.
257-259. The 1983 data on Japanese feelings of superiority are from Chikio Hayashi, “Sta-
tistical Study on Japanese National Character,” Journal of the Japanese Statistical Society,
special issue (1987), p. 77.
65. Kuroda, et al., “The End of Westernization,” pp. 258-259.
66. G. J. Bamber and R. D. Lansbury, International and Comparative Labour Relations (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1987).
67. Japanese Working Life Profile: Labor Statistics 1993-94 (Tokyo: Japan Institute of Labour,
1992), p. 56.
68. Okimoto, Between MITI, pp. 121-122. See also Labour-Management Relations in Japan
1992 (Tokyo: Japan Institute of Labour, 1992), pp. 13, 21, 27.
69. Ben-Ami Shillony, “Victors Without Vanquished: A Japanese Model of Conflict Resolution,”
in Eisenstadt and Ben-Ari, eds., Japanese Models, p. 127.
70. Hamilton and Sanders, Everyday Justice, p. 37.
male Karel van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), pp. 337-339, 409-410.
(2s Shillony, “Victors Without Vanquished,” p. 127. i
73. Walter L. Ames, Police and Community in Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1981), p. 1.
 Notes (pp. 227-231) 329

74. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994 (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1994), p. 198; Asahi Shimbaum Japan Almanac 1994
(Tokyo: Asahi Shimbaum Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 224-225.
os Japan 1992. An International Comparison (Tokyo: Keizei Koho Center, 1992), p. 93. For
1992 comparisons, given as bar charts, not numbers, but showing even more striking differ-
ences, see “The Secret of Japan’s Safe Streets,” The Economist, April 16, 1994, p. 39.
76. Hamilton and Sanders, Everyday Justice, pp. 158-159.
ahs Ibid.
78. Statistical Abstract, 1994, pp. 407, 409; Japan Almanac, pp. 227-228; Nicholas D. Kristof,
“Japanese Say No to Crime, Tough Methods, at a Price,” New York Times, May 14, 1995,
pp. 1, 8.
a9. “The Legal Profession,” The Economist, July 18, 1992, Survey, p. 512. See also Hamilton
and Sanders, Everyday Justice; p. 23.
80. “The Legal Profession,” p. 54.
81, Ibid., p. 513.
82. Russell Ward, The Australian Legend (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 27.
83. Shillony, “Victors Without Vanquished,” p. 135.
84. Frank K. Upham, Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1987), pp. 166-227.
85. John Owen Haley, Authority Without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 14.
86. John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame and Reintegration (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), p. 61. See also pp. 62-65.
87. George DeVos, “Dimensions of the Self in Japanese Culture,” in Anthony V. Marsella,
George DeVos, and Francis L. K. Hsu, eds., Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives
(New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985), pp. 145-146.
88. Kristof, “Japanese Say No,” p. 8.
89, Chugakusei no Hahaoya—Amerika no hahaoya to no hikaku (Mothers of Junior High School
Students—A Comparison with American Mothers (Tokyo: Somucho Seishonen Taisaku
Honbu [Youth Affairs Administration Management and Coordination Agency], 1991).
90. “Japan’s Missing Children,” The Economist, November 12, 1994, p. 46; Statistical Abstract,
p. 105.
Me William J. Goode, World Changes in Divorce Patterns (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1993), pp. 226-228.
2, Suzuki, “Ways of Life,” p. 89.
23: Nanakakoku Hikaku, p. 48.
94. On client relationships, see S.N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), especially pp. 145-150, 174-178.
D> Charles A. Anderson, “Corporate Directors in Japan,” Harvard Business Review, 62
(May-June 1984), p. 30.
96. Ibid.; Prestowitz, Trading Places, pp. 289-317.
Oia Tadao Kagano, et al., Strategic vs. Evolutionary Management: U.S.-Japan Comparison of
Strategy.and Organization (Amsterdam: North Holland Press, 1985), pp. 55-90; Labour-
Management Relations, pp. 31-32; Masahiko Aoki, Information, Incentives and Bargains in
the Japanese Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 61-64.
98. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures, p. 60.
99; The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 60.
100. Masanori Hashimoto and John Raisian, “Employment Tenure and Earnings Profiles in Japan
and the United States,” American Economic Review, 75 (September 1985), pp. 726-727;
Robert Cole, Work, Mobility and Participation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1979), pp. 87-90.
101, Scott A. Bass, Productive Aging and the Role of Older People in Japan: New Approaches for
the United States (New York: Japan Society and the International Leadership Center on
 330 Notes (pp. 231-237)

Longevity and Society, 1994), pp. 22-24; Eamonn Fingleton, “Japan's Invisible Leviathan,”
Foreign Affairs, 74 (March-April 1995), p. 77.
102. Japan Institute of Labour, “Working Conditions and the Labor Market,” Japan Labor Bul-
letin, March 1, 1993, p. 3.
103. Japan Institute of Labour, Japanese Working Life Profile: Labor Statistics 1993-1994 (Tokyo:
Japan Institute of Labour, 1992), p. 28.
104. Shin-chi Takazawa and Arthur M. Whitehill, Work Ways: Japan and America (Tokyo: Japan
Institute of Labour, 1983), pp. 58-61.
105. Suzuki, “Ways of Life,” pp. 88-89; Vogel, Japan as Number One, p. 152.
106. Takezawa and Whitehill, Work Ways, pp. 118-120.
107. The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 62.
108. James R. Lincoln and Arne L. Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment. A Studyof
Work Organization and Work Attitudes in the United States and Japan (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990), p. 88.
109. Hayashi, “Statistical Study on Japanese National Character,” pp. 74—75.
110. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures, pp. 165-166.
1G See Takeshi Inagami, “The Japanese Will to Work,” in Okimoto and Rohlen, eds., Inside the
Japanese System, pp. 32-36.
K2: Lincoln and Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment, p. 56.
Liss Japan Almanac, p. 99, and Statistical Abstract, 1994, p. 420.
114. Japan Almanac, p. 63.
[OIey Ibid., p. 68.
116. The World Youth Survey, 1989.
La Leisure and Recreational Activities in Japan (Tokyo: Leisure Development Center, 1991), pp.
19-20. See also Labour-Management Relations, p. 38.
118. Leisure and Recreational Activities in Japan, pp. 20-22.
19. “The European Union,” The Economist, October 22, 1994, Survey, p. 4.
120. Ronald Dore, British Factory—Japanese Factory. The Origins of National Diversity in Indus-
trial Relations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 67—70. See also
Labour-Management Relations, p. 33.
121. Kazuo Yawata, “Le recruitments et la carrigre des hauts fonctionnaires japonais,” Promotions
Revue de l’Association des ancients Eléves de l'Ecole Nationale d’'Administration, 113
(July—Aug., 1981), p. 5.
122. Chie Nakane, “Hierarchy in Japanese Society,” in Okimoto and Rohlen, eds., Inside the
Japanese System, pp. 10-11.
123. The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 62.
124. From an analysis of the original data by the Roper Data Library.
125% Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures, p. 37.
126. Elizabeth H. Hastings and Phillip K. Hastings, eds., Index to International Public Opinion,
1980-81 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 606-607.
Zi Ronald Dore, “Elitism and Democracy,” The Tocqueville Review, 14(2) (1993), p. 71
(emphases in original).
128. Japan Institute of Labour, Japanese Working Life Profile: Labor Statistics 1993-1994 (Tokyo:
Japan Institute of Labour, 1992), p. 60.
WPA2), Lincoln and Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment, pp. 57-61.
130. Ibid., p. 61.
1310 Ibid., p. 50; Dore, British Factory—Japanese Factory, p. 232.
132. Dore, British Factory—Japanese Factory, p. 218.
133% Lincoln and Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment, p. 61; Robert E. Cole, Japanese
Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition (Berkeley, CA:‘University of California Press, 1971), p.
238.
134. Ando, “Japanese View of Self,” pp. 6 and 8.
135% Richard Rose, “National Pride in a Cross-National Perspective,” International Social Science
Journal, 37, no. 1 (1985), pp. 86, 93-95; Russell V. Dalton, Citizen Politics in Western
 Notes (pp. 237-242) 331

Democracies (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1988), p. 257; “American Values,” The Econ-
omist, September 11, 1992, p. 20.
136. Alex C. Michalos, “Optimism in Thirty Countries Over a Decade,” Social Indicators
Research, 20 (1988), pp. 178-179. The data for 1990 are from a Gallup Poll release. The
poll did not ask the question from 1986 to 1989 nor from 199] to the present.
ew The data of the 1990 World Values study show that when asked to place themselves on a 10-
point scale running from “individuals have no personal effect on what happens to them” to
the belief that they have a great deal of “freedom of choice and control,” 77 percent of the
Americans put themselves in high-control categories compared to 29 percent of the Japanese.
138. Reischauer, The Japanese, pp. 162-165.
139; Triandis, “Cross-Cultural Studies,” p. 103.
140. William J. Goode, private communication.
141. Stephen J. Anderson, Welfare Policy and Politics in Japan (New York: Paragon House,
1993), p. 143.
142. The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 58.
143. Hiroshi Ishida, “Educational Credentialism, Class, and the Labor Market: A Comparative
Study of Social Mobility in Japan and the United States.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard Uni-
versity, Cambridge, MA, 1986), p. 176 (emphasis in original). For a discussion of the
emphasis on ranking schools and universities, as well as companies, see Befu, “Four Models
of Japanese Society,” pp. 220-222.
144, Dore, “Elitism and Democracy,” p. 70.
145. Kenrick, Where Communism Works, p. 152.
146. Nakane, “Hierarchy,” p. 11.
147, George DeVos. “Confucian Hierarchy Versus Class Consciousness in Japan.” Unpublished
paper, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 1990.
148. Suzuki, “Ways of Life,” pp. 88-89.
149. 1987 New Social Indicators (Tokyo: Social Policy Bureau Economic Planning Agency,
1987), p. 91; The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 86.
150. Mary C. Brinton, “The Social-Institutional Bases of Gender Stratification: Japan as an IIlus-
trative Case,” American Journal of Sociology, 94 (September 1988), p. 308; Brinton, Women
and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1993), pp. 24-70.
15st: Patricia A. Roos, Gender and Work: A Comparative Analysis of Industrial Societies (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), pp. 146-147.
152. Ibid., pp. 15-16, 131; Constance Sorrentino, “The Changing Family in International Per-
spective,” Monthly Labor Review, 113 (March 1990), p. 53.
IES David E. Sanger, “Job-Seeking Women in Japan Finding More Discrimination,” The New
York Times, May 27, 1994, p. A9.
154. John Greenlees, “Females Say Sayonara to Job Chances,” Times Higher Education Supple-
ment, November 12, 1993, p. 11.
155: Robert V. Smith, “Work and Family in Contemporary Japan, Background Information”
(Data distributed for a talk at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars), Sep-
tember 17, 1992; Statistical Abstract, 1994, p. 858.
156. Ibid.
LBZ Ibid.
158. Mary C. Brinton, “Christmas Cakes and Wedding Cakes: The Social Organization of Japan-
ese Women’s Life Course,” in Takie Sugiyama Lebra, ed., Japanese Social Organization
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), p. 96.
159. Reischauer, The Japanese, pp. 204-212.
160. For similar findings from 1988 data, see Tatsuko Suzuki, “Cultural Link Analysis: Its Appli-
cation to Social Attitudes—A Study Among Five Nations,” in Bulletin of the International
Statistical Institute, Proceedings of the 47th Session, Paris (1989), p. 368, and Brinton,
Women and the Economic Miracle, pp. 92-93.
161. Prime Minister's Office, “International Comparison,” p. 5.
 332 Notes (pp. 243-250)

162. The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 86.

163. Prime Minister's Office, “International Comparison,” p. 8.
164. See the Dentsu Institute’s Virginia Slims Report 1990: A Comparative Study of Opinion Polls
on Women's Issues Between Japan and the United States (Tokyo: Dentsu Institute for Human
Studies, 1990).
165. Yearbook of Labour Statistics (Geneva: International Labor Office, 1991), pp. 108, 409, 418.
166. Cited by Greenlees, “Females Say Sayonara,” p. 11.
167. Chugakusei no Hahaoya, pp. 1, 14-15, 34. See also Brinton, “Christmas Cakes and Wed-
ding Cakes,” p. 86.
168. Mary C. Brinton, “Gender Stratification in Contemporary Urban Japan,” American Sociolog-
ical Review, 54 (August 1989), p. 554.
169, Japan Statistical Yearbook: 1989 (Tokyo: Statistics Bureau, Management and Coordination
Agency, 1989), p. 782.
170. Brinton, “Christmas Cakes and Wedding Cakes,” p. 87.
lial The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 64.
172. Fumie Kumagai, “Modernization and the Family in Japan,” Journal of Family History, 11, no.
4 (1986), pp. 371-382.
Ly. Glazer, “Social and Cultural Factors,” p. 861.
174. Management and Coordination Agency, “The Summary of International Comparative Sur-
veys of the Life and Opinions of the Elderly” (Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, Japan, 1986), p.
5; and Rojin-no Seikatso to Ishiki (The Lifestyle and Attitudes of the Elderly) (Tokyo: Somu-
cho Chokan Kanbo Rujin Taisaku Shitsu [Elderly Affairs Administration, Management and
Coordination Agency], 1991).
M75. “Presentation” by Chikako Usui and “Comment” by George DeVos, in Japanese/American
National Character Conference (Tokyo: Institute of Statistical Mathematics, and Stanford,
CA: Hoover Institution, 1991), pp. 79-80. For the same data, see Management and Coordi-
nation Agency, “The Summary,” p. 4; and for 1991, see Rojin-no Seikatsu.
176. Sorrentino, “The Changing Family,” p. 52.
177, Junko Matsubara writing in Chuo Koron, as reported in “Japanese Society Ignores Singles’
Rights,” Mainichi Daily News, July 5, 1992, p. 2.
178. The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 48.
sZt), Brinton, “Christmas Cakes and Wedding Cakes,” p. 96.
180. Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York:
Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 116-118. See also Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-
Industrial Japan (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957).
181. Masatsugu, The Modern Samurai Society, p. 18.
182. The World Youth Survey, 1989, p. 74.
83. Tatsuko Suzuki, et al., “A Study of Japanese-Americans in Honolulu, Hawaii,” Annals of the
Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Supplement 7 (1972), p. 29.
184. World Values Survey, 1990.
185. Virginia Slims—Roper Poll.
186. For evidence from the foreign traveller literature, see Lipset, The First New Nation, pp.
99-139,
187. Alan Wolfe, “Cultural Sources of the Reagan Revolution: The Antimodern Legacy,” in B.B.
Kymlicka and Jean V. Matthews, eds., The Reagan Revolution? (Chicago: Dorsey Press,
1988), pp. 70-71.
188. See Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism
in America, 1790-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
189. There is much evidence of extremely high rates of ethnic and even Jewish intermarriage in
America—see Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp, 45-48, 72-73, 182-183. The best stud-
ies are Stanley Lieberson and Mary Waters, From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups
in Contemporary America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989), pp. 162-246, and
 Notes (pp. 251-262) 333

Mary Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1990), pp. 102-114.
190. Suzuki, “Ways of Life,” p. 100.
19] . Japan 1992, p. 72; Labour-Management Relations, p. 10.
192. World Values Survey, 1990.
193) Dale, The Myth, pp. 105-107; Dore, British Factory—Japanese Factory, pp. 202-203,
219-220, 370; Michael Shalev, “Class Conflict, Corporatism and Comparison: A Japanese
Enigma,” in Eisenstadt and Ben-Ami, eds., Japanese Models, pp. 73-77; Kenrick, Where
Communism Works, pp. 124-125.
194. Bass, Productive Aging, p. 16. See also Vincent A. Mahler and Claudio J. Katz, “Social Bene-
fits in Advanced Capitalist Countries,” Comparative Politics, 21 (October 1988), p. 40. Data
taken from International Labor Office, The Cost of Social Security. Eleventh International
Inquiry, 1978-1980 (Geneva: ILO, 1985). See also Fukutake, The Japanese, pp. 99-201.
19> Tomoni Kodama, “Observations on the Differences and Similarities in the Japanese and
U.S. Benefit Systems,” Employee Benefits Notes, 13 (August 1992), p. 1.
196. Naoyuki Isomo, “Stimulus Size Exceeds Expectations,” The Nihon Weekly, September 5,
1992, p. 4; T. R. Reid, “Economic Recovery Plan,” The Washington Post, August 31, 1992,
pp. Al, Al3.
Mf See p. 145 for wording of question.
198. T. J. Pempel and Keiichi Tsunekawa, “Corporatism Without Labor? The Japanese Anom-
aly,” in Philippe Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, eds., Trend Toward Corporatist Inter-
mediation (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979), pp. 231-270; Leonard Lynn and
Timothy McKeown, Organizing Business Trade Associations in America and Japan (Washing-
ton, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1988).
1997 For an analysis of these experiences, see Robert E. Cole, Strategies for Learning Small-
Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1989). :
200. Vogel, Japan as Number One, p. 141.
201. Quoted in Mike Millard, “After the Bashing,” The Japan Times Weekly, July 4, 1992, p. 3.
202. James C. Abegglen and George Stalk, Jr., Kaisha: The Japanese Corporation: The New Com-
petitors in World Business (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 194-195.
203. Kagono, et al., Strategic vs. Evolutionary Management, p. 38.
204. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures, p. 32.
205. Ibid., pp. 48-49. The survey results are presented in twelve tables on pp. 26-46. The cross-
national variations on well over 100 items are considerable.
206. Richard Florida and Martin Kenney, “Transplanted Organizations: The Transfer of Japanese
Industrial Organization to the U.S.,” American Sociological Review, 56 (June 1991), p. 382.
See also Karen Cool and Cynthia Legnick-Hall, “Second Thoughts on the Transferability of
the Japanese Management Style,” Organization Studies, 6 (1985), pp. 1-22.
207. Florida and Kenney, “Transplanted Organizations,” p. 391.
208. Fallows, “The Japanese Are Different,” pp. 37-38.
209. Johnson, “The People,” pp. 82-83.
210. Richard B. Freeman, ed., Working Under Different Rules (New York: Russell Sage Founda-
tion, 1994), pp. 7-10.
211. Johnson, “The People,” p. 82.
212. Fingleton, “Japan's Invisible Leviathan,” pp. 69-85.
213. Lipset, Continental Divide, p. 212.
214. Paul Krugman, “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle,” Foreign Affairs, 73 (November—December
1994), p. 74.
oANey “The Triumph of the West,” The Economist, October 29, 1994, p. 74. The summarized com-
parative study is Arnoud De Meyer, et al., 1994 Manufacturing Futures Survey.
216. George V. Church, “And It Hurts,” Time, October 24, 1994, p. 51.
217. Krugman, “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle,” pp. 73, 74-75.
 334 Notes (pp. 262-272)

218. Jerry Jasinowski and Robert Hamrin, Making It in America (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1995), pp. 24-31.
PME “The Global Economy,” The Economist, October 1, 1994, Survey, p. 38.

8. A DouBLE-EDGED Sworp (pp. 267-292)

_ . This chapter is elaborated from an article by Jeffrey Hayes and myself entitled “Individual-
ism: A Double-edged Sword,” in The Responsive Community, 4 (Winter 1993-94), pp.
69-80, and another by Seymour Martin Lipset, “American Democracy in Comparative Per-
spective,” in Robert S. Leiken, ed., A New Moment in the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Books, 1994), pp. 1-13. I am very indebted to Hayes for agreeing to allow me to
incorporate our article, as well as for his assistance on earlier drafts of a number of chapters
in this book.
. Data from “Worrying Isn’t New,” The American Enterprise, 4 (July-August 1993), p. 94.
. See Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor,
and Government in the Public Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, expanded
and updated ed., 1987). See also Lipset, “American Democracy in Comparative Perspective.”
. Mortimer Zuckerman, “Where Have Our Values Gone?” U.S. News and World Report,
August 8, 1994, p. 88.
. Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1985).
. Louise I. Shelley, “American Crime: An International Anomaly?” Comparative Social
Research, 8 (1985); V. Lee Hamilton and Joseph Sanders, Everyday Justice: Responsibility
and the Individual in Japan and the United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1992), p. 194. See also Japan 1992. An International Comparison (Tokyo: Keizei Koho Cen-
ter, 1992), p. 93, and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States,
1994 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1994), pp. 198, 201.
. Charles Derber, “A Nation Gone Wild,” Utne Reader (March-April 1993), p. 69.
. James Wilson makes this argument, although he avoids blaming individualism per se. He
emphasizes an ethic of “self-expression” that he locates in America’s public philosophy. See
James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime (New York: Basic Books; rev. ed., 1983), pp.
234-249.
. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL.: The Free Press, 1957),
pp. 167-169; Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe, IL.: The Free Press, 1960), pp.
116-117.
10. John Leo, “The Age of Litigation,” U.S. News and World Report, March 30, 1992, p. 22.
11. See David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working
Class (New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 19-40.
12. Alan Wolfe, “Middle-Class Moralities,” Wilson Quarterly, 17 (Summer 1993), p. 53.
13. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Iatrogenic Government,” The American Scholar, 62 (Summer
1993), p. 354.
14. Information Please Almanac and Yearbook 1994 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), p. 466.
. J. Hector St. John de Crévecover, Letters from an American Farmer (Franklin Center, PA:
Franklin Library, 1982), p. 159.
16. Information Please Almanac, p. 466.
7 Lloyd Johnston, “Drug use continues to climb among American teen-agers, as attitudes and
beliefs about the dangers of drugs soften, U-M survey says,” University of Michigan News
and Information Services, December 8, 1994, p. 2, and Table I. For similar findings up to
1993 by Gallup, see “American Youth Culture: . Roper Center Review,” The Public Per- -
spective, 5 (January 1994), p. 23.
18. Ibid., Table I.
We Everett C. Ladd, “The Myth of Moral Decline,” The Responsive Community, 4 (Winter
1993-94), p. 62. Data are from Gallup Youth Surveys.
20. James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: The Free Press, 1993), pp. 162-163.
 Notes (pp. 273-277) 335

21. David Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies (New
York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988), p. 288.
22. Ibid., p. 291.
23. “Home Alone,” The Economist, May 15, 1993, p. 74.
24. Nancy Wood, “Unmarried . . . with Children,” Maclean's, August 23, 1993, p. 40.
25, William J. Goode, World Changes in Divorce Patterns (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1993), p. 82.
26. Ann Hulbert, “Home Repairs,” The New Republic, August 16, 1993, p. 32.
. Ibid., p. 26.
28. Statistical Abstract, 1994, p. 62.
29. “New Census Bureau African American Report Most Comprehensive in 20 Years,” United
States Department of Commerce News (Washington, D.C.; U.S. Department of Commerce,
February 23, 1995), p. 3.
30. Christopher Jencks, “Is the American Underclass Growing?” in Christopher Jencks and Paul
E. Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991)
pp. 86-89. See also U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States,
1944-45 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1945), Daigo
Bile Robert T. Michael, et al., Sex in America. A Definitive Survey (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994),
See also Edward U. Laumann, et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality. Sexual Practices
in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994),
32. Andrew Greeley, “Marital Infidelity,” Society, 31 (May-June 1994), p. 13, Laumann, et al.,
The Social Organization, pp. 208-216.
33. Andrew Greeley, “Review of Sex and Morality in the United States: An Empirical Inquiry
Under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute by Albert D. Klassen, Colin Williams, and Eugene
E. Levitt and edited by Hubert J. O'Gorman (New Haven: Wesleyan University Press,
1990),” Society, 27 (May-June 1990), pp. 104-105. In surveying American public opinion
on sex issues, William Mayer argues that since 1974, “The dominant impression is again one
of stability and continuity.” See William G. Mayer, The Changing American Mind. How and
Why American Public Opinion Changed Between 1960 and 1988 (Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 36-38.
34. James H. Rutherford, The Moral Foundations of United States Constitutional Democracy
(Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 1992), pp. 23-24.
33% In an excellent essay, Michael Walzer elaborates a complex and persuasive image of Ameri-
can pluralism, which is ultimately a mixed review of the societal record: “Perhaps an immi-
grant society has no choice; tolerance is a way of muddling through when any alternative
policy would be violent and dangerous. But I would argue we have made the best of this
necessity. ...” Even though Walzer embraces America’s pluralist framework, he does so
reluctantly, noting that tolerance is the second best alternative. Still he recognizes the dan-
ger of the communitarian version of pluralism for American society: “communitarianism is
not a plausible option; it doesn’t reach to our [political and cultural] complexity.” See
Michael Walzer, “What Does It Mean to be an American?” Social Research, 57, no. 3 (Fall
1990), pp. 610-611, 613.
36. Zbigniew Rau, “Human Nature and Civil Society,” Social Philosophy and Public Policy, 8,
no, 1 (Autumn 1990), p. 178.
37. Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest, p. 332.
38. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: An Essay in Moral Theory (South Bend, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 181.
39. See pp. 70-71 of this book.
40. Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 22 (emphasis in original). Wuthnow’s data are
from a national survey of 2,775 adult respondents conducted in 1988 by Gallup and
reported in Giving and Volunteering in the United States: Findings from a National Survey
(Washington, D.C.: Independent Sector, 1988), p. 37.
41. Ladd, “The Myth of Moral Decline,” p. 65.
 336 Notes (pp. 278-292)

42. Peter F. Drucker, “The Age of Social Transformation,” Atlantic Monthly, 274 (November
1994), p. 76.
43. The patterns were similar in 1981-83. See James E. Curtis, Edward G. Grabb, and Douglas
E. Baer, “Voluntary Association Membership in Fifteen Countries: A Comparative Analy-
sis,” American Sociological Review, 57 (April 1992), pp. 143-147.
44, Mayer, The Changing American Mind, pp. 33, 184-185 (emphasis in original).
45. Statistical Abstract, 1994, p. 70.
46, Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: Democracy in America at the End of the Twentieth Cen-
tury. Unpublished paper, Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
1994; partially published as “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of
Democracy, 6 (January 1995) pp. 65-78.
47. Putnam, “Bowling Alone,” Journal of Democracy, p. 69.
48. Ibid., p. 71.
49. Putnam, “Bowling Alone,” unpublished version, p. 22.
50. Lipset and Schneider, The Confidence Gap, p. 13.
Syl The (Los Angeles) Times-Mirror Center, The New Political Landscape (Washington, D.C.,
1994).
52: “Measuring Crime,” The Economist, October 15, 1994, p. 21.
538 Ibid., p. 23.
54. “The European Union,” The Economist, October 22, 1994, Survey, p. 4.
. Norman Ornstein, “Less Seems More: What to Do About Contemporary Political Corrup-
tion,” The Responsive Community, 4 (Winter 1993-94), pp. 16-17.
56. The Hudson Institute, “The American Dream.” Unpublished study, Indianapolis, 1994.
57. See chapter Five, pp. 65-70.
58. Richard Rose, “How Exceptional is American Government?” Studies in Public Policy, 150
(Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, 1985).
59. Tom W. Smith, “The Polls: The Welfare State in Cross-National Perspective,” Public Opin-
ion Quarterly, 51 (Fall 1987), p. 406.
60. “Bottom of the Heap,” The Economist, December 11, 1993, p. 28.
6l. Nathan Glazer, “Welfare and ‘Welfare’ in America,” in Richard Rose and Rei Shiratori, eds.,
The Welfare State East and West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 62; Harold
Wilensky, The Welfare State and Equality (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1975), pp. 28-39; Arnold Heidenheimer, et al., Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of
Social Choice in Europe and America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983).
62. For a sophisticated analysis of the changes which have been attempted, and which have sur-
vived or failed, see Hugh Heclo, “The Emerging Regime,” in Richard A. Harris and Sidney M.
Milkis, eds., Remaking American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 290-320.
63. For a discussion of the complementary interrelated character of consensus and conflict in
societies, see Seymour Martin Lipset, Consensus and Conflict: Essays in Political Sociology
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985), especially pp. 1-109.
64. Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, MA: Belk-
nap Press, 1981), pp. 130-131 (emphasis added), and 85-109.
65. Quoted in Sacvan Bercovitch, “The Rites of Assent: Rhetoric, Ritual, and the Ideology of
American Consensus,” in Sam B. Girgus, ed., The American Self: Myth, Ideology and Popular
Culture (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), p. 21; see also Sacvan
Bercovitch, The American Jeremaid (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978),
pp. 140-151, 176.
66. Bercovitch, “Rites of Assent,” pp. 5—6 (emphasis in original).
67. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers,
1971), pp. 21-22, 272, 318.
68. Seymour Martin Lipset, “No Third Way: A Comparative Perspective on the Left,” in Daniel
Chirot, ed., The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left (Seattle: University of Wash-
ington Press, 1991), pp. 183-205.
 Index

abolition, 65, 113, 176, 177, 290-91 definition of, 19, 31

abortion, 28, 67, 200, 204, 248 factors in, 19-28, 31
Abrams, Elliott, 195, 196 as ideology, 18-19, 31, 83, 154, 207, 268,
Abrams, Garry, 185 291-92
absenteeism, 233 liberalism of, 31, 32, 143-44
achievement tests, 54 preferential treatment and, 127—31, 143,
Acts of Compassion (Wuthnow), 277 149-50
Adams, Henry, 178 transformation of, 22, 289, 290-92
Adams, John, 13, 178 American Dilemma, An (Myrdal), 116
adoption, 221 American Dream, 287-88
affairs, extramarital, 248, 274 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 37, 38,
affirmative action, 118-31 95, 97, 107, 120
civil rights movement and, 120, 128, 139, 143 American Federation of Teachers, 107
as form of collectivism, 121, 128, 129 American Political Science Association, 198
government support for, 118-22 American Revolution, 14, 18, 24, 31, 39, 54,
liberal support for, 128-29, 131 91-92, 268
meritocracy vs., 121, 122, 124-25, 139, American Society for the Prevention of
205-6 Cruelty to Animals (A.S.P.C.A.), 158
negative effects of, 120, 148-49 American Sociological Association, 177
opposition to, 117, 120-21, 124-25, Anderson, John, 41, 86, 91, 162
128-29, 194, 195, 204 Anderson, Stephen, 238
political impact of, 120-22, 126, 131, Ando, Kiyoshi, 237
139-43, 149 Anglican Church, 19, 93
poverty and, 137-38 anti-communism, 65—66, 181, 190-91, 192,
“problem of standards” and, 124 194, 197, 199, 201
public opinion on, 124-27, 139-43 Anti-Defamation League, 151
Republicans and, 120-22, 126, 131, 139, Anti-Masonic Party, 249
141, 149 anti-Semitism, 122, 151, 158, 159-61, 162,
women and, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127 163-68, 171, 172-73, 175, 205
AFL-CIO, 120, 191, 192, 194, 198 aristocracy, 47-48, 53, 54, 62, 68, 87, 252,
African-Americans, see blacks 268
agnostics, 152, 179 Aronson, Bernard, 200
Agrarian Socialism (Lipset), 14 Articles of Confederation, 39
Alter, Robert, 186 atheists, 179, 205
American Association of Retired People Australia, 57, 101
(AARP), 281 authority:
American Association of University Professors, opposition to, 21, 182
178 respect for, 19, 24, 199, 240, 282
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 40
American Creed: Baird, Zoe, 168
blacks as exception to, 113, 115-16, 122, Baker, James A., III, 174
143, 154 Banfield, Edward C., 44, 202
 338 Index

Baptists, 19, 64, 70 Breyer, Steven G., 168

Beard, Charles, 178 Brinton, Mary, 241, 242
Beason, Richard, 215-16 British Columbia, 105
Becker, Carl, 180, 181 Broder, David, 201
Befu, Harumi, 216 Brown, Henry Phelps, 93, 96-97, 102, 106
Bell, Daniel, 48-49, 55, 194, 196, 198, 199, Brown v. Board of Education, 118
260, 269 Bruce, Peter, 108
Bell, Linda, 60 Bruckberger, R. L., 64, 67
Bellah, Robert, 50, 63, 64, 247, 250 Buchanan, James, 160
Belmont, August, 158 Buchanan, Patrick, 196-97
Beloff, Max, 36 Buckley, William F., Jr., 196, 201-2
Bendix, Reinhard, 14 Buddhism, 226, 247
Ben Gurion, David, 167 Burger, Warren, 122
Benjamin, Judah P., 158 Burke, Edmund, 33, 60
Bennett, William, 195, 196 Burnham, James, 201
Bercovitch, Sacvan, 26, 290, 291 Burnham, Walter Dean, 62, 109
Berman, Paul, 204 Bush, George, 44, 67, 121, 141, 169, 254,
Bernard, Jessie, 205 283, 284
Bernstein, Richard, 184
Bill of Rights, 20, 21, 25, 40, 49, 116 Calvert, John, 105
Bismarck, Otto von, 21, 35, 84, 117 Calvinism, 153, 155, 164
blacks, 113-50 Cameron, Bruce, 200
as Americans, 13, 113 Campbell, Colin, 93-94
birth rate of, 136 Campbell, Kim, 99
communal rights and, 121, 128, 129, Canada:
146-47 authoritarianism in, 24
discrimination against, 28, 81, 113, 115-16, Britain compared with, 33
119-20, 129-30, 133, 138, 144, 175 collectivism in, 93-94, 95, 98, 102, 146-47
drug abuse by, 272 common history of, 91
education and, 82, 114-18, 135-36, 137 counter-revolution in, 14, 24, 91-92
equal opportunity for, 113-14, 130-31, 132 criminal justice system of, 92
as exception to American Creed, 113, currency of, 93
115-16, 122, 143, 154 economy of, 94, 96, 98, 100
fair housing laws for, 119, 121 education in, 101
government assistance for, 147-48 equality vs. freedom in, 101
Jews compared with, 122, 151, 167, 175 foreign trade of, 66
leadership of, 131-32 Francophone population of, 88-89, 92,
media coverage of, 134 93-94, 96, 273
in middle class, 134-35, 136 GDP of, 55
as minority, 113, 122 health care in, 99
poverty of, 132-33, 134, 135, 136-37 Jewish population of, 157, 167
quotas for, 118-31, 137-38, 149, 205-6 labor legislation in, 90, 102-6
social progress of, 131-38 meritocracy in, 145
stereotypes of, 133-34 prison population of, 47
stratification systems and, 113-16, 151 public employment in, 99
underclass of, 50, 113, 133-34 religion in, 62, 63, 91-92, 93
work ethic and, 132, 133 socialism in, 78, 88-108
in working class, 120, 138, 139, 140, 148, statism in, 19, 92-95, 97
149 third parties in, 90-91
boarding schools, 82, 114 Tory tradition in, 24, 91, 92-93, 95, 97,
Bobo, Lawrence, 146 102, 108
Bok, Derek, 103 trade unions in, 78, 88, 89-90, 91, 95-108
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 155 U.S. compared with, 19, 21, 24, 32-35, 78,
Bozell, Brent, 201 88-108, 261, 291
Bradley, Tom, 170 welfare state of, 92, 95, 99
Braithwaite, John, 228 Canadian Auto Workers, 107
 Index 339

Canadian Congress of Labor (CCL), 96 cocaine, 271, 272

Canadian Jewish Congress, 157 Cohen, Steven M., 151, 169, 171, 172
capitalism: Cold War, 149
communistic, 215 Cole, Robert, 231
liberal, 94 Cole, Stephen, 49
mercantile, 54, 94, 130, 211, 215 collectivism, communalism:
post-, 55 affirmative action as form of, 121, 128, 129
sectarianism and, 225 in Canada, 93-94, 95, 98, 102, 146-47
socialism vs., 37—38, 88 conservative opposition to, 36, 128
values of, 154 as ideology, 37, 67-68, 93
Cardoso, Fernando, 35 individualism vs., 69, 102, 216-20, 275-76,
Carter, Jimmy, 194, 195, 197, 283, 284 293-96
Castro, Fidel, 66 Japanese, 213, 216-20, 228-29, 237-38,
Catholic Church, 19, 28, 60, 64, 65, 67, 85, 240, 252-53, 256, 257
92, 93, 157, 159-60, 165, 205 minority rights and, 21, 121, 128, 129,
Caudill, William, 218 146-47, 176
censorship, 49, 207-8 Commentary, 198, 201
Champy, James, 261 Committee for Labor Law Reform, 198
Characteristics of Black Population, 137 Committee on Freedom of Expression, 207-8
charitable donations, 70-71, 277 Commons, John, 95
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 146-47 common schools, 54, 82, 114
Chesterton, G. K., 31 Common Sense, 195
children: Communist International, 77, 189
black, 136-37, 273 communists, 31, 65-66, 77, 97, 179, 181,
illegitimate, 17, 50-51, 137, 273, 274 189, 190-91, 192, 194, 197, 199, 201
parents’ relationship with, 218-19, 220, “communitarian” movement, 37
223, 240, 244, 246-47 competition: -
Chile, 35 collusion vs., 295
Chodorov, Frank, 201 conservative support for, 36
Chomsky, Noam, 68, 207 education and, 53, 54, 114-15
Christian, William, 93-94 individualism and, 58, 102, 108, 235, 260,
Christian Coalition, 249 261, 267-68
church attendance, 61, 276, 279-80 quotas and, 118-22, 130-31
Churchill, Winston, 31, 66, 251 by trade unions, 107-8
citizenship, 154, 155 Confucianism, 220, 247
civic consciousness, 219-20 Congregationalists, 91
civil disobedience, 181 Congress, U.S., 42, 43, 44-45, 282, 283
civil liberties, 49, 290 Congress for Cultural Freedom, 191
Civil Rights Act (1964), 120 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),
Civil Rights Act (1991), 141 38, 89, 95, 97, 107, 120
civil rights movement: conscience, obedience to, 20, 65
affirmative action and, 120, 128, 139, 143 Consensus and Conflict (Lipset), 26
leadership of, 131-32 conservatism:
legislation for, 120, 137, 141, 170, 284 anti-statism of, 36, 37, 98, 289
neoconservative support for, 197 anti-urban sentiments of, 249
social impact of, 116, 119, 128, 131 business ideology of, 36
student support for, 181-82 collectivism opposed by, 36, 128
trade unions and, 120-21 comparative analysis of, 35-37
civil servants, 44, 45 of intellectuals, 180, 182-83
Civil War, 65, 168 Japanese, 250-56
class consciousness, 23, 33, 38, 77, 78, 85, liberalism vs., 35-39, 128
87-88, 97, 98, 108-9, 147, 251-52, 289 neo-, see neoconservatism
Clinton, Bill, 27, 67, 97, 141, 142, 168, 174, progress and, 36-37
198, 254, 283, 284 in Republican Party, 38, 171, 183, 254
Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), social, 98-99, 200
194, 198 of Tories, 31, 35, 36, 37
 340 Index

Conservative Party, British, 153-54, 201 anti-communism in, 192

Conservative Party, Canadian, 92, 98-99, 105 anti-statism of, 289
Constitution, Canadian, 146-47 black support for, 147
Constitution, U.S., 20, 22-23, 39, 43, 53, 86, electoral gains by, 101, 139-42, 147
116, 156 intellectuals as supporters of, 179, 189
Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions Jewish support for, 152, 169, 170, 171, 174
of the United States and Canada (Lipset), liberalism of, 38, 171
14, 94 neoconservatives and, 194, 198, 199
“Contract with America,’ 27—28 New Politics wing of, 192, 194
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation trade union support for, 38, 97, 101
(CCF), 96 Democratic Socialists, Japanese, 254
corporations: Democratic Socialists, U.S., 89, 192
downsizing of, 58-60, 233, 261, 262 Depression, Great, see Great Depression
Japanese, 230-38, 252-54, 257-59 Derber, Charles, 269
profit margins of, 257, 258, 294 DeVos, George, 228, 240
work organization of, 258-59 Dewey, Thomas, 180
Coughlin, Charles, 166 Diggins, John, 183, 206
Crévecoeur, J. Hector St. John, 33-34, 271 Dinkins, David, 170
crime: Dionne, E. J., 197
blacks and, 134 Disraeli, Benjamin, 21, 35, 84, 117
control of, 49, 227, 290 Dissent, 193
drug abuse and, 271-72 divorce, 26, 49-50, 229, 245-46, 272-74, 289
“functional” role of, 49 Dole, Bob, 122
high rates of, 13, 17, 21, 26, 46-49, 267, Dore, Ronald, 216, 235, 236, 239, 253
269-70, 285 Douglas, William O., 122
low rates of, 27, 46, 49, 227, 228-29 Douglass, Frederick, 148, 291
morality and, 47, 269-70 Drucker, Peter, 55, 131, 277-78
Cruse, Harold, 122 drug abuse, 47, 267, 271-72
Culley, Margo, 186-87 Dukakis, Michael, 169
currency, monetary, 93 Duke, David, 139, 140
Curti, Merle, 68 Duke, James Buchanan, 69
Durkheim, Emile, 214-15
Dahl, Robert, 286
Daily Forward, 163 Economist, 59-60, 234, 261-63, 285
Dale, Peter, 223 economy, U.S.:
Davies, Robertson, 108 decline of, 17, 55
Davis, Jefferson, 158 equal opportunity in, 53, 72, 76, 81, 82, 92,
Dawidowicz, Lucy, 163 98, 113-15, 118-22, 130-31, 132
Dearborn Independent, 165 foreign competition and, 58, 59-60
Debs, Eugene V., 189 government control of, 33, 37, 38, 58, 74,
Declaration of Independence, 13, 14, 31, 116, 76, 94-95, 97, 145-46, 215, 216, 254,
143 260, 290
deficit, budget, 38, 169, 200 growth of, 17, 38, 55-60
de Gaulle, Charles, 66 as market economy, 215
Degler, Carl, 87 as postindustrial economy, 55~57, 58
Delany, Martin, 148 structual variations in, 100
democracy: Edsall, Thomas, 141, 142
civil society in, 276-77, 280-81 education:
open societies and, 13, 49, 53-54, 78, 259 blacks and, 82, 114-18, 135-36, 137
stability of, 14, 17-18 competition and, 53, 54, 114-15
values of, 63-67, 197, 276-77 cross-national comparisons of, 21-22,
Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 17-18, : 82-83, 101, 114, 117-18, 144, 213, 217, .
34 1237, 238-39, 244-45
Democratic Party: desegregation of, 22, 114, 118
affirmative action and, 120, 121, 126, 131, equal opportunity in, 21, 53-54, 82-83,
139, 140, 141, 142, 149 114-15, 144
 Index 341

higher, 26, 58, 82, 83, 114, 177, 178, freedom vs., 101, 145, 255-56
179-88 of groups vs. individuals, 119, 121, 143,
ideology and, 61, 88 146-47
Jewish involvement in, 152, 163-64, 167, individualism vs., 255
171-72 meaning of, 13~14, 32, 36
levels of, 53, 288, 289 natural vs. practical, 148
mass, 21, 54, 59, 82, 114, 280 of opportunity vs. results, 130-31, 235, 238
political correctness and, 202-8 equal opportunity:
quotas in, 123, 131, 163-64, 167 economic progress and, 53, 72, 76, 81, 82,
religion and, 197, 200 92, 98, 113-15, 118-22, 130-31, 132
rote learning in, 217 in education, 21, 53-54, 82-83, 114-15,
social mobility and, 61, 82-83, 118 144
special, 145 equality of results vs., 130-31, 235, 238
spending on, 22, 82, 83, 117-18, 145 for immigrants, 123-24, 127
vocational, 82, 118 meritocracy and, 22, 25, 53, 76, 81-83, 92,
women and, 244-45 101, 114, 144-45, 195, 199, 234-35,
egalitarianism: 248, 255, 260, 289
definition of, 19 for minorities, 21, 113-14, 123-24,
economic development and, 213 130-31, 132, 176
equality and, 32, 235 for women, 121, 122, 243-44
forms of address and, 34, 53 Etzioni, Amitai, 37
as ideology, 19, 31, 78, 128 Europe:
individualism vs., 128-29 Eastern, 153, 161-65, 202
popular support for, 14, 24, 84, 128 economies of, 38
elderly, 200, 220, 231, 246, 254 education in, 22, 114, 117-18, 144
elections: postfeudal societies in, 21, 35, 79, 115,
class divisions and, 22 116-17, 147, 248, 252, 288-89
institutional structure of, 40-41 religious trends in, 61-63
primary system for, 40, 43, 86 social evolution of, 214-15
special interests and, 44-45 trade unions in, 103-4
third parties in, 37, 41, 42, 86, 90-91, see also individual countries
97-98, 180, 283 European Community, 57
two-party system in, 39, 41-42, 45, 86, 260, European Union, 22, 46, 234
282-83 exceptionalism, American:
voter participation in, 13, 17, 21, 26, 43-46, comparative analysis of, 32-35
85, 240, 282-83 failure of socialism and, 77-109
Eliot, T. S., 178 historical analysis of, 23-24
Ellison, Ralph, 134 Japanese uniqueness vs., 27, 28, 208,
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 18 211-63
employees: marginalism and, 28, 176
blue-collar, 140, 149 Marxist analysis of, 33, 62, 211, 251, 291
dislocation of, 56—57 methodology on, 23-28
expectations of, 235 negative vs. positive aspects of, 13, 26-27,
government, 99 28, 267-92
Japanese, 230-38, 252-54, 257-59 organizing principles of, 13, 150, 256, 261
loyalty of, 233, 294 traditional values and, 267-68
white-collar, 59, 234, 288 validity of, 24, 288-92
workweek of, 60, 74, 75, 233 see also American Creed
Encounter, 36 Eyerman, Ron, 187
Engels, Friedrich, 33, 34, 54, 77, 78-81, 84
English language, 34-35, 127-28, 239 Fallows, James, 259
Episcopalians, 152, 169 families:
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, black, 119, 136-38, 273
120 crime rate and, 47
equality: decline of, 281
egalitarianism and, 32, 235 independence in, 27
 342 Index

families: (continued) Garrison, William Lloyd, 291

Japanese, 233, 242-43, 245-47, 260 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 131, 132-33, 183-84,
male-dominant, 242-43 206
nuclear, 245, 260, 273-74 Genovese, Eugene, 204
single-parent, 17, 54, 136-37, 272-73, 289 geographic mobility, 85, 281
social mobility and, 81, 83 Germany:
values of, 272-74, 276 competitiveness of, 59
work responsibilities vs., 233 economy of, 55, 57, 58
Farber, Henry, 104, 105 education in, 22, 144
Feinstein, Dianne, 139 Jewish population of, 160-61, 162, 165,
feminism, 176, 187, 205, 207 166, 167
Fifth Amendment, 120, 190 patriotism in, 51
Fingleton, Eamonn, 260 productivity of, 55, 56
Finn, Chester, 195 religion in, 61-62
First Amendment, 203-4 trade unions in, 38
First New Nation: The United States in U.S. compared with, 60
Historical and Comparative Perspective, welfare state in, 21, 35, 84, 117, 252
The (Lipset), 14, 34 white-collar jobs in, 59
Fish, Stanley, 203-4 Gershman, Carl, 195
Fisher, Alan, 171, 173 Gilder, George, 197
Flacks, Richard, 185-86, 187, 188 Gingrich, Newt, 28, 82, 177
Flanagan, Scott, 221-22 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 168
Florida, Richard, 258 Gitlin, Todd, 204
Forbath, William, 95 Glazer, Nathan, 164, 194, 198, 245, 289
Ford, Henry, 165 Glendon, Mary Ann, 23
Ford, James W., 179 Goldscheider, Calvin, 151, 162
“foreign traveler” literature, 17, 33-34 Goldwater, Barry, 197
Foster, William Z., 179 Gompers, Samuel, 37, 96
Foucault, Michel, 184 Goode, William, 50, 229
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 185 Goodman, Paul, 290
France: Gotlieb, Allan, 42
economy of, 58 Gould, Stephanie, 72
education in, 22 government:
Jewish population of, 155 affirmative action supported by, 118-22
patriotism in, 51 bureaucracy of, 58
religion in, 62 distrust of, 17, 27, 39, 45, 46, 68, 281-84,
taxation in, 73 286-87
U.S. compared with, 18 employees of, 99
Franco, Francisco, 66, 189 industrial ownership by, 39
Franklin, Benjamin, 60, 153 participatory, 43-44, 289
freedom, 19, 31, 101, 128, 145, 154-57, 223, regulation by, 27-28, 74, 75
255-56 separation of powers in, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44,
Freeman, Richard, 60, 103 46
French Revolution, 17, 92, 155 social programs of, 25, 37, 147-48, 196
Frey, William H., 135 spending by, 38, 169, 200
Friedman, Milton, 36, 154, 196, 200, 202 unified, 39-40
friendship, 245, 276 Gramsci, Antonio, 54, 61, 78, 87, 290
Fuchs, Lawrence, 124 Grant, George, 36-37
Fuchs, Victor, 137 Grant, Ulysses S., 158
Future in America, The (Wells), 33 Gray, John, 185, 188
Great Britain:
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 85 civil liberties in, 49
Garfield, James, 159 conscientious objection in, 65
Garin, Geoff, 140 crime rate in, 49
Garment, Leonard, 119-20 education in, 101, 144
Garment, Suzanne, 28, 177 equal opportunity in, 83
 Index 343

Jewish population of, 153 House of Representatives, U.S., 39

parliamentary system of, 17-18 housework, 242-43
patriotism in, 51] Howe, Irving, 193
postfeudal traditions of, 288-89 Hulbert, Ann, 273
prison population of, 47 Humphrey, Hubert, 120, 192, 193, 194, 195
religion in, 61, 62, 65 Huntington, Samuel, 26, 54, 63-64, 290
taxation in, 73 Hussein, Saddam, 67
trade unions in, 38, 103—4
U.S. compared with, 32, 33 Image of America, The (Bruckberger), 64
welfare state in, 21, 35, 84, 117, 252 immigrants;
Great Depression, 22, 27, 37, 38, 70, 89, 95, assimilation of, 158, 165-66, 175, 249-50
97, 99, 163, 166, 167, 179, 274 equal opportunity for, 123-24, 127
Greeley, Andrew, 274 Jewish, 154, 160, 162, 163
Green, Martin, 69 living standards of, 85
Greenberg, Stanley, 139-40, 141 non-Protestant, 165
gross domestic product (GDP), 22, 55, 73, populism and, 154
117 rights of, 174
gross national product (GNP), 22 success of, 48, 135
Group of Seven, 55 Third World, 259
Gulf War, 67, 284 income:
discrepancies in, 72-73, 75
Haley, John, 228 distribution of, 13, 26, 73, 75, 76, 84-85,
Hammer, Michael, 261 92, 145
Hampden-Turner, Charles, 25, 217, 257-58 guaranteed, 76, 145
Hamrin, Robert, 262 per capita, 55
Hardin, Herschel, 94 regulation of, 225-26, 234-35
Harrington, Michael, 81, 87-88, 191, 192, individualism:
193 collectivism vs., 69, 102, 216-20, 275-76,
Hartz, Louis, 87, 108 293-96
Harwood, Richard, 134 competitive, 58, 102, 108, 235, 260, 261,
Hashimoto, Masanori, 231 267-68
Hawkins, Augustus F., 121 culture of, 106, 114, 237-38
Hayek, Friedrich, 36, 154, 180, 196, 200 divorce rates and, 50
Head Start, 119, 130, 145, 149 economic impact of, 74-75, 213
health care, 27, 58, 71, 75, 83, 95, 99, 253-54 egalitarianism vs., 128-29
Heath, Edward, 201 equality vs., 255
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 175 expressive, 50
Helmreich, William, 173 as ideology, 19, 31, 96, 122, 125, 128, 143,
Helms, Jesse, 139 199, 275-76, 287
Hess, Karl, 68 Jeffersonian, 196
Heston, Allen, 55 legal rights and, 20-21, 139
Higginson, Henry Lee, 69 as moral standard, 64, 267-68, 269, 275-76
Higham, John, 161 possessive, 95
Himmelfarb, Dan, 196 sectarianism and, 19-20
Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 195, 196 sexuality and, 51
Himmelfarb, Milton, 169 social impact of, 26-27, 273, 277
Hispanics, 124, 127, 135, 167, 272 statism vs., 22-23, 84
history: uncontrolled, 269
common, 18, 31, 91, 207 Industrial Revolution, 211-12
consensual, 25—26 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 37,
Hitler, Adolf, 67, 189 95, 97, 190
Hofstadter, Richard, 18, 26, 37, 178, 179 infant mortality, 58, 134
Holocaust, 166, 167 inflation, 93, 97
Hook, Sidney, 81, 87, 193 Inglehart, Ronald, 217, 260
Hoover, Herbert, 38 initiative petitions, 43-44
Horowitz, Gad, 95, 96 Innis, Harold, 93
 344 Index

innovation, 48, 59, 172, 213-14, 230, 258 education in, 22, 101, 144, 213, 217, 237,
institutions: 238-39, 244-45
corruption of, 20 employment in, 59, 230-38
distrust of, 17, 27, 63 equality vs. freedom in, 101, 255-56
religious, 63 gender relations in, 241-45
integration, compulsory, 128-29 GOP of, 55
intellectuals, 176-208 health care in, 253-54
adversary culture of, 178 industrialization of, 211-17, 238, 245, 251,
alienation of, 28, 177—78, 188 260
anti-communism of, 190-91, 192 intellectuals in, 187
in anti-war movement, 177, 182, 190, 191, intolerance in, 224-25
192 litigiousness in, 27, 227-28, 238
as conservatives, 180, 182-83 marriage rate in, 241-42
Jewish, 194 modern society in, 212-17, 221-25,
as liberals, 180-81, 182, 183 250-56
Marxism of, 184-86 nineteenth-century barons of, 213-14
moralism of, 176-77 as outlier, 25, 27, 238, 263
political correctness and, 176, 177, 183, parent-child relationships in, 218-19, 220,
202-8 223, 240, 244, 246-47
political views of, 179-208 parliamentary system of, 226, 240, 260
radicalism of, 179-81, 182, 184, 188 postfeudal traditions of, 211, 212-15, 217,
repression of, 66, 176, 180, 181, 190, 204 238, 248, 252, 256, 260
socialism supported by, 177—78, 179, 180, postindustrial society in, 257-59, 262
181, 187-88, 189 prison population of, 227, 229
at universities, 177, 178, 179-88 productivity of, 55, 56, 58
values of, 179-81 “racial purity” in, 259
intolerance, 13, 113, 122, 204, 224-25 religion in, 63, 213, 221, 226, 247
Iran-Contra Scandal, 284 scientific development in, 222-23
Ireland, 19, 28 social exchange model for, 216
Israel, 154, 166, 167, 168, 174, 175, 197 socialism in, 251, 254-55
Italy, 58, 159-60, 278 statism in, 19, 221
status-consciousness in, 213, 238-40
Jackson, Andrew, 285 trade unions in, 225-26, 233, 251-52
Jackson, Henry, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197 traditional values in, 220-25, 229, 241-42,
Jackson, Jesse, 148 244, 245, 246-51, 263
Jacobs, Norman, 215 uniqueness of, 27, 28, 208, 211-63
Jaher, Frederick, 160 U.S. compared with, 27, 28, 38, 58, 59, 60,
Jakobovits, Immanuel, 153 208, 211-12, 216-63
James, William, 178 U.S. occupation of, 223, 251
Japan, 211-63 volunteerism in, 27, 217, 278, 279
agrarian society of, 211, 214, 245, 249, 260 work ethic in, 233-37
birth rate in, 245, 260 xenophobia in, 212-13, 224-25, 259
civic consciousness in, 219-20 Japanese language, 239
collectivism in, 213, 216-20, 228-29, Jasinowski, Jerry, 262
237-38, 240, 252-53, 256, 257 Jefferson, Thomas, 13, 46, 93, 115-16, 150,
competitiveness of, 17, 59-60, 234, 155, 252, 285
256-63 Jencks, Christopher, 137, 273
conflict resolution in, 225-30 Jews, 151-75
conservatism in, 250-56 as Americans, 13, 151, 152~—54, 155,
crime rate in, 27, 46, 49, 227, 228-29 174-75
cultural biases in, 236-38 assimilation of, 158, 165-66, 175
divorce rate in, 229, 245-46 birth rate of, 168, 175
duty and obligation in, 215, 217-20 blacks compared with, 122, 151, 167, 175
economy of, 17, 38, 55, 57, 58, 59-60, conservatism of, 173—74
212-16, 231, 248, 251, 254, 256, 260, Conservative, 166
261 discrimination against, 122, 151, 158,
 Index 345

159-61, 162, 163-68, 171, 172-73, 175, King, Martin Luther, Jr., 284, 291
205 Kirkland, Lane, 193, 198
Eastern European, 153, 161-65 Kirkpatrick, Evron, 195, 196
education and, 152, 163-64, 167, 171-72 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 194, 195, 196, 197-98,
equal opportunity for, 123-24 202
forced conversion of, 159-60 Klehr, Harvey, 80
German, 160-61, 162, 165 Know-Nothing American Party, 249
as immigrants, 154, 160, 162, 163 Kodama, Tomoni, 253-54
incomes of, 151-52, 161, 169 Korean War, 65, 66, 191
as intellectuals, 194 Kosmin, Barry, 168
intermarriage by, 168, 175 Kristol, Irving, 36, 194, 195-96, 197, 198,
liberalism of, 169-72, 175 199-200
in middle class, 163, 164 Kristol, William, 195
as neoconservatives, 194, 202 Krueger, Alan, 104, 105
occupations of, 152, 160-61, 164 Krugman, Paul, 262
Orthodox, 162, 163, 166, 169 Kudrle, Robert T., 71
philanthropy of, 168-69, 170, 174 Ku Klux Klan, 165, 249
political influence of, 157-58, 162-63, 168,
169-70, 172, 174 labor unions, see trade unions
quotas used against, 163-64, 167 Labour Party, British, 101, 201
Reform, 165-66 Ladd, Everett Carll, 53, 64, 74, 180
as refugees, 166, 167, 174, 175 LaFollette, Robert, 37, 41, 86, 91, 162
religious freedom of, 154-57 LaFollette, Suzanne, 201
social acceptance of, 157-60, 161 laissez-faire:
Soviet, 174 conservatism and, 36
stratification systems and, 151 economic, 54, 74, 94, 96
success of, 28, 151-54, 167, 169, 175 as ideology, 19, 31, 96, 287
values of, 152-54, 164, 170-71, 172, 173, liberalism and, 153—54, 196, 202, 215, 252
213-14 statism vs., 27, 76
work ethic of, 153-54, 155, 164 Lament for a Nation (Grant), 36-37
Jews and the New American Scene (Lipset and Latin America, 35, 39
Raab), 14 law:
job creation, 38, 57, 74, 75, 76, 289 comparative analysis of, 49, 50
job security, 101, 145 due process of, 49
Johnson, Chalmers, 215 obedience to, 46, 47-48, 93, 269-70, 289
Johnson, Lyndon B., 66, 67, 118-19, 120, recourse to, 25, 26, 27, 40, 49, 50, 227-28,
139, 192, 285, 290 238, 267, 270
Johnson, Richard, 156 lawyers, 25, 49, 152, 270
Judis, John, 107-8, 197, 201-2 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 180, 181
League for Industrial Democracy (LID), 191
Kalleberg, Arne, 233, 236 Left:
Kampelman, Max, 194, 195 conflicts in, 188-92
Kampf, Louis, 204 New, 37, 183, 190, 191, 192, 193, 199,
Kapital, Das (Marx), 33, 80, 292 204, 291
Kassalow, Everett, 103—4 Old, 192
kehillah, 157 radicalism of, 179-81, 182, 184, 188
Kemble, Penn, 200 Lehning, Percy, 200
Kemp, Jack, 198 Leiken, Robert, 200
Kendall, Willmore, 201 Lenin, V. I., 33, 78, 85
Kennan, George F., 66 Leo, John, 186
Kennedy, John F., 118, 192 Leonard, Jonathan, 137
Kennedy, Robert F., 192 Letters from an American Farmer (Crévecoeur),
Kenney, Martin, 258 271
Kenrick, Douglas Moore, 215, 239 Leuba, James, 179
Keynesianism, 180, 254 Levy, Uriah, 158
Keyserling, Hermann, 87 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 251, 254
 346 Index

liberalism: marriage, 27, 50-51, 241-42

of American Creed, 31, 32, 143-44 Martineau, Harriet, 34
anti-statism of, 91, 95, 200, 201, 215, 252 Marx, Karl, 33, 77, 78-81, 84, 88, 215, 292
bourgeois, 256 Marxism, 33, 62, 77-81, 184-86, 211, 251,
classical, 54, 91, 95, 98, 147, 200, 202, 291
ROJ 21D, 202,203 Marzorati, Gerald, 186
conservatism vs., 35-39, 128 materialism, 35, 44, 54, 77, 178, 183, 252,
definition of, 35-36 277
economic development and, 213 Matsubara, Junko, 246
of intellectuals, 180-81, 182, 183 Mayer, William, 279
Jewish, 169-72, 175 Meany, George, 193, 194
laissez-faire, 153-54, 196, 202, 215, 252 Medoff, James, 103
mercantile, 147, 154 Meiji restoration, 213-14, 251, 252, 254, 256
neo-, 198 Meltz, Noah, 99-100
neoconservatism vs., 196, 197, 200 meritocracy:
political impact of, 38, 171 affirmative action vs., 121, 122, 124-25,
as possessive individualism, 95 139, 205-6
libertarianism, 46, 89, 200 equal opportunity and, 22, 25, 53, 76,
Liebman, Arthur, 162 81-83, 92, 101, 114, 144-45, 195, 199,
Lincoln, Abraham, 13-14, 18, 120, 158, 285 234-35, 248, 255, 260, 289
Lincoln, James, 233, 236 Merton, Robert K., 26, 47, 115, 269
litigiousness, 25, 26, 27, 40, 49, 50, 227-28, Methodists, 19, 60
238, 267, 270 metric system, 21, 93
living standards, 38, 57-58, 76, 80, 81-82, 85, Meyer, Frank, 201, 202
144, 145-46 Ministry of International Trade and Industry
lobbyists, 44-45 (MITI), 215
Lorwin, Val, 181 Mitchell, Clarence, 121, 148
Lubell, Samuel, 97 Mitchell, John, 121
Lutherans, 19 Moberg, David, 106
Modern Language Association, 177, 186, 187
MacArthur, Douglas, 251 Molotov, V. M., 189
McCarthy, Eugene, 192 Mondale, Walter F., 198
McCarthy, Joseph, 181, 190 morality:
McCarthyism, 66, 176, 180, 181, 190, 204 absolutism in, 63—67
McConnell, Grant, 37 in adversarial societies, 226-27
McDonald, Charles, 107 anti-communism and, 65—66
McGovern, George, 192, 194, 198 conventional, 48-49
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 277 crime and, 47, 269-70
Mackenzie-Papineau Rebellion, 24 decline in, 17, 26-27, 28, 267-92
McLeod, J. T., 94 foreign relations and, 20, 65-67
Macmillan, Harold, 24 human perfectibility and, 20
Madison, James, 13, 155 individualism and, 64, 267-68, 269,
Magnes, Judah, 157 275-76
Major, John, 153, 201 sectarianism and, 27
Making It in America (Jasinowski and see also values
Hamrin), 262 Moral Majority, 249
malpractice suits, 265, 238, 270 Mori, Arinori, 213
managers, business, 25, 230, 239, 257-59, Morita, Akio, 257
261, 294 Mortara, Edgardo, 159-60
Marcuse, Herbert, 204 Mouer, Ross, 212
markets: Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 178, 193, 194, 196,
commodities in, 211 198, 202, 271
forces of, 130, 276 Mulroney, Brian, 99
international, 59 multiculturalism, 176, 183-84, 186, 206, 259
share of, 257 Murayama, Tomiichi, 251
Marmor, Theodore R., 71 Myrdal, Gunnar, 26, 116
 Index 347

Nader, Ralph, 194 Organization of American Historians, 187

Nakane, Chie, 234, 239 Ornstein, Norman, 286
Nakazawa, Shin-ichi, 215 Owen, Robert, 82
Napoleon Bonaparte, 155
Nasar, Sylvia, 55, 56n, 57 Page, Benjamin, 82
Nathan, Richard P., 135 Palmer, John, 72
National Academy of Sciences, 136 parent-teacher associations (PTA), 280
National Education Association, 107 Park, Robert, 153
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 108 parliamentary system, 17-18, 42-43, 44, 45,
National Review, 196, 197-98, 201-2 90-91, 226, 240, 260
national service, 149 particularism, 96, 102, 123, 175, 213, 217,
National Survey of Religious Identification, 232-33
171 Parti Québécois, 88-89, 96
National Taxpayers Union, 68-69 patriotism, 20, 51, 65, 289
National Union for Social Justice, 166 Peele, Gillian, 189
Native Americans, 122 pensions, 71-72, 75, 83, 230, 253
nativism, 160 Perle, Richard, 194, 195
Nazism, 166, 167, 171, 189 Perlman, Selig, 85, 95
neoconservatives, 193-202 Perot, H. Ross, 41, 86, 89, 91, 97-98, 169,
affirmative action opposed by, 194, 195 283, 287
anti-communism of, 194, 197, 199, 201 Perry, Matthew, 259
conservatives vs., 196-98, 200, 201-2 Perutz, M. F., 186
Democrats and, 194, 198, 199 pessimism, 267, 281-83
emergence of, 193-98 Peterson, Paul, 134
Jewish, 194, 202 Phi Beta Kappa, 152
labeling of, 193 Philadelphia Plan, 120
liberalism vs., 196, 197, 200 philanthropy, 67~71, 153, 168-69, 170, 174,
meaning of, 199-202 217
Republicans and, 193-94, 195, 196, Pierson, George, 18
197-200, 202 Pipes, Richard, 195
Tories and, 200 Plato, 82
welfare supported by, 195, 196, 197, Podhoretz, Norman, 195, 196, 197
199-200, 201, 202 pogroms, 159
Nettl, J. P., 40 Poland, 19, 28
New Deal, 27, 37-38, 95, 97, 130, 192, 193, political correctness, 176, 177, 183, 202-8
199, 201 Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics
New Democratic Party (NDP), 88, 89, 90, 96, (Lipset), 15
98, 99, 101, 102 politics:
New Republic, 195, 201 compromise in, 44—45
New York Times, 73, 228, 241 free speech and, 203-4
New York Times Book Review, 200 local, 42
Nicaragua, 200, 284 radical, 179-81, 182, 184, 188
Nisbet, Robert, 198, 202 variables in, 39-46
Nixon, Richard M., 119, 120, 121, 149 194, Popenoe, David, 49-50, 71, 273, 276
195-96, 198, 206 populism:
Noah, Mordecai, 158 electoral support for, 40, 43, 45, 46
noblesse oblige, 21, 31, 35, 68, 72, 94, 117, as ideology, 19, 31
252, 254 immigration and, 154
Novak, Michael, 195, 198 predominance of, 24, 40
poverty, 73-76, 119, 130, 132-38, 146, 200
OECD, 73, 117, 253, 289 pregnancies, teenage, 50-51
oil crisis (1973), 55, 59, 222 Presbyterians, 64
Okimoto, David, 215, 226 President, U.S., 39, 41, 42-43, 44, 53, 86, 90
Ollmann, Bertell, 185 Presthus, Robert, 92
O'Neill, Thomas P. (Tip), 42 prime ministers, 42-43
optimism, 51-52, 81, 132, 237 prison population, 17, 26, 46-47, 227, 229
 348 Index

productivity, 26, 55, 56, 57, 58-59, 79, 85, established, 154, 155, 157
256-57, 258, 261, 262 freedom of, 154-57
Progressive Conservatives, Canadian, 98-99 fundamentalist, 61, 160, 165, 256
Progressive movement, 37, 162, 190 hierarchical, 61, 93, 277
Progressive Party of 1924, 162 moral absolutism and, 63-67
Progressive Party of 1948, 162, 190 popular support for, 61-63, 276, 279-80,
Prohibition, 176 289, 290
proletariat, 81, 88 in public schools, 197, 200
Proposition 187, 174 state vs., 19, 62, 63, 67, 197, 200, 252
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, voluntary, 19, 61, 154—55, 277
The (Weber), 60 see also individual religions
Protestantism, 60, 63, 160, 234, 270, 279 “repressive tolerance,” 204
see also individual denominations Republican Party:
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 165 affirmative action and, 120-22, 126, 131,
Public Interest, 194, 198, 201 139, 141, 149
Puritanism, 60-61, 153, 155, 164, 238 anti-statism of, 289
Putnam, Robert, 280, 281 conservatism in, 38, 171, 183, 254
electoral support for, 101, 139-42
quality circles, 216, 256-67, 259 government control opposed by, 27-28
Quebec, 88-89, 92, 93-94, 96, 273 intellectuals as supporters of, 193-94
quotas, 118-31, 137-38, 149, 163-64, 167, Jewish support for, 162, 169, 170, 171
205-6 neoconservatives and, 193-94, 195, 196,
197-200, 202
Raab, Earl, 14, 170, 172, 175, 249 origins of, 41
racism, 28, 81, 113, 115-16, 119-20, 129-30, WASPS in, 171, 195
133, 138, 144, 175 Resnick, Philip, 200
“rackets,” 48, 49 retirement, 231, 254
Raisian, John, 231 reverse discrimination, 137, 141-42
Ranney, Austin, 44 Ribuffo, Leo, 160
Ransom, John Crowe, 185 Richards, I. A., 185
Raskin, Marc, 68 Richards, John, 100
Raspberry, William, 142 Rickenbacker, Eddie, 66
Rau, Zbigniew, 276 Riddell, W. Craig, 100
Reagan, Ronald, 36, 38, 65, 121-22, 154, 183, Right, Old, 192, 196-97
187, 195-200, 202, 284 Rockefeller, John D., 70
recessions, 97, 98, 132, 231, 237, 241, 254, Roosevelt, Franklin D., 13, 14, 37-38, 97,
258, 259, 261 166, 189, 190, 197, 285
Reconstruction, 148 Roosevelt, Theodore, 37, 86, 91, 283
redundancy, 56—57 Ross, Aileen, 70-71, 277
Reengineering Capitalism (Hammer and Ross, E. A., 178
Champy), 261 Russia, Czarist, 86, 159
Reform Party, Canadian, 98-99 Russian Revolution, 77
Reich, Robert, 58 Rustin, Bayard, 193
Reid, Whitelaw, 178 Rutherford, James, 275
Reishauer, Edwin, 238, 250
religion: Samson, Leon, 81, 87
bourgeois society and, 61-62 Samuelson, Robert, 57-58
in Canada vs. U.S., 91-92 samurai, 214, 220
churches vs. sects in, 19-20, 27, 60-67, 80, savings rate, 26, 59, 235-36, 270
93, 154-57, 207 Schactman, Max, 191
“civic,” 18, 63-64 Schaff, Philip, 54
clergy in, 19, 92, 155 Schattschneider, E. E., 41
congregational, 19, 61, 157, 277 Schlamm, Willi, 201
cross-national comparisons of, 62, 63, Schooler, Carmi, 215, 218
901-92, 93 Schuman, Howard, 146
dogmatic, 226-27 Schumpeter, Joseph, 180, 181
 Index 349

scientific development, 59, 222-23 trade unions and, 78, 80, 84, 85, 95-96,
Searle, John, 184-85 108
segregation, 115, 122—23, 128 USS. failure of, 14, 28, 32, 33, 37-39, 76,
Seligman, Joseph, 158 77-109
Senate, U.S., 39, 40 worker support for, 22, 33, 78, 80, 84,
seniority, 101, 124, 234, 258 85-86, 95-96, 108
sexuality, 51, 248, 272-74, 290 Socialist International, 89
Shamir, Yitzhak, 167 Socialist Party, Japanese, 254
Shapiro, Robert, 82, 117 Socialist Party, U.S., 37, 80, 89, 97, 181, 189,
Shelley, Louise, 46, 47, 269 192
Shinto religion, 213, 226, 247 Socialist Workers Party, 190
Shultz, George, 119-20, 12] social mobility, 14, 26, 53, 61, 81-82, 83, 84,
Silberman, Lawrence, 120 149, 168
Simms, Margaret, 137 Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Lipset
Skerry, Peter, 127-28 and Bendix), 14
slavery: society:
abolition of, 65, 113, 176, 177, 290-91 adversarial, 25-26, 178, 199, 216, 225-27,
immorality of, 13, 24 276, 290-91, 296
political impact of, 41, 114, 115 agrarian, 62, 211, 214, 245, 249, 260, 288
Smeeding, Timothy, 73-74 bourgeois, 32, 54, 61-62, 147, 211, 225,
Smith, Adam, 215 238, 256, 291
Smith, James P., 136 civil, 276-81
Smith, Tom, 168 communal, see collectivism, communalism
Snow, C. P., 180 heterogeneous, 54
Social Credit Party, 105, 200 : modern, 62, 77, 79, 84, 212-17, 221-25,
Social Democratic Party, British, 201 248-56
social democrats, 22, 24, 37, 42, 78, 86, new, 79, 84
93-99, 108, 118, 170, 189, 192-94, 198, open, 13, 49, 53-54, 78, 259
200, 201 paternalistic, 24, 93
Social Democrats USA, 192, 193, 194, 198 pluralistic, 176, 183-84, 186, 206, 259,
socialism: 275-76
black support for, 147 postfeudal, 21, 22, 35, 79, 109, 115,
in Canada vs. U.S., 78, 88-108 116-17, 147, 211, 212-15, 217, 238,
capitalism vs., 37-38, 88 248, 252, 256, 260, 288-89
class consciousness and, 23, 77, 78, 85, postindustrial, 257-59, 262
87-88 stratification of, 79, 80-81
comparative analysis of, 78, 86-88 sociology, 178, 181, 187
contemporary sociological analysis of, 81-86 Sombart, Werner, 33, 78, 84
electoral gains by, 37, 89, 97 Soviet Union, 174, 185, 189-91, 202
intellectuals as supporters of, 177-78, 179, Spanish-American War, 65, 178
180, 181, 187-88, 189 speech, freedom of, 203-8
in Japan, 251, 254-55 Spence, Janet, 218
market, 215 Staats, Elmer, 120
Marxist principles of, 77-81 Stalin, Joseph, 66
modernism and, 62, 77 Stalinism, 189
party organizations for, 37, 77, 80, 85-86, Stanford, Leland, 178
89, 97, 181, 189, 192, 254 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 291
paternalistic, 24, 93, 95, 154, 230, 253 “State as a Conceptual Variable, The” (Nettl),
political factors and, 85-86, 192 40
postfeudal societies and, 22, 109 statism:
repression of, 86 conservative opposition to, 36, 37, 98, 289
sectarianism vs., 79-80 cross-national comparisons of, 19, 92-95,
societal variables and, 84-86 97
statism and, 90-96 individualism vs., 22-23, 84
stratification factors and, 79, 80—81 institutional structures and, 40-41
surrogate, 84, 87-88 in Japan, 19, 221
 350 Index

statism: (continued) statism of, 87, 91, 93-94, 97, 102, 153-54,
laissez-faire vs., 27, 76 200, 253
liberal opposition to, 91, 95, 200, 201, 215, U.S. failure of, 32
252 values of, 31-32
socialism and, 90-96 welfare supported by, 20, 153
Tory support for, 87, 91, 93-94, 97, 102, tort, 26, 49, 50, 227-28
153-54, 200, 253 Trades and Labour Congress (TLC), 96
Statistical Abstract of the United States (1994), trade unions:
58 business opposition to, 103
Steele, Shelby, 148-49 in Canada vs. U.S., 78, 88, 89-90, 91,
Strauss, Leo, 39 95-108
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 185, civil rights movement and, 120-21
191 class consciousness and, 97, 98, 108-9,
success: 251-52, 289
conditions for, 28, 151-54, 167, 169, 175, collective bargaining by, 102, 103-4,
287 225-26
ends vs. means in, 47, 230 competition by, 107-8
as goal, 47-48, 135 decline of, 33, 89-90, 98
Summers, Robert, 55 density of, 89, 90, 96-108
Sunday Mails Law, 156 “Europeanization” of, 38
Supreme Court, U.S., 39, 118 for government employees, 99
Suzuki, Tatsuko, 220-21, 250-51 growth of, 22, 38, 89-90
Swartz, Donald, 107 in Japan, 225-26, 233, 251-52
Sweden, 62, 73, 118 leadership of, 107-8
Switzerland, 40, 45 legislation for, 90, 102-6
membership of, 103, 104, 107-8, 289-90
Taft, Robert, 197 non-member support for, 104—5, 106, 191,
Talmud, 153 192
Tax, Sol, 65 organizing by, 90, 102-5, 107-8
taxation, 26, 38, 68-69, 72, 73, 169, 227-28, political influence of, 38, 97, 100-102
253 socialism and, 78, 80, 84, 85, 95-96, 108
television, 219, 281, 285-87 strikes by, 107, 225, 233
Thatcher, Margaret, 153-54, 200, 201, 292 for teachers, 107
“There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and Trompenaars, Alfons, 25, 217, 257-58
It’s a Good Thing Too” (Fish), 203-4 Trotsky, Leon, 33
Thielens, Wagner, Jr., 180, 181 Trotskyism, 188-89, 190, 191, 192, 195
Thomas, Norman, 189 Trow, Martin, 53
Thomas, W. I., 78, 178 Troy, Leo, 99
Tiryakian, Edward, 155 Truman, Harry S., 180, 190, 192, 197
Title VII, 137 tzedekah, 170
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 13, 17-18, 34, 60-61,
62, 77, 80, 81, 154, 228, 270, 276, 277, “un-American” beliefs, 207, 291
280 Underhill, Frank, 24
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America unemployment, 38, 56-57, 145-46, 231
(Pierson), 18 unemployment benefits, 83
Tokugawa Shogunate, 212 unemployment insurance, 71—72, 94
Tominaga, Kenichi, 215 Unitarians, 152, 177
Tories: United Auto Workers (UAW), 107
in Canada, 24, 91, 92-93, 95, 97, 102, United Church of Canada, 93
108 United States:
conservatism of, 31, 35, 36, 37 as adversarial society, 25-26, 178, 199, 216,
elitism of, 95, 235, 252 225-27, 276, 290-91, 296
neoconservatives and, 200 as Anglophonic society, 34-35, 127-28
paternalistic socialism supported by, 24, 93, as bourgeois society, 32, 54, 147, 211, 225,
95, 154, 230, 253 238, 256, 291
political party of, 42 colonial period of, 18
 Index Sil

decentralization in, 18 Wallace, Henry, 190

economy of, see economy, U.S. war:
exceptionalism of, see exceptionalism, opposition to, 20, 65, 66, 176, 177, 182,
American 190, 191, 192
feudal structures lacked by, 19, 54, 79, 87, support for, 14, 20, 65
109, 211 unconditional surrender in, 65, 66, 67
foreign perspectives on, 17-18, 33-34 veterans of, 123
foreign policy of, 20, 43, 65-67 Washington, George, 13, 53, 115-16, 155
industrialization of, 28, 55, 60, 260 Washington, Harold, 170
as “melting pot,” 249-50 Washington Post, 134
as new society, 79, 84 Watergate scandal, 27
as open society, 13, 49, 53-54, 78, 259 Watson, Tom, 165
as outlier, 13, 18, 25, 26, 27, 73,234, 263 Wattenberg, Ben, 195
revolutionary basis of, 14, 18, 24, 31, 39, Weber, Max, 23-24, 34, 54, 61, Wie Woe 21 te
54, 91-92, 268 250, 277
trade deficit of, 59 Weiler, Paul, 99, 104
wealth of, 26, 33, 47, 53, 69-70, 84, 88 Weinstein, David, 215-16
universalism, 115, 154, 172, 175, 228, 249 Welch, Finis R., 136
utopianism, 63, 66, 84, 177 welfare:
in Canada, 92, 95, 99
values: entitlements of, 22-23
attitudes vs., 24-25, 101, 102, 221, 236, as institution, 71—75, 84
250-51 neoconservative support for, 195, 196, 197,
bourgeois, 32, 54, 61-62, 147, 211, 225, 199-200, 201, 202
238, 256, 291 reduction of, 38, 98
capitalistic, 154 revenues for, 83, 92
change in, 267-68, 271 Tory support for, 20, 153
consensus vs., 290-91, 296 viability of, 24, 26, 27, 33, 68, 92, 117, 169,
democratic, 63-67, 197, 276-77 170
family, 272-74, 276 Wells, H. G., 31-32, 33, 35, 87
individual rights and, 116 Wesley, John, 60
of intellectuals, 179-81 Where Communism Works (Kenrick), 215
Judaic, 152-54, 164, 170-71, 172, 173, Whigs, 24, 41, 46, 91, 108
213-14 Why Is There No Socialism in the United
secular, 63 States? (Sombart), 33
social, 47, 54-55, 87 “Why We Are Not Republicans” (Kirkpatrick),
Tory, 31-32 195
traditional, 220-25, 229, 241-42, 244, 245, Wiener, Jonathan, 187
246-51, 263, 267-68 “wilding,” 269
Van Buren, Martin, 156 Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany, 251
Veblen, Thornstein, 172, 180, 181, 214, 221 Wilson, Clyde, 197
Vernoff, Edward, 185 Wilson, Edmund, 185
Vietnam War, 65, 66, 177, 182, 190, 191, Wilson, James Q., 44, 272
192, 286 Wilson, Pete, 139
Visser, Jelle, 100, 106 Wilson, William Julius, 134, 137, 149
volunteerism, 27, 28, 61, 67-68, 71, 217, 268, Wilson, Woodrow, 197
276-81 Wolfe, Alan, 248, 270
voter participation, 13, 17, 21, 26, 43-46, 85, Wolff, Edward N., 55, 56n, 73
240, 282-83 women:
voter registration, 45—46 affirmative action and, 121, 122, 125, 126,
voting rights, 85-86, 205 127
Vulnerable, The (Gould and Palmer), 72 black, 136-37, 138
discrimination against, 205, 246
wages, 25, 57, 74, 75, 80 education and, 244-45
Wald, Kenneth, 62 equal opportunity for, 121, 122, 243-44
Wallace, George, 41, 86, 91 gender as viewed by, 221, 244
 ae Index

women: (continued) World Economic Forum, 59, 262

Japanese, 241-45 World WarI, 65, 178, 190
quotas for, 205, 206 World War II, 20, 65, 123, 189-90, 191
working, 57, 205, 241, 242-44, 281 Wuthnow, Robert, 277
Woodward, C. Vann, 208
work ethic, 54, 60, 81-82, 87, 132, 133, Yale University, 177
153-54, 155, 164, 233-37, 287, 295 Yankelovich, Daniel, 282
working class: Yarborough, Ralph, 121
blacks vs. whites in, 120, 138, 139, 140, Yiddish, 153, 162
148, 149 Yoshio, Sugimito, 212
class consciousness of, 33, 98, 108-9, 147, Young, John, 117
252 Yulee, David, 158
living standards of, 79, 80, 81-82, 84, 118
see also trade unions Zionism, 162, 163, 167
Workingmen’s Party, 78, 82, 114 Zuckerman, Alan, 151, 162
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Current AFFAIRS / SOCIAL SCIENCE

A major political analyst explores the

deeply held but often inarticulated beliefs
that make up the American creed.

American Exceptionalism
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
“An illuminating American values are complex, writes Seymour
Martin Lipset, because of paradoxes within our
new book.”
culture. American Exceptionalism explains why
—David Gergen,
socialism has never taken hold in the United
U.S. News & World Report States, why Americans are resistant to absolute
quotas as a way to integrate blacks and other
minorities, and why American religion and for-
“Invariably eign policy have a moralistic, crusading streak.
perceptive and Born out of revolution, the United States
has always considered itself an exceptional
revealing.”
country of citizens unified by an allegiance to
—Economist
a common set of ideals, individualism, anti-
statism, populism, and egalitarianism. This
ideology, Professor Lipset observes, defines
the limits of political debate in the United
States and shapes our society.

Cover photograph by © Larry Lee/Westlight

_ Cover design by Eric Handel

Pauper NORTON - NEW YORK - LONDON