Where We Are as a Nation

 There are few books whose contents have had as big an impact on my view of politics and government as American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony by Samuel P. Huntington. During graduate studies at SIU-Carbondale in the late 1960s, I used Huntington's book on political development, Political Order in Changing Societies, to guide my master's thesis. Later, teaching at Austin Community College (ACC), I was drawn to American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony. In teaching, I've always believed that students need a compelling framework or theory on which to hang the concepts they learn in studying politics and government. Huntington provides such a framework.

I've written about this framework previously on this blog. In this post, I want to demonstrate how a large portion of the nation has adopted a radical revision of what Huntington described as the American Creed: five ideas that formed the promise and goal of American politics and government. Three of the five ideas pertain to politics: individualism, liberty, and equality. The other two ideas pertain to government. The following figure demonstrates the relationship among the three political ideas.

The anchor for the four ideologies is individualism. The division between liberty/social order and equality recognizes the inherent conflict between the ideals of equality and liberty/social order. Note that each of the combinations is favorable to the ideals of American politics. The four ideologies represent the possible combinations. According to one national survey, a plurality of Americans (42 percent) displays a combination of ideals that places them in the middle of the figure (called ambivalent by Keeter and Smith). Smaller percentages are liberals (18 percent), conservatives (15 percent), populists (16 percent), and libertarians (9 percent).

Source: Keeter, Scott and Gregory A. Smith, "In Search of Ideologues in America," Pew Research Center, April 10, 2006.  https://www.pewresearch.org/2006/04/10/in-search-of-ideologues-in-america/

Although the axes are different, the conceptual framework is the same. All of these ideologies are within the range of fealty to the three ideas of the American Creed. But are most Americans still located there? Or are there many Americans, including a substantial number of elected officials, now holding issue positions that are outside the bounds of support for the three ideas?

Also, what about the other two values: constitutionalism and democracy? Constitutionalism is support for a fundamental law that provides power to the government to achieve the political goals (individualism, equality, and liberty) and also places limits on the government through adherence to the rule of law. Allegiance is not to a person, but to a constitution that applies not only to the government, but also to each resident of the nation, state, or local community. Democracy, in its fundamental sense, is rule by the people. Each resident has privileges and responsibilities to participate in their governance. In other words, they must be citizens.

In this case, many of us have abandoned the ideal of democracy and constitutionalism for the simplicity of authoritarianism, where power is concentrated and turned over to a few. As a result, they are no longer citizens, they are subjects. And the rulers face no limits on their control over what their subjects can and cannot do. That is not an America of aspiration and inspiration.