American Political Culture

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American Political Culture

•  
• Why didnt people shoot President Obama?
• Why do we pay taxes?
• Why dont we all take to the streets to protest
  Wall Street?

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Definition of Political Culture 

• a set of norms, beliefs, traditions, and values
  oriented toward the political system that are for
  the most part shared by the society and are
  relatively unique to a political system

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The American Political Culture

• Is there an American political culture?
• Has it disappeared? Why or Why Not? 
• How does it affect public policy?

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Sources of Political Culture

• American Revolutiion
• Constitution
• Protection of the individual

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Tenets of Classical Liberalism 

• Individual have natural rights
• Individuals are equal under the law
• Government should be limited
• Government's 1 purpose is to serve individuals
  not itself

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Declaration of Independence

• All men are created equal
• Endowed with certain inalienable rights, life,
  liberty, pursuit of happiness
• Government derives their just powers from the
  consent of the governed

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Do you believe in Liberty?

• What is Liberty? 
• The belief that individuals should be free to act
  and think as they choose, provided they do not
  infringe unreasonably on the freedom and well
  being of others.

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Individual Responsibility

• A commitment to personal responsibility, self
  sufficiency, and material accumulation
• The belief that hard work pays off
• What happens if we give up this belief? What if
  only some give it up?

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• It is the responsibility of the state to take
  care of poor people who cant take care of
  themselves. 
• Agree or Disagree?

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• People like me and my family have a good chance
  of improving our standard of living.
•  Agree or Disagree?

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Something to think about!

• Government should reduce income inequality.
• Government should provide all Americans with a
  guaranteed income.
• Luck is more important than hard work in getting
  ahead.
• What would those making less than 12k think? 

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Values are shared by the least and the most
fortunate

• Do you believe in Equality?

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Equality 

• Americans have a strong commitment to legal,
  social and political equality.
• Not equality of outcomes or economic equality
• Public Support for Affirmative Action
• Equality more of a contested concept

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Clinton/Obama Health Care Plan

• large government operation
• remove control from the market
• restrict the choices of individuals
• Promote equality of outcomes
• a government takeover of your life
• automatically enrolled in a government run
  health alliance

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Future of Freedom FoundationWhy America hates
SocialismValues Shape Policy Outcomes 

• Policies are suspect if they conflict with
  dominant political culture.
• large government operation
• remove control from the market
• restrict the choices of individuals
• Promote equality of outcomes
• Universal health care living wage policies

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Are we really rugged individualists? 

• Large majorities favor
• Government regulation of Wall Street
• Protecting the environment
• Building or rebuilding our infrastructure
• Economic Safety net

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Public Support for Greater Government Role in
Health Care Industry

• Are we really rugged individualists?
• Tocqueville, Democracy in America
• Tocquevilles Vision 
• Frontier and widespread property ownership
• Life characterized by atomistic social freedom
• Do not need strong state or class movement to
  create upward mobility
• New world creates faith in individualism

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Traditional Explanations  
no feudal aristocracyno landed aristocracy to
provide a conservative view minimal taxes few
legal restraints frontier provides
opportunitieseasy for ambitious individuals to
succeed nation of small independent farmers

• Louis Hartz, from The Liberal Consensus

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Is the American polity characterized by hegemonic
liberal democratic values?

• All men are created equal
• Endowed with certain inalienable rights, life,
  liberty, pursuit of happiness
• Government derives their just powers from the
  consent of the governed

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All men are created equal.

• Multiple Traditions Critique 
• Americans share a common culture, but one more
  complexly and multiply constituted than is
  usually acknowledged.

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Multiple Traditions Critique Rogers Smith --gt

• American political culture is the complex
  patterns of apparently inconsistent combinations
  of traditions, accompanied by recurring
  conflicts.
• Complex Mix of liberal and ascriptive forms of
  Americanism at the same time
•   "fails to give due weight to inegalitarian
  ideologies and conditions that have shaped the
  participants and the substance of American
  politics just as deeply" as liberalism has

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Contd.

• At the republics founding, the comparative
  moral, material, and political egalitarianism
  that prevailed . . . among moderately propertied
  white men was surrounded by an array of other
  fixed, ascriptive systems of unequal status, all
  largely unchallenged by the American
  revolutionaries

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• for at least two-thirds of American history, the
  majority of the domestic adult population was . .
  . ineligible for full American citizenship solely
  because of their race, original nationality, or
  gender
• Reconstruction period- example of liberal and
  ascriptive traditions

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Civil War and Reconstruction

•  Slavery abolished
• All persons born in US deemed citizens,
  regardless or race, creed, or gender
• None could be denied voting rights on racial
  grounds
• BUT,

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Darwinism and Spencerism

• Intellectual and political elites develop the
  most elaborate theories of racial and gender
  hierarchy in US history and embody them in
  staggering array of laws governing
  naturalization, immigration, deportation, voting
  rights, electoral institutions.

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Intellectual Credibility Racial Hierarchies 

• black, brown, and red races (had) a peculiar
  mental temperament which has become hereditary.
  Leaving them constitutionally recreant to the
  cues of civilization 1895

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• Daniel Brinton, President, American Association
  for the Advancement of Science
• CA Senator, John MIller 
• 40 centuries of Chinese life had ground into
  the Chinese race characteristics that made them
  unbeatable competitors against the free white
  man.  They were automatic engines of flesh and
  blood far below the Anglo-Saxon- such that
  immigration of Chinese laborers must be banned.
• Chinese Exclusion Act

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Senator Lodges Literacy Test 

• Research shows it will exclude the Italians,
  Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and
  Asiatics,  thereby preserving the quality of
  our race and citizenship. 

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Are you smart enough to be a US Citizen? 

• What is the supreme law of the land?
• What is the economic system in the United States?
  
• Name one branch or part of the government.
• We elect a U.S. Representative for how many
  years?
• Who vetoes bills?
• What are two ways that Americans can
  participate in their democracy?
• Name one American Indian tribe in the United
  States.

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Sources

• Thanks to Skidmore University for permission to
  use in class.