American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika
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Название: American Democracy in Context
Автор: Joseph A. Pika
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика
isbn: 9781544345208
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classical liberalism The doctrine that a society is good only to the extent that all of its members are able to develop their capacities to the fullest and that to encourage this result, government should intervene as little as possible in people’s lives.
rule of law The idea that laws, rather than the whims or personal interests of officials, should determine the government’s actions.
Support for the Rule of Law
The rule of law, another basic American value, is the principle that laws, rather than the whims or personal interests of officials, should determine the government’s actions. The Preamble to the Constitution refers to the rule of law in the phrase “[to] establish Justice.” This principle deals not with what the government should do but rather with how the government should comport itself. According to the rule of law, government should be guided by basic principles and should follow fair procedures, as summarized in the statement, “Ours should be a government of laws, not of men.”17
The rule of law embodies the idea that everyone should be treated the same way; thus, it is related to the value of fairness. It goes beyond simple fairness, however, in that it also maintains that careful procedures should be set up to limit what the government can do. Remember that the government is the one entity in a country with the right to use force to implement its decisions; the rule of law limits government so that it cannot abuse its power by treating people unfairly. For example, consider the many protections—some of which are stated in the Bill of Rights—that are designed to preserve the rights of accused persons in U.S. criminal trials. These include the right against unreasonable searches for evidence; the assumption that a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty; and the right to not be held in prison for more than a short time without being charged with a crime, known as habeas corpus.
The Bill of Rights was included in the Constitution in order to guarantee Americans the same rights that English citizens had traditionally enjoyed. Thus, the United States established traditions of the rule of law earlier than most countries. It was not until after World War II, for instance, that France instituted the right of habeas corpus or the presumption of innocence. In general, the United Kingdom and its former colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and India established strong traditions of the rule of law earlier than continental European countries and their former colonies.
Religion
Americans are unusually religious. In one study, 49 percent of Americans—a far greater percentage than in any other prosperous country in the world—indicated that God is very important in their lives. Twenty-two percent of Australians responded in kind, but very few did from Japan, Germany, Sweden, or other prosperous countries (see Figure 6.5).18
Americans are more religious than citizens of any other prosperous nation. Many regularly attend services at temples and churches, like these members of Potter’s House Church in Dallas.
Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images
Moral values rooted in religion have figured strongly throughout U.S. history, influencing both conservatives and liberals. For example, Christian denominations were partially responsible for the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement. Many churches also supported a powerful temperance movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; this movement led ultimately to a constitutional amendment banning the sale of alcoholic beverages (the Eighteenth Amendment, which was passed in 1920, before being repealed in 1933). The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s drew strong support from both African American and white churches. Today, conflicts over abortion, same-sex marriage, proposals to ban pornography, and the teaching of creationism in public schools have strong moral/religious roots.
Variations and Conflicts in Values
Fairness, individualism, belief in the rule of law, and religion are all basic American values, but this does not mean that every American holds these four values equally nor does it mean that every American views each of the values in the same way.
Sometimes values conflict with each other. Should the government set limits to executives’ pay (fairness) or should they leave each executive free to earn whatever the market will bear (individualism)? Should homeowners have to build structures pleasing to their neighbors (fairness) or should they be free to build whatever they want, no matter how bizarre (individualism)? Should prayer be required in the schools (religion) despite the Constitution’s ban on the government establishing a religion (rule of law)? Such conflicts between values form the underlying basis of American ideologies.
American Ideologies
An ideology is an interconnected set of ideas that forms and organizes our ideas and attitudes about politics. Our attitudes on gun control, on same-sex marriage, on appropriate levels of taxes, and on many other issues cluster and connect with each other. If we know whether certain individuals support gun control, for instance, that information may often help us to make an educated guess about whether they favor allowing same-sex marriage, though we would not be able to predict this perfectly. An ideology organizes our ideas and attitudes for us. It also adds emotional intensity to our views on issues, as our attitude on each issue is reinforced and strengthened for us by the issue’s connection to the other attitudes in the ideological cluster.
In this chapter, we will present a brief overview of American ideologies. As indicated earlier, the four basic American values can sometimes conflict with one another. Not surprisingly, Americans’ ideologies relate to different combinations of these basic values. Two particular lines of conflict between values form the primary basis of Americans’ ideologies: the conflict between individualism and fairness and the conflict between individualism and moral beliefs.
The conflict between individualism and fairness, especially the broader interpretations of fairness, yields an economic left–right dimension or basis for ideology, with support for economic free choice at one end (the right) and support for government interventions (through regulations, taxes, and programs) to ensure economic fairness and equality at the other end (the left). Examples would include the dispute in 2017 over whether to provide tax cuts to people with large incomes and recurring disputes over whether to impose rules on banks to limit the fees they may charge customers.
ideology An interconnected set of ideas.
The conflict between individualism and moral beliefs yields what is sometimes called a “social issues” dimension or basis for ideology, with support for free choice in such issues as abortion, sexually explicit entertainment, and drug or alcohol use at one end and support for government interventions to enforce moral values in such issues at the other. Moral issues do not only figure on the political right, of course. Those on the left have also sometimes favored moral imperatives over individual freedom of choice, as in liberals’ desire to regulate hate speech. Currently in the United States, however, a constellation of moral values on the right is a major factor defining the political landscape.
As you can see in Figure 1.3, when we put these two dimensions together, we have a grid of possible ideologies. Individual Americans’ ideologies can be located on the grid, depending on how they feel about government intervention to ensure economic fairness and how they feel about government intervention to enforce policies based on religious views. For instance, a person who opposes intervention in either case would be located in the lower-left part of the grid (low on СКАЧАТЬ