American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword

by Seymour Martin and Seymour Martin Lipset

Book Overview

American values are quite complex, writes Seymour Martin Lipset, particularly because of paradoxes within our culture that permit pernicious and beneficial social phenomena to arise simultaneously from the same basic beliefs.

Born out of revolution, the United States has always considered itself an exceptional country of citizens unified by an allegiance to a common set of ideals, individualism, anti-statism, populism, and egalitarianism...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393316149
• ISBN13: 9780393316148
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A brilliant American social scientist's gift for generalization can lead us astray if we don't test

If everything else about him is forgotten, Lipset, who died in 2006, will surely be remembered for coining the term, "American Exceptionalism". Before I took up social science as a "second language" at Lipset's last academic residence (School of Public Policy, George Mason University) I was an earth scientist - avocationally interested in public policy. The only political and other social scientists whose names appeared at regular intervals in Science Magazine were Lipset, Robert Merton, and Amitai Etzioni. Lipset had omnivorous curiosity and interests. Among his many memberships and honors, he was the only person to serve as President of both the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association. In almost every publication Lipset effortlessly tosses out bold and often accurate generalizations that other academics did not mention - either because the relationship didn't occur to them, or because they were afraid to venture conclusions not quantitatively established by "empirical" studies. [Empirical studies are social scientists' term for research that tests hypotheses using statistical proofs.] For example, in his Introduction, Lipset states that the U.S. is the most religious country in Christendom, and the only one where churchgoers adhere to sects. Protestantism has not only influenced opposition to wars, but determined the American style of foreign policy. The U.S. disdain of authority has led to the highest crime rate and the lowest level of voting participation in the developed world, etc. I found that Lipset's penchant for generalization had to be respected but taken advisedly. This is illustrated by the abovementioned claim that the U.S. had the lowest level of voting participation in the developed world. In fact, this statement only applies to recent years. The Wikipedia article "American election campaigns in the 19th century" points out that elections in the Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio, reached 95% voter turnout in 1896. Generally high voter turnouts continued after the turn of the Century. Lipset's intent in using the term American Exceptionalism is to confirm that America IS qualitatively different from all other nations. He indicates that this quality was first established by the 19th Century French observer, Alexis De Toqueville. Besides the earlier-mentioned points, Lipset identifies a large number of other differences. These include less obedience to authority and deference to superiors, identification with a creed (moralism), rather than ethnic or other commonalities; firm belief that the U.S. is best and unique among nations; distrust of a strong state, aversion to state-provided welfare, weak working-class radicalism, and lack of a significant socialist movement. Elections are more pervasive than in any other nation, etc. Lipset recognized that the strong American proclivity for moral absolutism could lead to excesses. This is abundantly demonstra

The Land of Opportunity- analyzed

Lipset himself illustrated one of the best premises of the American creed, the idea that through hard work and effort an individual can succeed and reach the heights of his profession. Lipset was a believer in the land of opportunity , and understood the special blessing of American society. It is open to the contribution of immigrants in a way no other society is. It also stresses fundamental values which are not dependent on ethnicity or religion, and is a nation different from others in this way. Lipset also saw the problematic character of American exceptionalism. He understood that it is a society whose very dynamism leads to enormous social problems. On the whole however he makes in this work a detailed study of a culture a society a country which has given more opportunity to more people than any other on earth.

book reviews

More reviews here (30 pages): [...] American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword; book reviews Commonweal September 13, 1996, Pg. 38 There is no dearth of opinions about what ails the United States today. Everyone seems to have a diagnosis as well as a prescription for our reputed moral decline. However, new books by political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset and by legal scholar Ronald Dworkin go beyond merely expounding a set of predetermined conclusions or recommendations and provide readers with analytic tools for use in the assessment of American political culture. Lipset's title gives a reliable indication of the central thesis of this work, which proceeds in continuity, with a well-developed body of social science literature to which Lipset himself has been a major contributor. The United States is different from other countries because it is founded upon a national creed rather than upon the social bonds of ethnicity and history that normally cement peoples together. Our national sense of self is derived from a broadly shared ideology which includes commitment to liberty, equality, populism, individualism, and antistatism. This consensus does not, of course, eliminate all conflict, but it does constrict considerably the range of mainstream opinion to one or another form of liberalism (in the classical sense of the word). From these same cultural roots stem both faces of U.S. distinctiveness: the laudable (voluntarism, individual initiative, personal responsibility) and lamentable (self-serving behavior, atomism, disregard for the common good). Lipset takes seriously the adage: "to know only one culture is to know none." Group traits are best highlighted by observing patterns of variation and contrast. This insight serves as an organizing principle of his book, which includes chapters comparing the political culture of the United States with that of our closest kin, Canada, and of our fellow misfit (or "outlier" in terms of social indicators) in the international community, Japan. Lipset's analysis of distinctive U.S. social, political, economic, and historical factors succinctly recapitulates the classic debate (started by Marx and Engels) over the surprising underdevelopment of class consciousness and socialist movements in the United States. Lipset joins such commentators as Louis Hartz, Richard Hofstadter, and Michael Harrington in seeing Americanism (the ideology of success that posits the existence of unrestricted opportunity) as, in effect, a substitute for socialism in the U.S. context. This phenomenon renders the American experience qualitatively different from the consciousness of limited opportunity and political power that prevails in other industrialized societies. Lipset's use of contrast is not limited to cross-national comparison. Nearly half the book is devoted to "exceptions to exceptionalism," social groups within American society which have undergone experiences at variance from the national mainstream. Lipset cho

Chapter 6 by itself is worth the price.

As someone lucky enough to be employed at an American university, I really appreciated Chapter 6: "American Intellectuals-Mostly on the Left, Some Politically Incorrect." On page 188 we read [as a quote] "American academic Marxism is politically irrelevant and marginal and compensates for its political nullity by seeking hegemony within academic institutions" Same page:"As Hayek noted half a century ago, in an analysis that is even more true today, the conservative bourgeoisie control the economy while the campus anti-establishmentarians dominate intellectual life in the humanitites and much of the social sciences..." Lipset also makes the stimulating suggestion that as vulgar Marxism has been discredited in the social sciences it has retreated into the humanities