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(Hartz not as fun as The Man, but Louis H. is an important observer).
– Bromley
A note on Hartz
Hartz points to the dichotomy in American self-conception as guiding light for the world as democratic example and at the same time isolationist, fearing, as Washington said in his Farewell Address, “foreign entanglements” that would compromise and corrupt Americans.
Hartz contends that America cannot be a pure example to other nations because the Americans did not need to break the feudal experience (kings, lords, peasants, class-based society, etc.) Instead, the American Revolution, to Hartz, was a product of a liberal heritage reaching back to the Magna Charta, the Mayflower Compact, and liberal thought, etc., so the American Revolution was conservative and not radical in terms of overthrowing an entire form of government, especially those bound in feudal histories.
To Hartz — and to de Tocqueville, the American Revolution was not a “democratic revolution.” Hartz says that the American revolutionaries “inherited the freest society in the world,” making theirs a “conservative” revolution. As Hartz writes, “The past had been good to Americans and they knew it…” (13). Thus, to Hartz, Americans are inherently “liberal,” having inherited that tradition and not having to create a world anew (“rationalism”) and “traditionalist” in the sense of upholding their past and not having to reject it (14-15). On the other hand, European revolutions, especially, rejected their pasts and obsessed themselves with the new (followed by subsequent and violent reaction to those revolutions).
However, Americans are also “rationalist” in that they did create new structures that “bore amazing marks of antihistorical rationalism” (13) — such as the constitution and protections of rights. All of these characteristics exist within the American collective mind, but without awareness of them, making them, to Hartz, paradoxical and often contradictory:
“…one of the enduring secrets of the American character: a capacity to combine rock-ribbed traditionalism with high inventiveness, ancestor worship with ardent optimisim” (14)
Hartz, however, worries about a collective “unanimity” among Americans, born of their freedom from “class obsessions of Europe” (15), leads them to a dangerous conformity, despite all of its various and seemingly disparate manifestations — the “veritable maze of polar contradictions” that Hartz lists as “pragmatism and absolutism, historicism and rationalism, optimism and pessimism, materials and idealism, individualism and conformism” (16; btw, in class we have referred to this as “cognitive dissonance”) Hartz here is trying to give a new name to Tocqueville’s fear in American of the “Tyranny of opinion,” and he claims that this fundamental consensus of Americans makes them incapable of understanding other nations and peoples and democratic struggles, as well as to be an ineffective example to them.
See what you can understand in Hartz, and then evaluate his ideas, either in the specific or the whole.
1. Why does America fail to recognize liberalism within its society? Is it accidental or intentional?
2. Why do we try to force societies to fit into established labels? Why can’t we just accept the system as new?
3. If “a sense of community based on a sense of uniformity is deceptive”, then isn’t deception a positive thing in this case? Isn’t this balance between opposites what makes America so unique?
4. Was this concept of community really so foreign in Europe? Why?
5. Does America’s inherent advantage of never existing under an unequal system alienate them from the rest of the world? Is this the source of our elitist complex?
1. How can changes in the system or circumstantial change affect national ideals?
2. How does America function as a stable structure with such cognitive dissonance in ideals? Are governments in societies who agree on fundamental ideals more effective at pleasing the most people, or are governments in societies where an abundance of idea and argument?
3. If we have so many contradicting things that we stand for, doesn’t that mean we don’t fully stand for anything? Why can’t we define our ideals?
4. In a free society aren’t such internal disparities inevitable? Or can society still be required to agree on fundamental matters of ideal while disagree on political decisions?
5. The statement of “all men are created equal” is an ideal in itself, absent of circumstance, so as a nation which can only rule based on realism, does the absence of context (equality of property/liberty/ethnic bias) establish in itself that certain fundamental ideas are simply ideals which can never be accomplished? How is society supposed to deal with this?
1. What is Trotskyite law?
2. Why is America classified as a non-feudal society? Can’t it also identify as a non-communist, non-authoritarian, non-totalitarian, non-monarchial, etc? Because apparently it can’t be a non feudal because there wasn’t a revolution?
3. I agree that Americans did not endure a “democratic revolution.” But can’t we say the emigrants endured a revolution of some sort to become the Americans who helped shaped the nation we are today?
4. Even though Hartz states that Americans are both rationalist and traditionalist, do we tend to lean towards one side more than the other?
5. What allowed the Ameicans to feel a sense of togetherness due to similar uniform ways of life in America as opposed to Europe? How were the circumstances different?
Hartz mentions that Americans are “not in truth world revolutionaries”, and that the shot around the world is less significant than we perceive it to be. He then goes on to say that “We have been able to dream of ourselves as emancipators of the world at the very moment that we have withdrawn from it. We have been able to see ourselves as saviors at the very moment that we have become isolationists”. I think that the shift to revolutions around the world was inevitable, but the American Revolution sped things up significantly. All that the world needed was one revolution to lead the rest.
Hartz says that “Colonial history had not been the slow and glacial record of development that Bonald and Maistre loved to talk about. On the contrary, since the first sailing of the Mayflower, it had been a story of new beginnings, daring enterprises, and explicitly stated principles- it breathed, in other words, the spirit of Bentham himself”. First off, I’m not sure who Bonald, Maistre, or Bentham are. Secondly, If Hartz is saying what I think he is saying, and that being that the colonies were destined to break free from Britain from the start, then I agree completely. Colonists left their mother countries for a reason, and looking back, it makes sense that the plan was to break free all along.
Hartz says that the “spirit of 1776” was remarkable “not because it looked forward to the future but that it worshiped the past as well”. Is Hartz referring to the fact that America looked at ancient civilizations, such as Greece and Rome, when they were planning their country?
Hartz mentions that with America, something new appeared. he says that “By the knowledge that they (Americans) were similar participants in a uniform way of life– by ‘pleasing uniformity of decent competence’ which Crevecoeur loved so much. The Americans themselves were not unaware of this”. Is Hartz saying that patriotism was new with America? Was patriotism new with America?
Hartz mentions the “tyranny of the majority” in American life. I think that in American life, there is a definite tyranny of the majority. The concept of Democracy is great, except when the majority of the people are wrong, and the minority needs their opinion to go public. Democracy doesn’t allow this to happen easily, and so we stay with social norms, and social change is not able to come into average American life.
1. Can America be called a liberal nation, if it is accepting its governement becoming a police state?
2. If Americans view liberial ideas as a threat, then how is America liberal?
3. Were the Founders just establishing a form of government America had used before the French and Indian War?
4. Isn’t having many contradictions in an established government a form of arbitrary rule?
5. When an individual is developing doesn’t he recieve the world and not the other way around, since the world can reject that individual?
1) is the American political identity focused on a “fixed, dogmatic liberalism”?
2) were American politics shaped by a unique social and political history defined by the absence of feudalism?
3) is liberal democracy the only political tradition that has existed in the United States?
4) how has John Locke’s liberalism shaped American views on, say property or individual freedoms?
5) what are the consequences of unanimity in a liberal society?
Page 11-12 Question 1
Is the liberalism Hartz refers to the same as the what liberalism is considered to be today (I ask this because Hartz states that there is no liberal party or movement and so I want to clarify if he is referring to liberalism as in lowercase l or Liberalism as in uppercase L). Why is the Lockian Doctrine a symbol of rationalism in the West yet is considered irrational or not recognized as liberalism in America?
Page 12 Question 2
What does Hartz mean when he says “Here is a doctrine which everywhere in the West has been a glorious symbol of individual liberty, yet in America its compulsive power has been so great that it has posed a threat to liberty itself”? Moreover, what is the threat to liberty posed by America? I do not understand what Hartz is trying to say in the beginning paragraph in that he states that the biggest danger in the American system is that of unanimity or tyranny of opinion. I say I do not understand, because was the American system not created to facilitate faction in that the many factions would be exposed in the House of Representatives and the majority faction to be represented in the Senate (does this not prevent the tyranny of opinion and danger of unanimity?).
Page 13 Question 3
What is the difference between a liberal (radical) and a conservative revolution, and do our majority factions derive their names from these terms? Why does Hartz state that history has been good to Americans (is saying this because America, unlike Europe, had a feudal system prior to governance)? Moreover, why does Hartz believe that America not having a feudal system propelled the government into prosperity?
1. If Hartz is correct, and America is inherently liberal, why do Americans continue to elect more conservative leaders?
2. While America didn’t have to physically abolish any previously established feudal structure on the continent, the emigrants had already attained the knowledge and cultural profits of such events.
3. How can the Americans be traditionalists and liberal in their appeal to government?
4. While Hildreth denounced Europe for “half a dozen codes of morals” that were contradictory and praised America for “one code moral standard,” would it be correct to say that the tides have now switched? Or in the very least, that America no longer can hold to the “one code moral standard” name anymore, with such problems as the Statutes at Large not containing all laws, and even some laws being contradictory.
5. What ideals do Americans have engrained into their once liberal ideology that they have become conservative-liberal radicals?
6. How has America never had a time when they build on the ruins of others? Native Americans?
7. Why is Bromley’s book $40?
$49 list price. Small publisher, academic market. I wish the price were lower.
1. Why did America skip feudal stage?
2. When he refers the West as being a “glorious symbol of individual liberty” does he mean the movement out to the West? Or something else?
3.Did American’s truly form the world as we know it through our revolution and way of thinking?
4.How can we be both rationalists and traditionalists?
5.Why was community hard for Europe?
Is Hartz trying to say because America skipped the feudal stage that there is no such thing as the American Revolution and that it is nonexistent?
Does Hartz believe that no one should have the freedom to express their opinion(including himself)?
If everyone in America thought alike how would that cause tyranny when everyone is on equal ground and no one would want or be able to excel and control others?
Hartz to me seems to be thinking that all Americans are “brainwashed” in some way into believing that America is a great country that is an example of liberalism and revolutions even though those things do not exist in American society.
Is Hartz saying that American rational in history was completely wrong and that history didn’t unfold the way it is have said to been?
Is Hartz trying to say that America was so busy with starting a country and making a government that they had no account of what was going on or occurring and if they did they could not comprehend why it was happening?
Is it intentional that Americans don’t recognize liberalism as an inherent quality of our government?
If American ideals are based in liberalism, why do the conservatives have such a large faction within the government?
When Hartz says that America skipped the feudal stage, could the slave trade and existence of massive plantations in the South be considered a type of Feudalism?
Is it possible for Americans to be both Liberal and Conservative in there appeals to government?
What does Hartz mean by, “Dogmatic Liberalism” ?
What does Hartz mean when he says America is a liberal community yet “there has never been a liberal movement or real liberal party in America”?
Hartz argues that because we fear revolution, we’ve decided to condemn it to the past. Is it true that most Americans would not want to see another revolution in their lifetime regardless of the price of liberty?
I think that although Hartz makes a valid point in asserting that the American revolution wasn’t necessarily applicable to the revolutions that took place in Europe, in what still highly influential. Here was country that although had never had to break out of a feudal system, still managed to revolt against a tyrannical government as most of Europe was suffering from and they did it in a way that had never been done before. Too argue that America is being too pompous in our estimation of ourselves is a bit of a pompous observation in my humble opinion.
What were these “marks of antihistorical rationalism”?
Can a liberal revolution really not occur in the absence of an overthrow of a feudal system?
Where does this immense power found in the “middle” come from. Does America not possess an influential bourgeoisie class?
1. Why is experience with feudalism important to developing equality?
2. Why does Hartz say that liberalism is “a stranger to the land”, and America “poses a threat to liberty itself”?
3. What American ideas embraced both radicalism and traditionalism?
4. How did Americans lack “passionate middle class conciseness”?
5. Wasn’t the Civil War America’s feudal revolution in a way?
1. Why did America never fall into a Feudalistic system?
2. Does Hartz agree or disagree with Tocqueville’s ideas?
3. How would American history be impacted if America had endured a “democratic revolution”?
4. What is an example of how the United States “poses a threat to liberty itself”?
5. Are Americans more of rationalists or traditionalists?
1. Is Hartz implying in his reading that America is not democratic?
2. Is Liberalism loathed by Hartz?
3. What is “the ‘contamination’ that Jefferson feared…”? (pg. 13)
4. Could our present society be what Tocqueville predicted as a “tyranny of option”?
5. In what way would an actual democratic revolution shift the way the government functioned today?
1.What does Hartz mean when stating, “[A]merica its compulsive power has been so great that it has posed a threat to liberty itself”?
2. How is “unanimity” ethical and is it a problem in a liberal society?
3. If America ever had another revolution under the influence of current issues what type of predicted revolution would it be?
4. What makes a revolution effective and not effective?
5. Do all individuals seek independence?
6. How come in a “modern world” revolutions still exist? is it an idea that occurs under the influence of ignorance and rational?
5. Other than conditions how come other countries are advancing a lower pace than the U.S is?
Also, what does Hartz mean when he is stating that Americans did not have to endure a democratic revolution and also that, “[i]t gave to the wild enthusiasms of Europe an appearance no only of analytic error but or (unrequited love).”?