What It Means to Be an American

by Michael Walzer

Book Overview

Condensed to bumper-sticker pith, What It Means to Be an American asks everyone to Honk If You Hate Us-Against-Them Thinking. Offering a fine antidote to exclusionist tripe about 'Americanism, '... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568860250
• ISBN13: 9781568860251
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Marsilio Publishers
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Walzer's America is worth celebrating

This book is pithy and clear. Walzer's America is dynamic. The fluidity of the national conscience is grounded in America's most prominent and politically salient feature: we are immigrants. Walzer writes, "the political culture of the country as a whole was English and Protestant, but this culture was never firmly established either in the symbols or the substance of law and policy" (pg. 9). National unity is difficult to achieve and will "probably always be tumultuous" (pg. 12). Walzer provides a "brief checklist" on how to reassert the "twinned American values of a singular citizenship and a radically pluralist civil society" (pg. 17). This checklist is in six points: (1) remember we are a "society of immigrants" when we discuss our national conscience; (2) "Strengthen our public schools;" (3) Recognize the civic quality "parochial associations;" (4) "maintain the neutrality of the state" because (for example) "the United States cannot be a Christian republic in the way that Iran is an Islamic republic;" (5) "Create a more participatory politics;" (6) Although "silliness" and "nastiness" inevitably accompany democratic politics these features should be marginalized. (For these 6 points see pgs. 17-19). After that introduction, Walzer presents four essays that I will summarize below: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN "AMERICAN"? "If the manyness of America is cultural, its oneness is political, and it may be the case that men and women who are free from non-American cultures will commit themselves more fully to the American political system. Maybe cultural anonymity is the best possible grounding for American politics" (pg. 29). Walzer thinks that the Great Seal of the USA, E pluribus unum "From many, one," is misleading because the uniqueness of America is that we do not know what that one is, we are immigrants, we are "Hyphenated Americans" (e.g. Italian-Americans, African-Americans, etc; see pgs. 36-40). Even today, "America is still a radically unfinished society" (pg. 48). Patriotism is largely unique in America because unlike the "Old World" where loyalty is to the patrie or the fatherland (or motherland), in America loyalty is often evoked by referring to traditions and standards that were developed from our immigrant-histories. Thus Walzer says beautifully, "Americans have no inwardness of their own; they look inward only by looking backward" (pg. 26). PLURALISM: A POLITCAL PERSPECTIVE Here, Walzer's discussion of the relationship between the public and private life of an American is more detailed. "Americans are communal in their private affairs, individualist in their politics. Civil society is a collection of groups; the state is an organization of individual citizens" (pg. 67). Again attacking the Great Seal, "Not only From many, one, but also Within one, many" (pg. 62). Within that latter notion, Walzer describes how the function of "ethnic self-assertion" has given rise to healthy pluralism: (1) by "the defense of et