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Chapter 1Outtakes and H of Hearts Comments. Forms of Government: John Locke. Forms of Government: John Stuart Mill. Politics . Politics: conflict over the leadership, structure, and policies of governments. Representative democracy (republic)
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Politics • Politics: conflict over the leadership, structure, and policies of governments. • Representative democracy (republic) • Governments are run by elected officials who represent the interests of their constituents. • Direct democracy • Citizens themselves vote on all legislation. • town meetings, referenda
Pluralism • Groups and organized interests also participate in politics. • Groups and organized interests provide funds for candidates, lobby, and try to influence public opinion. • The pattern of struggles among interests is called group politics, or pluralism.
Who Are Americans? • The United States has grown in population from 3.9 million in 1790, the year of the first official census, to 318 million in 2014. • The government sets policy to determine whom it allows in and who is eligible for citizenship. • This decision is highly political and has changed many times over the course of American history.
Who Are Americans?: Citizenship U.S. Citizenship: • The first census did not count Native Americans (in fact, it was not until 1924 that Native Americans could become citizens). • Most people of African descent were not officially citizens until 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution conferred citizenship on the freed slaves.
Who Are Americans?: Immigration Policy Immigration Policy: • Immigration policy has been historically biased against nonwhites. • Until 1870, only free whites could become naturalized citizens. • The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 outlawed the entry of Chinese laborers into the United States.
Who Are Americans?: Twenty-First Century • Twenty-First-Century Americans • By 1965, Congress lifted strict immigration limits set in place in the 1920s. • This resulted in new waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America. • 2012 Population (U.S. Census) • White: 63 percent • Asian: 5 percent • Black: 13 percent • Latino: 17 percent
Who Are Americans?: Continent of Origin Immigration by Continent of Origin (1900–2008)
Who Are Americans?: Age Distribution • The age distribution of the population can have a profound impact on politics. • Different age groups have very different needs for public services. • Different age groups vote differently.
Review of Habits of the Heart Are some character types more compatible/necessary to Democratic Governance than others?
American Character Evolves • Utilitarian individualism: A form of individualism that takes as given basic human appetites and fears... and sees human life as an effort by individuals to maximize their self-interest relative to these given ends. • Utilitarian individualism views society as arising from a contract that individuals enter into only in order to advance their self-interest.... Utilitarian individualism has an affinity to a basically economic understanding of existence. • Expressive individualism: A form of individualism that arose in opposition to utilitarian individualism • Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.... Under certain conditions, the expressive individualist may find it possible through intuitive feeling to "merge" with other persons, with nature, or with the cosmos as a whole. • Republican tradition: The tradition... that contributed to the formation of modern Western democracies. • it presupposes that the citizens of a republic are motivated by a civic virtue as well as self-interest. • It views public participation as a moral education and sees its purposes as the attainment of justice and the public good..
American Character Evolves 2 • Franklin and Whitman, public and private • the independent citizen, (old) • the entrepreneur, (old) • the manager, (new) • The therapist (new)
Character and Democracy • Which of these character types, views of individualism are compatible with American democracy?
American Political Culture If Americans do not share a common blood line or religious or ethnic heritage, what unites the nation? • Political culture • American political culture emphasizes the values of: • Liberty • Equality • Democracy
American Political Culture: Liberty • Liberty: freedom from government control. This includes: • Personal freedom • Economic freedom • Linked to the concept of “limited government.”
American Political Culture: Equality • Equality • Equality of opportunity • Equality of outcome • Political equality
American Political Culture: Democracy • Democracy • People choose their rulers and have some say over what those rulers do. • When ultimate power rests with the citizenry, this is called popular sovereignty. • In America, the people are sovereign and majority rules, but the individual rights of the minority are still protected.
