MYTH OF AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM

One writer says of Barry Shain's book The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Thought that we must take into accout the religous push for community over individualism in early American history: "For a long time it seemed indisputable that America was a nation whose constitution and politics were based on the belief that government exists in order to protect the rights of individuals. In recent years, however, a number of historians have undertaken to challenge this conventional wisdom. They have argued that the founders of the American Republic were less interested in the rights of individuals than we had supposed and more concerned with the welfare of the community. Their conclusions, although varying, run something like this. Early Americans were by no means unanimously and simply dedicated to an individualistic philosophy of natural rights. Instead, they were in touch with a multiplicity of political ideas, including some that were strongly communitarian in nature."

"As a title, The Myth of American Individualism is not only deliberately provocative, it may be misleading. Shain does not claim that American individualism doesn't really exist; indeed, he worries that there is too much individualism in America today. What he argues is that the individualism of present-day America is supported by the myth that no other political philosophy but that of individual natural rights has ever prevailed in America, and this myth he sets out to shatter.

"American society was not originally individualistic, he argues, but only became so after the Revolution. And the shared value system that Shain claims antedated the natural-rights philosophy of Lockean liberalism in America is Protestant Christianity. The form of Christianity that most interests him is Reformed (that is, Calvinist) in theology and sectarian in organization; it was transplanted to the Atlantic coast of North America by various groups, most of them religious dissenters from European state churches. These included English Puritans and Quakers, French Huguenots, Scottish and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, and German pietists.

"What concerns Shain about these people is not what they themselves valued most highly -- their personal spiritual relationship with the risen Christ. What he likes is the fact that their way of life constituted a form of democratic communalism. They bore collective witness to their faith in defiance of temporal authorities and despite frequent hardship. They were people who restrained their emotional and hedonistic impulses --a trait that Shain also approves. They maintained "watch and ward" over each other to preserve their community discipline, guarding each other against the opportunity to sin, and rendering mutual aid and comfort.

"Shain has rendered a valuable service in calling attention to the power of Protestant Christianity in early American political culture. In many ways his emphasis on the importance of the small community -- the church and the town alike, although he doesn't distinguish them -- is well placed. To understand the power of these local communities and their ministerial spokesmen helps us understand many things: for example, how the American Revolution mobilized so much popular enthusiasm in New England, as well as why it commanded less widespread active support in parts of the country where local community ties were more attenuated. In a more general sense, Shain's book also helps us appreciate the constructive role of self-discipline in early American personality development and social life."

Princeton University Press says this about his book: "Shain reveals a very different understanding -- one based on a reformed Protestant communalism.

"In this context, individual liberty was the freedom to order one's life in accord with the demanding ethical standards found in Scripture and confirmed by reason. This was in keeping with Americans' widespread acceptance of original sin and the related assumption that a well-lived life was only possible in a tightly knit, intrusive community made up of families, congregations, and local government bodies. Shain concludes that Revolutionary-era Americans defended a Protestant communal vision of human flourishing that stands in stark opposition to contemporary liberal individualism."

I believe the title of his book is a little misleading because there is much healthy individualism in American history. The problem is that many historians have not seen the other side of the coin. Tocqueville did. Socialist/feminists have destroyed the community because they push for women being focused on individualism. Men lost heart to lead and now we have little community spirit. The first community is the family. When women left that community, then the wider community fell apart also.

Jean Bethke Elshtain reviewed Shain's book and said, "Shain hammers home his thesis over and over again: 'Revolutionary-era Americans believed that the needs and good of the public must be awarded priority over those of the individual.' Virtuous individuals were those prepared to sacrifice in the interest of a common good."

Gertrude Himmelfarb

Gertrude Himmelfarb in her book One Nation, Two Cultures says America is split in two camps just as James Dale Davison writes. We discuss his views in the introduction to our book Cultural War Since 1848. She is encouraged that the war has been relatively peaceful, and she is optimistic that America will continue to survive because it is a tolerant nation. All people are at the spiritual age of 16 because they do not know the Divine Principle that teaches that God's goal is for a one world culture centered on True Parents. Himmelfarb does not know this and therefore gives no great vision for the future.

She writes, "It is common these days to deplore the expression 'culture war,' as if the term is uncivil and inflammatory, a slander upon a good, decent, pacific people. It should hardly need saying that the 'culture war' is a 'war' only metaphorically." She says that there is a deep divide between people but, "Americans can justly pride themselves on surviving both the cultural revolution and the culture war without paroxysms of persecution or bloodshed, without, indeed, serious social strife. For all their differences, the 'two cultures' remain firmly fixed within 'one nation.'"

She ends with what she calls "modest predictions." Sun Myung Moon's predictions are just the opposite -- they are absolute, confident and bold. She says, "Historians have not been notably successful in predicting the future." And she is one of them. She is correct in predicting there will be change, but she is wrong to think it will be "modest" and will be "moral rather than religious." She does not know that God is behind the UM and sooner or later there will be a Great Awakening -- the greatest awakening -- that this earth has ever seen. The Messiah is on the earth and the truth he brings will sweep the earth just as the idea that the earth was round swept the earth.

She is open to a Great Awakening in the distant future if America declines so much that people realize "they are living off the religious capital of a previous generation and that capital is being perilously depleted" by "gradual secularization." She does not see that America has declined more than she thinks and God wants what she cannot see -- what she calls, "a total reformation of society." Without the vision of Sun Myung Moon people are doomed to small thinking.

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