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American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, by Colin Woodard
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The author of American Nations examines the history of and solutions to the key American question: how best to reconcile individual liberty with the maintenance of a free society
The struggle between individual rights and the good of the community as a whole has been the basis of nearly every major disagreement in our history, from the debates at the Constitutional Convention and in the run up to the Civil War to the fights surrounding the agendas of the Federalists, the Progressives, the New Dealers, the civil rights movement, and the Tea Party. In American Character, Colin Woodard traces these two key strands in American politics through the four centuries of the nation’s existence, from the first colonies through the Gilded Age, Great Depression and the present day, and he explores how different regions of the country have successfully or disastrously accommodated them. The independent streak found its most pernicious form in the antebellum South but was balanced in the Gilded Age by communitarian reform efforts; the New Deal was an example of a successful coalition between communitarian-minded Eastern elites and Southerners.
Woodard argues that maintaining a liberal democracy, a society where mass human freedom is possible, requires finding a balance between protecting individual liberty and nurturing a free society. Going to either libertarian or collectivist extremes results in tyranny. But where does the “sweet spot” lie in the United States, a federation of disparate regional cultures that have always strongly disagreed on these issues? Woodard leads readers on a riveting and revealing journey through four centuries of struggle, experimentation, successes and failures to provide an answer. His historically informed and pragmatic suggestions on how to achieve this balance and break the nation’s political deadlock will be of interest to anyone who cares about the current American predicament—political, ideological, and sociological.
- Sales Rank: #70052 in Books
- Published on: 2016-03-15
- Released on: 2016-03-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.06" w x 6.25" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Review
“Woodard, an award-winning journalist for the Portland Press-Herald in Maine, is a terrific writer, and his range is impressive. His musings about the impact of Ayn Rand on American conservatism or a day spent in the terrifying blackness of Nicolae Ceausescu's crumbling Romanian dictatorship are elegant set pieces.”
—David Oshinsky, Washington Post
“An illuminating national portrait at a particularly divisive time.”
—Downeast
“Woodard’s treatise is a must-read for anyone grappling with how we arrived at the present moment . . . Although the prose is effortlessly accessible to a general audience, the manuscript could easily serve as a textbook in a number of different disciplines: history, economics, political science and psychology, just to name a few.”
—Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News
“A deep analysis of the history of the common good versus individual rights. . . . A healthy democracy needs to balance the two; either one alone leads to disaster. . . . American Character adds a further prism to the public-private spectrum. ‘The struggle for freedom is not bilateral, but instead triangular,’ Woodard writes. ‘The participants are the state, the people, and the would-be aristocracy or oligarchy. Liberal democracy . . . relies on keeping these three forces in balance.’ The history of that struggle is a big-dipper ride through four centuries as first collectivists then individualists take their turn at managing the country. Lurking just below the surface are always mirrors reflecting our own times. . . . Woodard’s essential thesis is vital to understand.”
—Thomas Urquhart, Portland Press-Herald
“Woodard builds on his previous analysis of the country’s regional differences to focus on the conflict between individualism and collectivism that defines our national character. As in his previous book, the author . . . maintains, ‘our country has never been united, either in purpose, principles, or political behavior. We’ve never been a nation-state in the European sense, but rather a federation of nations’ like the European Union. . . . Although we have inherited a legacy of revolution against a king, making us ‘vigilant against the rise of an overarching government that might deny us our individual potential,’ Woodard sees that the vast majority of Americans believe that the ‘American Way’ means ‘pursuing happiness through a free and fair competition between individuals.’ Politicians must reassure voters that fairness is ‘the central issue of our political discourse’ by proposing tax reforms and investments in education that ‘would help keep the playing field even.’ . . . Thoughtful political theory for divisive times.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for American Nations
“[American Nations] sets itself apart by delving deep into history to trace our current divides to ethno-cultural differences that emerged during the country's earliest settlement.”
—The New Republic (Editors’ Picks: Best Books of 2011)
“[A] compelling and informative attempt to make sense of the regional divides in North America in general and this country in particular . . . Woodard provides a bracing corrective to an accepted national narrative that too often overlooks regional variations to tell a simpler and more reassuring story.”
—The Washington Post
“Mr. Woodard’s approach is breezier than [David Hackett] Fischer’s and more historical than [Joel] Garreau’s, but he has earned a place on the shelf between them.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A smart read that feels particularly timely now, when so many would claim a mythically unified Founding Fathers as their political ancestors.”
—Boston Globe
“[In] offering us a way to better understand the forces at play in the rumpus room of current American politics, Colin Woodard has scored a true triumph.”
—Newsweek/The Daily Beast
“Woodard makes a worthwhile contribution by offering an accessible, well-researched analysis with appeal to both casual and scholarly readers.”
—Library Journal
“For people interested in American history and sociology, American Nations demands reading.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“[A] fascinating new take on our history. . . ”
—The Christian Science Monitor
About the Author
Colin Woodard, an award-winning writer and journalist, is currently the state and national affairs writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram and received a 2012 George Polk Award for an investigative project he did for those papers. A longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents. His work has appeared in dozens of publications, including The Economist, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Politico, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Bloomberg View, and Washington Monthly. A graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago, he is the author of four previous books including American Nations and The Republic of Pirates.
Most helpful customer reviews
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Although its alleged purpose was “the promotion of the common good, ” it “yielded instead collective misery” (28)
By Daniel W. Crofts
Colin Woodard’s new book is a sequel to his American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America, which gained wide attention when published five years ago. He tried to explain there why disagreements about fundamentals have persisted in the United States. Searching back to the first European settlements of the seventeenth century, he showed how antagonistic ideas about a proper social order produced sharply divergent colonial regimes. In New England’s intensely democratic towns, local self-government harnessed and restrained individual striving to secure a larger community well-being. South Carolina’s slave plantations, by contrast, allowed the rich and powerful an unfettered pursuit of individual advantage.
Sprightly and historically informed, American Nations showed how these and other regional cultures competed against each other. No unitary national culture could result; the outcome always has been contested and plural. In effect, New England and the Deep South each searched for allies, with the pivotal “midlands” of New Jersey-Pennsylvania and points west positioned to determine who would control the presidency and Congress. Andrew Jackson thus led a political coalition that prized individual endeavor and feared a powerful central government, while Abraham Lincoln led a coalition that wanted government to promote economic development and secure equal rights and opportunities.
Woodard’s American Character argues that both polar paradigms—hyper-collective and hyper-individualistic—are dystopian. As a college student, he saw first-hand how the malignant Nicolae Ceauşescu turned Romania into a ghastly police state. Although its alleged purpose was “the promotion of the common good,” it “yielded instead collective misery” (28). But those traumatized by the collectivist nightmare, notably novelist Ayn Rand and Wichita oil magnate Fred Koch, concocted “an extreme individualist creed” that prized the pursuit of “rapacious self-interest” (38). Their obsessions about a too-powerful state blinded them to the way that weak states become despotisms dominated by the rich and powerful.
As in American Nations, Woodard grounds his case in history. New England gave priority to “individual self-denial,” with community power enlisted to restrain “the avarice of individuals.” Yankees had “faith in government and public institutions.” They prized education and “intellectual achievement” and they built public schools (62-63). By contrast, “the Deep South in the antebellum period was an extreme individualist’s dream.” It most valued “the freedom to own slaves.” It favored minimalist government and low taxes, and it denied any public responsibility for education (47, 49, 51).
Woodard notes that modern libertarians generally find it impolitic to celebrate the slave South. They look instead to an imagined sugar-coated utopia in the late nineteenth century’s Gilded Age, when laissez-faire ideologies maximized the realm of private endeavor and kept government small. From a libertarian perspective, the two Roosevelts undermined these happy arrangements by championing a dangerous, intrusive national state that infringed on property rights, raised taxes, and coddled loafers.
Woodard makes plain his own Rooseveltian preferences—what he dubs “national liberalism”—“a free market society overseen by an active, equality-seeking government” (157). This took shape in the 1930s and provided the foundation for the postwar expansion of the middle class. Its potential benefits were widened in the 1960s to better include African-Americans and women. But the political coalition that sustained national liberalism came unhinged amid the domestic and international crises of the 1960s, and it has been in retreat ever since.
The “laissez-faire right,” seemingly discredited by Barry Goldwater’s resounding defeat in 1964, embarked on a long march to build “its political and intellectual resources” (192). During the next fifty years, the fringe movement of 1964 moved to center stage. It gradually gained control of the Republican Party, where its ideological strait jacket has become a non-negotiable test of partisan allegiance. It has repeatedly slashed taxes on the rich and allowed the public sphere to deteriorate. Its dominance in the South is nearly absolute. It now controls both houses of Congress and a majority of state legislatures. The Speaker of the House and many of his rank-and-file are explicit devotees of Ayn Rand. Two Koch sons have invested heavily to make the party do their bidding.
But Woodard is convinced that the right has overreached and that its quest to recreate an imagined laissez-faire utopia cannot be the basis for a national majority coalition. He suggests instead that a new majority coalition can be created, based on a commitment to fairness and a widened equality of opportunity. The new majority will define itself in opposition to “the Deep South’s tradition of hierarchical libertarianism” (262). And it will not hesitate to raise taxes on those who have won an undeserved lion’s share in the new Gilded Age.
Woodard’s American Character is painted with a broader brush than American Nations. His purpose here is to explore the implications of his earlier analysis. He predicts, but he says little about how his predictions might be implemented. He could say more about why economic inequality widened after 1970, and how this trend might be reversed. He does not explain why issues such as guns and abortion so often eclipse what he might see as rational economic interest. He also could be more explicit about the coded racial scapegoating that suffuses all the never-ending complaints about taxes, health care, deficits, and immigrants.
Historians, including this one, will continue to prefer American Nations. But Woodard’s American Character seems keenly prescient in the spring of 2016 as the Republican Party flails helplessly while its ideological chickens come home to roost.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
One of the best books I have read
By doug korty
This is a phenomenal book. It is a readable book but a complex book that requires serious reading. It isn’t just a great book, it is a significant book that deserves to be read by many people and discussed widely. The ideas of this book should lead to many other people’s articles and books. Much of the history and discussion in this book is already known but the author gives it fresh life and meaning by the way he presents it and organizes it. He writes extremely well and thinks extremely well.
Woodard’s analysis of America, coming from his previous book American Nations, breaks the country into 11 regions:
Yankeedom
New Netherland
The Midlands
Tidewater
Greater Appalachia
Deep South
El Norte
the Left Coast
The Far West
First Nation
New France
These regions are defined and delineated based on a variety of characteristics: dialect maps, material culture regions, religious regions, political geography, maps of patterns of settlement, , votes for same sex marriage, in 2008, 2004 and 2008 election votes, people who answered “American” to the ancestry question in the census (high % in Appalachia), importance of religion, education level, states with carbon trading pacts, states with laws banning labor union shop contracts, counties voting Democratic or Republican.
The theme of the book is about the “epic struggle between individual liberty and the common good”. There are two introductory chapters and five historical chapters going from 1607 to the current period, and a conclusion, A Lasting Union.
Woodard is extremely knowledgeable and doesn’t miss much in his history or analysis. One of the reviews faults him for not being objective. He doesn’t claim to be non partisan, he is clearly a progressive Democrat arguing for the strongest commitment to fairness and equal opportunity. He is not a socialist or a social democrat nor does he see social democracy in our future. My only suggestion is that the book could have had more maps or descriptions of the regions to help the reader understand the discussions about regions, especially in the final chapter.
This is an exceptionally good book that anyone interested in democracy and the future of our country should read.
Midwest Independent Research
13 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Informative historical review of regional American political tendencies - more ...
By Michael F. Bouscaren
Informative historical review of regional American political tendencies - more critical of oligarchical failures to make opportunity equal; scant criticism of big government's costly inefficiencies and its futile tendency instead somehow to try to make people, not opportunity, equal.
Facile linkage of political initiatives with concurrent economic change, as if politicians actually directly drive economic activity.
Woodard's conclusion focuses on strategies to make red states blue, thereby bald-facing his transparent political biases throughout, which for the reader regrettably call the validity of his analysis into question.
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