Individualism and Public Life [antikvár]

Preface Ours is generally a non-political age. This is, ironically, in part because American public life, especially since World War II, has been a success of sorts. People have been able to direct their energies in other than political ways partly because dire public threats or crises have not much intruded. Americans have not been called to the barricades or felt the oppression of dictatorships or even been asked to pull together in serious or sacrificial ways to cope with common problems. We have been materially well-off, unthreatened from without, moderately governed, and untouched by the sort of traumas that have afflicted China, Iran, Poland, Korea, Argentina, Israel, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Spain, the Philippines, and so many other nations that have either been poorly or harshly governed, or perhaps simply had natural or geopolitical bad luck. This is a blessing, of course, for which we can be thankful. Indeed, more than that, it is a benefit we can properly, and pridefully, in part ascribe to our political institutions and to the fairness and good sense that have often characterized our public life. Because we have a political system that is in many ways admirable, and a reasonably responsive citizenry (including a useful, goading awareness of the nation's many flaws), we have gone along comparatively well, all things considered. So much, in fact, have Americans experienced openness and variety that they tend often to be entirely preoccupied with private existences, and even to suppose their freedom and fulfillment to be directly proportional to the absence of government in their lives. Lack of contact with government bureaus or law enforcement agencies, minimal diversion of energy into citizen obligations, decline of political party