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Is America Exceptional?

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient of the PresidentialNational Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancer patients through cellularand molecular biology, improving lives today and bringing hope for tomorrow.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde andHarry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. To quote one of our guests ontoday's program, 'America is the most religious, optimistic, patriotic,rightsoriented, and individualistic nation in the world.' Now, is thatuniqueness good for America? Is it good for the world?

Joining us today are two students and teachers of all things American: ProfessorSeymour Martin Lipset, author of the recently released 'American Exceptionalism:A DoubleEdged Sword'; and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.

The topic before this house: Is America exceptional? This week on 'Think Tank.'

Our guests today are both graduates of the City College of New York and are bothformer Harvard University professors. Dr. Seymour Martin Lipset is the author ofover 20 books and is the past president of both the American Political ScienceAssociation and the American Sociological Association. He is currently a fellowat the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

Dr. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the senior senator from the state of New York. Senator Moynihan has worked for four presidents in two parties and has taught atseveral leading universities. He is the author or editor of 17 books, includingthe recently published 'Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy.'

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us at 'Think Tank.' Marty Lipset, could westart with you? What does that phrase 'American exceptionalism' mean?

MR. LIPSET: Well, the phrase was actually coined, as far as anybody knows, byAlexis de Tocqueville in his great book 'Democracy,' which is in many ways stillthe most informed book about America. And in the book, Tocqueville says Americais exceptional as compared to other countries, by which he meant it was anoutlier, it was different on a number of factors. The thing that interested himmost at the time was that it was the only democratic country in the world. Andhe coming from France, where the French Revolution had seemingly failed, came toAmerica to try to understand why did democracy work?

MR. WATTENBERG: America's different, is that to be interpreted that America isbetter? It sometimes is.

MR. LIPSET: Yeah, it's to be interpreted but it's better and it's worse. Thereare some things which we many things which, if you look at statistics of behavioral patterns, weare at the good end of the scale. But there are some in which we're at thebottom end of the scale. One of them is crime and violence, violent crime. Another is voting. We have close to the lowest proportion of the populationvoting.

But on the positive side, we have more people involved in organizationalactivities and community activities. We're still the wealthiest country in theworld by far. We're the greatest job producer by far. We're the most religiouscountry in terms of church attendance and belief, very much by far. And onecould go on in terms of differences between the United States and othercountries.

MR. WATTENBERG: Pat Moynihan, how exceptional are we? You have traveled theworld many, many times.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Well, two things I might say, if you don't mind a New Yorkerspeaking for a moment. Tocqueville actually came here, as Marty knows, as a partof a threeperson commission of the French government to look into our prisonreforms, and he was heading

MR. WATTENBERG: He was on a junket.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: He was on a junket, and he had to get out of France, actually, itwas a good thing. And he was heading for Auburn, New York, where we had producedthe reformatory, a pretty grim place, you couldn't talk to anybody or stillthere.

MR. WATTENBERG: Finger Lakes, close to Hobart College.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: That's right, sir, exactly. Your own. But we were innovating,we were trying to improve people who had as against just punish them. Marty, wemight agree that it would be sort of serendipitous that Tocqueville would belooking for a country where crime was seen as an opportunity for reform asagainst punishment.

But you know, there is something else since Tocqueville, and you surely willagree on this. We are exceptional in that there is not a country, a majorcountry in the world with which we could be compared on which we do not havestationed American military personnel, American bases. The one exception isFrance, but France is part of NATO, and we have been protecting France for 50years, having liberated the place. We have our armed forces all over the worldin a peaceful participation, in a confrontation with the Soviet Union in the end. It began with the German and Japanese empires. That surely is exceptional.

MR. WATTENBERG: Has that ever happened before in history?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: No. MR. LIPSET: I don't think so, but you know, it ties in with another aspect ofexceptionalism in the book, that we're an ideological country, that Americanismis an ideology in the same sense that communism or socialism or fascism areideologies. Richard Hofstadter once said it's been our fortune or misfortune asa nation to be an ideology. And as part of that ideology

MR. WATTENBERG: Fortune or misfortune.

MR. LIPSET: Yeah, because, you know, being an ideology leads you to want tochange the world. And this is something Americans have wanted to do; they'vewanted to be involved. In many ways, up to 1917, up to the Russian Revolution,we were the center of the world revolution, that is, the democratic revolution. Democratic revolutionaries from all over the world, when they were defeated, whenthey needed R&R or they needed money

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Came here.

MR. LIPSET: Came here. Sun Yatsen did, Kossuth did, Garibaldi did, and this wasthe place that they wanted to when we wanted to export our values, ourinstitutions, we didn't want to dominate them. But this notion that we should beconcerned, that we want the rest of the world to be democratic, to be decent isan old American orientation which other countries which are historic countriesdon't have.

MR. WATTENBERG: You gave a list of the sort of classic American characteristics:individualism, meritocracy this whole list that we went through optimism. Isthere a grand theme that could put all these things together that says, well,yes, we're exceptional, here are aspects of our exceptionalism, and if you wantedto put a label on it, is there something that would say this is what unites thosethemes? Pat, Marty, either.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Marty. It's your book.

MR. WATTENBERG: Because I have an idea, but I'm not going to I want to see ifyou all

MR. LIPSET: I suppose you could say it's individualism, democracy oregalitarianism. You know, Tocqueville stressed the fact that America at the timewas the most egalitarian country in the world. By that he didn't mean equal inincome or equal in power, but he meant that equal opportunity, but also equal interms of social relationships, that Americans didn't bow down to others anddidn't want people to bow down. In fact, he suggested he didn't use these words that personal service is unamerican, that Americans don't like to have servantsand don't want to be servants, unlike the situation in the hierarchical,postfeudal countries of Europe. And this emphasis on egalitarianism andachievement, getting ahead, I think are the two dominant themes of the UnitedStates from which the others tie in.

MR. WATTENBERG: Pat. SEN. MOYNIHAN: I absolutely agree with that, and I think you would also say, andit's in your book, that this individualism, some get plenty and some get none, isleaving at the end of this century, in which we are the wealthiest nation in theworld, with the largest number of genuinely poor, isolated people. We have adegree of societal breakdown which we never would have expected. A third of ourchildren now are born to single parents. In our 50 largest cities, the averageratio, illegitimacy ratio I don't think you can say that anymore so I cancelthat; nonmarital is now

MR. WATTENBERG: There's a whole history of words that have described that. Itwent from bastard to illegitimate to out of wedlock to nonmarried.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Nonmarital.

MR. WATTENBERG: Nonmarital, excuse me.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: In the 50 largest cities in the country, the average is 48percent. Now, no society has ever in history had to deal with this. We areexceptional in this, too.

MR. LIPSET: Well, you know, this pattern, although I agree with Pat about thepoverty and the lower level, is a world is at least a Western phenomenon. Theprovince of Quebec, now one out of every two children in Quebec is born out ofwedlock. And in Britain, it's now up to a third.

MR. WATTENBERG: Listen, I want to come back to this because it's fascinating,but let's just wrap up that thought about what the unifying thought is. You bothsort of pointed toward individualism. Pat, you once issued a great cry from theheart to set up a liberty party in the world. Is it fair to say that whatcharacterizes America in most of these unique aspects is that it is more freethan anywhere else in the world?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Well, alas, that's why it's a think tank. We are more given toasserting the individual right to do as you will and more busybody and nosy aboutthe way people behave. And so that may be maybe that's quite really consistent. If we're a nation in which we all had these rights, we will be pretty quick tosay you're infringing mine or

MR. WATTENBERG: And we are, you pointed out in the book, Marty, the mostlitigious people. We are willing to go to court and get lawyers for anything.

MR. LIPSET: Well, you know, I was going to pick up on that because one of thepoints, the uniqueness about America, is our rights orientation. The Bill ofRights was the only one of its kind until recently. And you know, it saidCongress may not do, the government may not do this and that, because one of thecharacteristics of the Founding Fathers was they were suspicious of the state,they were antistate. Madison, who was the principal author of the Constitution,said how do you get government to control itself? And this was one of the ways. The other way was checks and balances of all kinds. Well, setting up the Bill of Rights meant you can sue for your rights against thegovernment. But it also led to people being concerned with their rights againsteach other, and this in turn produced all this litigiousness.

The Canadians adopted a bill of rights in 1982. They call it the Charter ofRights and Freedoms. And one of the effects of it has been a lot more litigationin Canada.

MR. WATTENBERG: You are both students of the Canadian experience, aren't you? You have written about

SEN. MOYNIHAN: I'm a student of Martin Lipset, who is a student of the Canadianexperience. But I do say, down here as a member of the Congress, anytime you ask you got something to think about, you always learn something when you say, whatdo they do in Canada?

MR. WATTENBERG: It is sort of a great laboratory, isn't it? I mean, you have acontrolled experiment.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Yes.

MR. WATTENBERG: And you say that that difference stems from political history?

MR. LIPSET: From the Revolution. The United States was the country of therevolution, that made the revolution, Tocqueville's interest. But Canada is thecountry of the counterrevolution. The revolution failed in Canada, the monarchywas preserved, Toryism continued, 50,000 people who were living in what becamethe United States moved up to Canada because they wanted to get away from the newnation. So Canada formed values which were values of continuity, of morehierarchical.

You know, I have what I consider a wonderful story illustrating thesedifferences. About 20, 25 years ago, both the United States and Canada decidedto go metric to get rid of this system of inches and yards and so forth. And youmay not know it, but both of them decided since they're on the same continent todo it at the same time. They both announced, as of a certain date, metric is thelegal system. But since you couldn't do this overnight, they gave people 20years, the country to adjust, each country.

Well, you know, if you go up to Canada, you can see that you can drive 100 anhour, by which they don't mean miles; it's all kilometers. You read the Canadiannewspapers and the temperature's given in Celsius. Here there's been no change. And if you ask me what happened, I'll tell you.

The Canadians were told to go metric by the government and they did. Americanswere told to go metric and they didn't. That is, Canadians are much moredifferential to authority, much they have a lower crime rate. They listen totheir betters, and America doesn't.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Martin, wouldn't you let me phrase it just a little bitdifferently?

MR. LIPSET: Sure.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: The Canadians were told by their government. It's theirgovernment, not somebody else's at all, and it reflects what they think isproper. They make that wonderful phrase about, they will say, 'In the UnitedStates, the West was won. Here in Canada, it was negotiated.'

MR. WATTENBERG: Pat, what you were saying before about this sort of socialdisarray that I know you are very concerned about and most everybody by now isvery concerned about, is that due to this huge amount of freedom we have?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: I would think that; I would think changes in the economy we don'tunderstand. I would first say that in the matter of social policy, Americanexceptionalism is going to be singular in that I think up until now, I thinkyou'd agree, Marty, most of the sort of social issues we've dealt with unemployment, old age and so forth we had European models. They got therefirst, with pensions in Germany and unemployment insurance in Britain. They gotthere almost in the last century. We followed on.

Now we're facing a new set of situations of which there's no Europeancounterpart. The Europeans are getting the problems that began here. We'regoing to have to work them out on our own, and I don't think we will do sosuccessfully if we just take as a model something the Europeans might do whenthey have a different set of social values as regards individual autonomy. We'regoing to have to work this out in terms of our values of the kind that Martydescribed so brilliantly in his book.

MR. WATTENBERG: The conservatives I think would argue that this increase, forexample, in outofwedlock birth was caused not by too much liberty, but by toomuch government, that you set up a welfare net that is so high that it led todependency, which encouraged the ability to have outofwedlock children. You knowthe argument a lot better than I do.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Yeah. Just to speak here in terms of Marty's book, in this inthe 104th Congress, we repealed for the first time a provision of the SocialSecurity Act of 1935, Title IV, the provision for dependent children. ThatSocial Security Act was really an accumulation of examples we had learned inEurope and brought in here very consciously.

Our country repealed it, this nation. If that's not exceptional, I don't knowwhat is. Can you imagine the Canadians saying there's no more provision fordependent children in Canada. There is now none.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well, it went to the states.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: It went to the states, but the federal government said,bipartisan, we're going to stop this. We started it 60 years ago, probably was amistake, probably caused all our problems. I don't think there's any evidencefor that, but there's no disproof, either. But it's something that wouldn'thave happened in Britain or Italy.

MR. WATTENBERG: You know, we complain in this country about government beingtoo large and too intrusive. How does it compare to other nations?

MR. LIPSET: Oh, we have the smallest government in percentage terms. Thedeficit, which people are so concerned about, and I don't like a deficit any morethan anybody else, but our deficit is under 2 percent of the GDP, which is thelowest by far of any developed country. We have the lowest tax rate. Americanscomplain I do, too about their taxes, but taxes in every other developedcountry, with a little bit well, the Japanese are slightly higher, but all thecountries are much higher. They pay much more taxes, there's a biggergovernment, they have a smaller deficit (sic). And so that when we have thiscomplaint that this is going to destroy the economy and so on, one has to ask,how come the economies of Europe or Canada have not been destroyed?

MR. WATTENBERG: Is this argument and this theme being played out in thepresidential election of 1996? I mean, Senator Dole is going around using the'l' word, liberal, by which he means too intrusive government, too biggovernment, social disarray brought about by this kind of liberal permissiveness.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Tocqueville would have taken the word liberal to mean someonewho did not want too much of a state, wanted limited powers and didn't have anyover great confidence in the natural goodness of man so that, as in ourConstitution, you make sure nobody can get too much done or too fast. As you say Marty says it takes three elections for a revolution around here.

MR. WATTENBERG: As Speaker Gingrich found out, you don't do it one twoyearterm, for sure. That's one lesson of what happened.

MR. LIPSET: But you know, in response to your question, I think, you know, thiselection is a continuation of a trend which does flow from these basic values andtraditions. You know, the Depression, which hit the United States harder thanany other country except possibly Germany, resulted in a major change, whichturned out to be temporary, that is, an increase in the role of the government.Hofstadter said we have a social democratic tinge in American life for the firsttime. The war increased it. But then since the war, we've gone through a periodof roughly with all the recessions up and down, of good times, expanding jobmarkets, and so on. And I think this has refurbished the American classictradition, which is this liberal tradition of being opposed to the state, ofwanting small government, small state. And Americans have turned back to this,and I think this is reflected in the fact that the

MR. WATTENBERG: To the oldfashioned liberalism.

MR. LIPSET: Right.

MR. WATTENBERG: Which we would today call what, libertarianism, I guess? !MR. LIPSET: Yeah, right, we call it now libertarian. But this is but you know

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Same Latin root.

MR. LIPSET: Right.

MR. WATTENBERG: Meaning?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Freedom.

MR. LIPSET: Freedom.

MR. WATTENBERG: Back to freedom again.

MR. LIPSET: The Democrats won five elections in a row with Roosevelt andTruman, dominated the Congress, and so on. Since '52, you've had a gradualgrowth in the strength of the Republicans. The high point was '94. But then in'96, President Clinton has joined the ranks. He's moved over to a lot of the you know, he said, 'The era of big government is over.' And by saying this, hebrought the Democratic Party, in a certain sense, back to where it had beenbefore

MR. WATTENBERG: He didn't say that at the Democratic Convention. He said thatin the State of the Union.

MR. LIPSET: In the State of the Union speech, right.

MR. WATTENBERG: Is the world Americanizing? Is that what we're going to see inthe future? By accident or design, we are exporting an ideology, very much thesort of freedomoriented ideology.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: I don't know how long that will last. I think, and I woulddefer to my senior colleague here, I think

MR. WATTENBERG: He was one of the people who hired you at Harvard, is thatcorrect?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: That's right, and that's why I defer to him.

MR. WATTENBERG: I understand that.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: It's an old Tammany principle, and he's my district leader here. And I want you to know, I am loyal.

MR. WATTENBERG: That was quite a group you had up there James Q. Wilson andNathan Glazer.

MR. LIPSET: Well, the committee that recommended Pat was chaired by James Q.Wilson, and a couple of members of it were Nathan Glazer and myself.

MR. WATTENBERG: And you coauthored that wonderful book.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: 'Beyond the Melting Pot' with Nat Glazer.

MR. WATTENBERG: 'Beyond the Melting Pot,' which we

SEN. MOYNIHAN: The Democratic alternative to totalitarianism has been so clearand so desirable that it is now that sort of Wilsonian impulse of ours to say,here, this is the way to behave and to govern yourselves, that is still very muchin evidence. But I don't know whether it will survive the retreat of thetotalitarian threat.

MR. WATTENBERG: But the surge of American popular culture around the world,this global culture. I mean that is, aside from anything military or economic,that seems to be where people want to go.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Yeah, that's more than a half century old. You know, thatstarted with Hollywood.

MR. LIPSET: There's another thing which the rest of the world, or Europe isbecoming American. You know, one of the ways in American exceptionalism has beenreferred to is that we are the only country in the world which has never had amajor significant socialist movement or labor party, whereas all the otherdeveloped countries have had them and they've been very big. The German SocialDemocrats were a major party very early in the game.

Well, if you look around the developed world now, not a single and I don't meanmost, but I've done some research not a single socialist party can be calledsocialist today. Every one of them says you need a market economy. Every one ofthem has been giving up nationalized property if they have nationalized. Everyone of them is in favor of cutting back on welfare or cutting back on the budget,though they start from a much higher point.

Well, you can say that in a certain sense, the United States has not developed asocialist party, which the radicals here and in Europe anticipated, but Europe isdeveloping a democratic party. That is, I'd say what's happening in Europe isthat the European socialist parties are becoming like the American Democrats.

MR. WATTENBERG: And you have written, Marty, that the Republican Party is theonly antistatist party

MR. LIPSET: Major.

MR. WATTENBERG: of the major industrial

MR. LIPSET: Right. It's the only major antistatist party in the industrializedworld. All the other countries, and you see, this is the other side of the coin,all the others are, to some extent or another, welfare stateoriented parties asthe Democratic Party is compared to the Republican Party, though as we saidearlier, the Democrats are now seemingly moving back somewhat to what was oncetheir traditional position.

One forgets today you know, people forget all sorts of things about Americanhistory that in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt, when running against Herbert Hoover,criticized him for favoring big government and for a big deficit.

SEN. MOYNIHAN: Promised to balance the budget.

MR. LIPSET: Right. And the Democrats up to that point were more theantistatist party. The Republicans favored what we now call industrial policy,were more protectionist.

MR. WATTENBERG: Just to wrap this up, Pat, so we've gone in your lifetime froma president who got elected a Democratic president who got elected by promisingto balance the budget to a Democratic president who is seeking to be reelected bysaying, 'The era of big government is over.' So have we sort of come fullcircle?

SEN. MOYNIHAN: There are some continuities, and whatever it is, a candidate forpresident pledges to balance the budget.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right. Thank you, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel PatrickMoynihan.

And thank you. We enjoy hearing from our viewers. Please send your commentsand questions to: New River Media, 1150 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.20036.

For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg.

ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in association withNew River Media, which are solely responsible for its content.

'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient of the Presidential NationalMedal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancer patients through cellular andmolecular biology, improving lives today and bringing hope for tomorrow.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde andHarry Bradley Foundation.

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