A Symposium on American National Character

Abstract

The articles in this symposium address four themes in relation to the question of American national character: citizenship (Rogers M. Smith), community mores (Rick Santorum), participation (W. B. Allen), and governance (Philip A. Wallach). They are the beginning of our effort to investigate, assess, articulate, and perhaps claim—or reclaim—an ethos shared by the American people. Emerging out of the first phase of our American National Character project, they are far from exhausting the subject but represent an auspicious commencement of a contemporary effort no less important that that described by Washington during the founding era. “[W]e are either a United people, or we are not.” Let us hope that we are and that we can rediscover the roots of America's common cause and act as a nation.