We welcome the opportunity to respond to Professor Lipset's comments on our article. While his new book was unavailable until just prior to the publication of our article,' we were sufficiently aware of the arguments raised in this new work, especially since they are fundamentally unaltered from his previous writings; hence, we were not disadvantaged by not having had earlier access to the book. We find very little in Professor Lipset's commentary that alters our assessment of his earlier writings. Indeed, his commentary itself underscores several of the weaknesses we perceive in his general work on this issue. We think that Lipset's response to our article reveals a 'save the hypothesis' attitude and fails to consider that new empirical findings or theoretical criticisms might provide the occasion for rethinking the whole problem of national differences. In criticizing our empirical findings, Lipset subverts his own thesis. After first citing survey results that apparently support the thesis, he summarily dismisses survey data on the grounds that cross-national attitude comparisons are hazardous, because of contextual and methodological difficulties. Now, it is not for us to deny Lipset this recourse, but it means that the most compelling empirical evidence in support of his interpretation is thereby disqualified.2 A key point in Lipset's reply is that what we have called inconsistencies and contradictions in his argument are really observations about social change. For example, he agrees in his comment that some of the cross-national differences he once alleged have now reversed direction, specifically in such areas as trade unionism, gender equality, and moral liberalism/conservatism. Astoundingly, he rejects the idea that structural and cultural changes call his central thesis into question. What can it mean to admit that the differences between Americans and Canadians have now disappeared, or even reversed, in various areas of culture and values, but to maintain nonetheless that there has been no consistent decline in the patterns of differences in behavior and values (1986:146), that the countries are still best viewed as like two trains running on parallel railway tracks (1990:212)?