Comment on the text Seymour Martin Lipset - American exceptionalism: A Double-edged Sword

Résumé du document

The USA is today at the first ranks in terms of wealth, military power, technology, science and has a strong influence all over the world. One speaks of the American Way of Life to refer to the way the Americans live and also to the fact that this way of life is adopted in other areas of the World. This is conveyed through the TV shows or the Hollywood productions but also by the multinational companies such as McDonald's. This domination dates back to the beginning of the 20th century and especially became true after World War I when the former European leading powers, France, Britain and Germany, were in ruins and had to recover. In this text which is an exerpt from American Exceptionalism, Lispet organizes a demonstration, in three points. He aims at pointing at the fact that the USA is not just a transplantation of the British model in another place of the world but that it is a real new country with its own specificities. In order to achieve his demonstration, Lipset first talks about the historical context of the birth of the USA in order to show that unlike other countries the USA is built on a creed and not on a territory .

Extraits

[...] The Americans did not want that. They did not want a hierarchy, especially in religious matter and this is once again related to the protestant background. The Tories in Britain were in favour of a strong state and to protectionnism, at least at the time of the American Revolution. All this enables Lipset to conclude that the ideology that existed in the minds of the revolutionaries was opposed to these ideas, that is it was opposed to statism, to state domination and to all kinds of superior authority. [...]

[...] Once again the references to noblesse oblige and to Tory are not accidental. They refer to Britain and Lipset continues his implicit comparison between the USA and Britain. America expresses in fact what the first puritan settlers felt and what they wanted to do while in Britain and what they were prevented from doing. The context of the birth of the American nation is thus of paramount importance in order to understand the political spectrum today. This was already present in Tocqueville in De la Démocratie en Amérique when he wrote" les peuples se ressentent toujours de leur origine. [...]

[...] America has its own conception of the nation, a particular origin and consequently a specific political landscape and this was the points Lipset wanted to illustrate in this text. America is not simply a bigger and richer Britain. [...]

[...] In this text Seymoour Martin Lipset realizes a real demonstration while trying to define the American creed. After having explained the importance of the American Revolution, which is already mentionned in the first line, and characterised Americanism as a creed, he then compares two different visions of nation and of nationality. Being American is totally different from being British and this has important consequences in the American political culture. One choose to be American although being British is a question of birth, of blood. [...]

[...] It is not so far from what Lipset tells avout the American nation. However, it enables him to attain the last part of the demonstration he wants to realize. In the second part of the text Lipset uses the definitions he established in the first paragraph in order to show that American exceptionalism also exists in terms of nationality. The American nation is based on an idea and not on a common history. However, one can point out the fact that the common history the settlers built and experienced , the Revolution for instance, were very important in the unity and the reinforcement of the nation. [...]