Character in the American Experience: An Unruly People(Political Theory for Today)

What is an American? Bruce P. Frohnen and Ted V. McAllister argue that we are, in fact, a distinct people with our own common character that transcends race, gender, ethnicity, and class. They find in our current political conflicts a crisis of identity that stems from changes, not just in our political, economic, and technological environment, but in our ability to evaluate—and to value—the personalities that shaped our way of life. The history of the American character is filled with triumph as well as tragedy, and with virtue as well as vice. It is a story of cooperation and conflict among an unruly people, who from earliest days questioned authority even as they worked to establish communities of faith, family, and local freedom under extreme circumstances.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Self, Character, and People Chapter 1: Unruly Pilgrims Chapter 2: The Roots of American Culture Chapter 3: Slavery Chapter 4: A Plural Nation: American Liberties and the Birth of a People Chapter 5: Conflict, Law, and Revolution Chapter 6: The Constitutional Conversation Chapter 7: Cane Ridge and the New Protestant Consensus Chapter 8: “The Democracy” and Its Limits Chapter 9: Changing Circumstances, Abiding Character Chapter 10: American Women and the Power of Self-Sacrifice Chapter 11: Civil War: The Deals that Failed Chapter 12: Aftermath: Salvaging the Deal, or Replacing It? Chapter 13: The West Chapter 14: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day, but Oklahoma City Was Chapter 15: The Pursuit of Consolidation Chapter 16: Wall Street vs. Main Street: The Early Years. Or, from Populism to Progressivism Chapter 17: A Generation of Change Chapter 18: A Changed Generation Chapter 19: Civil Rights and the Anti-Discrimination State Chapter 20: Radical Origins and Ideals Chapter 21: Conflict

About the Author :
Bruce P. Frohnen is professor of Law at the Ohio Northern University College of Law and Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Ted V. McAllister is the Edward L. Gaylord Chair and professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

Review :
In Character in the American Experience: An Unruly People, Frohnen and McAllister plumb the American past to uncover the dispositions, habits, folkways, and institutions that have bound a people characterized by intense cultural, regional, and local differences. The burden of this remarkably readable and jargon free book is to disclose the unique ways such a diverse country have learned to cooperate and agree on matters of vital public interest and to disagree without rancor and division when consensus was unavoidable. For all those concerned about the forces dividing the country, and the means for containing those forces, this book is an essential must read. In this bold and timely book, Frohnen and McAllister have revived the idea that the study of the American past can be a profoundly moral undertaking, offering us clues to sources of our current dilemmas, and gesturing toward the recovery of our troubled national soul. By emphasizing character, and its essential role in the life of a free people, the authors have advanced a very unfashionable position. But so much the worse for fashion, especially when it stands in the way of the truth. This book show by example how historians can help us recover what we are losing, before it is too late. Character in the American Experience is worth reading to reacquaint Americans with both the national and local stories we tell ourselves. In this age of media fragmentation and scholarly specialization, this book is a welcome antidote in narrating the story of our country from its founding to today. What we discover is that we always have been an unruly people, from the very beginning. It is a fact that gives us hope that our current disagreements and fights are not signs of our democracy’s weakness but its enduring strength. This book builds on David Hackett Fischer’s seminal history of the British folkways that underpin modern American culture, Albion’s Seed. These “deeper historical currents” take precedence over changing demographics and shifting political attitudes in determining a nation’s culture. The book shows how America’s original settlers had vastly more power than immigrants in shaping America, from its common English language to its British legal system and Protestant religion. Protestantism came in several flavors, so Americans valued tolerance as “a practical necessity rather than an imposed ideal.”….How do we recreate a functional country when ours is no longer bound by custom, language, or religion? The authors hope for a “self-respecting, honorable, and self-governing people” who can “begin anew.” Good luck, America.