American Political Culture

A good two hundred years ago, the Framers of the Constitution devised a representative democratic system to govern the United States. This system was based on a number of underlying concepts and distinguishing characteristics that could possibly conflict with one another from time to time.
Broken down, political culture is the shared beliefs and core values of the human population about how government should operate. For example, American political culture is the value of personal liberty, equality, popular consent and majority rule, popular sovereignty, civil society, and individualism. These six characteristics of the U.S. democracy are the basic concepts that were written into the Constitution. As stated by Dennis Kavanagh, political culture is, “a shorthand expression to denote the set of values with which the political system operates.” Or, in other terms, how we think our government should be carried out.
There are six main characteristics In the American political culture. One of these six is personal liberty, which, in my opinion, is one of the most important. Once again, the system of American political culture can be defined as commonly shared beliefs and core values about how government should operate. Personal liberty is emphasized by many different things. To state an example, the guaranty of life and liberty was written in The Constitution. Also, The Framers wanted Americans to have freedom of religion and speech, as well as freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Personal liberty is emphasized in American political culture not only by the expansion of Americans’ concept of liberty to include demands for freedom, but also by debates being carried out over how much the government should do to guarantee these rights. The concept of equality is also an important characteristic of American Political Culture. Equality can be defined as the state or quality of being equal; correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank, or ability. This characteristic is emphasized in American Political Culture because it reflects Americans’ stress no the importance of the individual. However, clearly some individuals have more political say than others, the expression “on person, one vote” implies a sense of political equality for all. A third characteristic of American political culture is individualism. Individualism holds that the primary function of government is to enable the individual to achieve his or her highest level of development. It is emphasized in American political culture because it stands for individual liberty. Also individualism indicates the belief in primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence. Not only does individualism have an influence on the population, but it has major influences on American political culture. “All individuals are deemed rational and fair,” stated Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence “with certain unalienable rights.” So basically, if we were to assume that the entire population is indeed fair, wouldn’t individualism be a good thing? People adequately living amongst themselves with no government intervention? This, however, is not the case. People may think they want no government, but when certain major events occur, the realization of how much they acutely need it, also occurs.
Individualism has had an influence on the American government from the start of our nation. During the formation of the United States, many of her citizens fled from religious or state oppression in Europe. These refugees were influenced by the egalitarian and the fraternal ideas that later found expression in the French Revolution. Later, these ideas influenced the Framers of the Constitution who believed government should seek to protect individual rights, which then led to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights. A second example of how individualism has had an influence was when the demands for government services increased as many individuals realized they could no longer exist independently of others. This occurred when the rugged individualism of the western frontier was altered as more and more citizens moved westward. Even from the beginning, individualism has emphasized our nation, and what is today American political culture, good or bad.
As seen by many examples discussed above, American political culture has a wide variety of meaning. From personal liberty, all the way to individualism, the six characteristics of American political culture define our nation. Looking at all the information, you can clearly see that America is indeed not a perfect nation, but it’s darn good. If the issue were could it be better, the answer is simple -- yes. But based on the liberties and freedoms the American political culture has installed for us, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.