The Individual in American Society

The central argument today seems to be between those who believe the community is the most important operator in our society and those who believe it is the individual.

These natural poles then take on an extremist clarity. The individual must have complete libertè in himself, must in all cases be allowed to do what he wants, no matter how detrimental to himself, his family, or his community. It's the old slippery slope argument: if we let one bit of infringement on liberty occur, then the individual will vanish, crushed under the jackboot of a police state.

On the other hand, the opponents of this extreme conception of liberty insist that equalitè and fraternitè must trump liberté, or else the bonds of community will be forever broken. And, then that same slippery slope appears, dictating that if any rights of liberty are permitted, then the community of men will perish in the flames of apocalyptic nihilism.

What is America? Are we a community or are we individuals? And if we are not solely either, then how might these two coexist without destroying each other?

The answer is that America is a community and Americans are individuals, and these two are brought together in a historically unique way: we are a nation of individuals who band together in voluntary associations. These “little communities” are myriad and extend from the smallest neighborhood coffee clash to the Senate of the United States. They are usually in some form of vague hierarchy, which in many cases corresponds to the size of the geographical area they encompass, but American associations tend towards the eccentric too.

Not eccentric in the sense of odd-ball, like The Wiccan Practitioners of Tattoo Removal might be, who practice painful repentance from their youthful attempts at self-esteem and get together for pot luck dinners every 2nd Tuesday of the month. But eccentric in the sense that such little communities do not gain their primary sense of value from a relationship with a larger ethic or cause. A garden club, weekend golf group, bird watchers, Elks Lodge, Cancer Awareness Group, Church social, Bible study group, Fantasy Football League, motorcycle club, book club, and various and sundry other temporary or permanent associations might have tangential relations to some larger ethic or culture, but at base are personal and local in nature. It is the association with others per se which is the value, not its movement within a wider context.

In this way, American society moves up and down, but also forward, backward and sideways, from the personal to the public and back again, in myriad streams of constantly shifting alliances, allegiances and common interests between family, friends and acquaintances, each association forming one part of the total life of the individuals involved.

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All of this might be called the "civil society" of America. Burke expressed a similar notion of social structures such as family and church being mediating institutions in society However, the American notion of civil society goes beyond Burke in that his social institutions were in service (at least in a certain sense) to the State, but American civil society is not. The uniquely American view, or better yet, insight, is that both the Burkean mediating institutions and the State are (or ought to be) themselves voluntary associations within this wider conception of individual freedom, and are more properly subordinate thereto. In other words, both mediating institutions and the government derive their essential function and vitality from this larger life of the culture, not the reverse.

It is important, then, to remember that when we talk of the individual in American society we are not talking about an isolated Liebnizian monad, which might collide with but never touch others. We are, or should be, talking about the person who is exercising his innate and God-given freedom to associate and cooperate with others. In doing so, he forms a concrete life that is neither purely individual nor purely communal, but a fusion of the best of both.