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Chapter 2. American Citizens and Political Culture

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Chapter Summary

• U.S. immigrants are citizens or subjects of another country who come here to live and work. To become full citizens, they must undergo naturalization by fulfilling requirements designated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
• In recent years, the influx of illegal immigrants, particularly in the southwestern states, has occupied national debate. Advocates of restrictive immigration policies are concerned that illegal immigrants get away with breaking the law, use social services funded by taxpayers, take jobs that could be filled by Americans, and threaten internal security by providing a path for terrorists to enter the country. Advocates of less restrictive measures argue that illegal immigrants fill many jobs Americans do not wish to do at low wages, pay taxes, and are too numerous to be all removed from the country. Attempts by the president and Congress to reconcile these differences have so far failed.
• Americans share common values and beliefs about how the world should work that allow us to be a nation despite our diversity.
• The American political culture is described as both procedural and individualistic. Because we focus more on fair rules than on the outcomes of those rules, our culture has a procedural nature. In addition, our individualistic nature means that we assume that individuals know what is best for them and that individuals, not government or society, are responsible for their own well-being.
• Belief in democracy, freedom, and equality are three core American values. Generally, Americans acknowledge democracy as the most appropriate way to make public decisions. We value freedom for the individual from government restraint, and we value equality of opportunity rather than equality of result.
• While the range of ideological debate is fairly narrow in America when compared to other countries, there exists an ideological division among economic liberals, social liberals, economic conservatives, and social conservatives based largely on attitudes towards government control of the economy and of the social order.
• America's growing political apathy is well documented. Yet despite abysmal voting rates, the country continues to function, a fact that may be explained by several theories. However, many people claim that such apathy may indeed signal a crisis of democracy.

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should understand

• our roots as immigrants and the role of immigration in American politics
• demographic trends that help us see what Americans are like in terms of crucial variables like age, race, income level, and education, and the ways these trends affect American political life
• American political beliefs-those that pull us together as a nation and those that drive us into partisan divisions