AMERICAN NOTES: A Different Fourth

Beyond the rhetoric of Fourth of July speeches, Americans have usually basked in the conviction that their past was exemplary, their present comfortable and their future horizonless. No longer, according to Hopes and Fears of the American People, a new study of the national psyche put out by Potomac Associates, a research and analysis organization.

The results, abstracted from data collected by Gallup pollsters, indicate that Americans in large numbers feel that their country has slid backward during the past five years. Moreover, nearly one in every two Americans regards national tensions as grave enough to “lead to a real breakdown in this country.” There is a spreading lack of faith in both the nation’s leadership and its institutions; only a small minority dismiss the national unrest as “the work of radicals and troublemakers.” A clear majority agrees that the U.S. must end the war in Viet Nam, even at the risk of a Communist takeover.

Particularly striking is a deepening sense of social and political concern. Most Americans view their personal situations as reflecting “overall contentment and assumption of fulfillment of much of the traditional American dream.” Yet, the survey finds, most citizens feel that the nation’s difficulties are rooted in fundamental, systemic causes, and that something needs to be done to cure the larger anomie. There is some comfort in this attitude, the very opposite of narrow I’m-all-right-Jackism.