Does communitarianism require individual independence?

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 4, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 283-304

  Cohen, Andrew Jason ^a  

^a Madison University MSC 7504   (United States)

Author keywords

Autonomy; Communitarianism; Communitarians; Community; Individual independence; Individuals; Inner citadel; Liberalism; Social constitution

Indexed keywords

EID: 11344256669     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1009869922259     Document Type: Article

References (151)

1. This paragraph is adapted from my "Communitarianism, 'Social Constitution,' and Autonomy," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (1999), p. 122.
2. Other communitarian writings include: D. Bell, Communitarianism and Its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
3. M. A. Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Free Press, 1991)
4. W. Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)
5. M. Walzer, "Liberalism and the Art of Separation," Political Theory 12 (1984), pp. 315-330
6. and M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983). Walzer's and Glendon's positions are, at times, closer to the liberal position than the three thinkers I consider here. Sullivan's are closer to those three thinkers, but I will not consider his work here. Bell's position is perhaps more stringently communitarian in the sense of that term I use here than any of those discussed here, but it also invokes problems Taylor, Maclntyre, and Sandel try to sidestep.
7. M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 150
8. see also M. Sandel, "Moral Argument and Liberal Toleration: Abortion and Homosexuality," in A. Etzioni (ed.), New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and Communities (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), pp. 71-87
9. [originally: California Law Review 77 (1989), pp. 521-538]
10. and M. Sandel, "Political Liberalism," The Harvard Law Review 107 (1994), pp. 1765-1794.
11. A. Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 98.
12. see also A. Maclntyre, "Critical Remarks on The Sources of the Selfby Charles Taylor," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994), pp. 187-190
13. A. Maclntyre, "A Partial Response to my Critics," in J. Horton and S. Mendus (eds.), After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work ofAlasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 283-304
14. A. MacIntyre, "Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1992), pp. 3-19
15. A. Maclntyre, "Moral Philosophy: What Next?" in S. Hauerwas and A. MacIntyre (eds.), Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 1-15
16. A. Maclntyre, "The Magic in the Pronoun 'My'," Ethics 94 (1983), pp. 113-125;
17. A. Maclntyre, "Moral Rationality, Tradition, and Aristotle: a Reply to Onora O'Neill, Raymond Gaita, and Stephen R. L. Clark," Inquiry 26 (1983), pp. 447-466
18. A. MacIntyre, "How Moral Agents Became Ghosts or Why the History of Ethics Diverged From That of the Philosophy of Mind," Synthese 53 (1982), pp. 295-312.
19. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p 35;
20. see also: C. Taylor, "Precis of Sources of the Self" Philosophy and Phenomeno- logical Research 54 (1994), pp. 185-186
21. C. Taylor, "Reply to Commentators," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994), pp. 203-213
22. C. Taylor, "Can Liberalism be Communitarian?" Critical Review 8 (1994), pp. 257-262
23. C. Taylor, "Justice After Virtue," in J. Horton and S. Mendus (eds.), After MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work ofAlasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 16-43
24. C. Taylor, "Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate," in N. Rosenblum (ed), Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 159-182
25. C. Taylor, "The Significance of Significance: the Case for Cognitive Psychology," in S. Mitchell and M. Rosen (eds.), The Need for Interpretation: Contemporary Conceptions of the Philosopher's Task (New Jersey: The Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 141-169
26. C. Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975);
27. and C. Taylor et al. Multi- culturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
28. For a more extensive exploration of the social constitution thesis, see my "Communitarianism, 'Social Constitution,' and Autonomy."
29. For a good introductory exposition of Amitai Etzioni's view, see his "A Moderate Communitarian Proposal," Political Theory 24 (1996), pp. 155-171.
30. where he talks of "the admittedly more complex concept of a self congenitally contextuated within a community" such that individuals have an "uncommunitized" part and a "communitized" part that should both be maintained in "a balanced, responsive community" (pp. 157-158)
31. and where he recognizes that the "state's role ⋯is as a lastresort" (p. 160). On such a view, "communities are free to follow whatever value consensus they achieve but only as long as it does not violate a particular set of overarching values" (p. 163). So long as those overarching values include some notion of individual rights (or their equivalent), no liberal should have a problem with this. Also see his The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996) and two of his edited volumes, The Essential Communitarian Reader (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998) and New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and Communities.
32. For liberal responses to the communitarian critique, see: A. Buchanan, "Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism," Ethics 99 (1989), pp. 852-882
33. S. Caney, "Liberalisms and Communitarians: A Reply," Political Studies 41 (1993), pp. 657-660
34. S. Caney, "Liberalism and Communitarianism: A Misconceived Debate," Political Studies 40 (1992), pp. 273-289
35. S. Caney, "Rawls, Sandel, and the Self," International Journal of Moral and Social Studies (1991), pp. 161-171
36. A. J. Cohen, "A Defense of Strong Voluntarism," American Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1998), pp. 251-265
37. D. Conway, Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 65-100)
38. A. Gutmann, "Communitarian Critics of Liberalism," Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985), pp. 308-322
39. S. Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994);
40. C. Kukathas, "Liberalism, Communitarianism, and Political Community," Social Philosophy and Policy 13 (1996), pp. 80-104
41. C. Kukathas, "Against the Communitarian Republic," Australian Quarterly 68 (1996), pp. 67-76
42. W. Kymlicka, "Communitarianism, Liberalism, and Superliberalism, " Critical Review 8 (1994), pp. 263-284
43. W. Kymlicka, "Liberalism and Communitarianism," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1988), pp. 181-203
44. M. Moore, Foundations of Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
45. M. Moore, "Justice for Our Times," Canadian Journal of Political Science, 23 (1990), pp. 459-482
46. and J. Paul, and F. D. Miller, Jr. "Communitarian and Liberal Theories of the Good," Review of Metaphysics 43 (1990), pp. 803-830.
47. For overviews ofthe debate between liberals and communitarians, see S. Gardbaum, "Law, Politics, and the Claims of Community," Michigan Law Review 90 (1992), pp. 685-760;
48. P. Neal, and D. Paris, "Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique: A Guide for the Perplexed," Canadian Journal of Political Science 23 (1990), pp. 419-439;
49. and especially S. Mulhall, and A. Swift, Liberals and Communitarians, second edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992).
50. For feminist perspectives on the debate, see E. Fraser, and N. Lacey, The Politics of Community: A Feminist Critique of the Liberal-Communitarian Debate (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993);
51. S. Hekman, "The Embodiment of the Subject: Feminism and the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism," Journal of Politics 54 (1992), pp. 1098-1119;
52. and S. M. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
53. For discussions related to the conception of the self in the debate, R. Beiner, "Revising the Self," Critical Review 8 (1994), pp. 247-256
54. A. L. Carse, "The Liberal Individual: A Metaphysical or Moral Embarrassment?," Nous 28 (1994), pp. 184-209
55. J. B. Elsh- tain, "The Communitarian Individual," in A. Etzioni (ed.) New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and Communities, pp. 99-109
56. M. Mosher, "Boundary Revi-sions: The Deconstruction of Moral Personality in Rawls, Nozick, Sandel and Parfit," Political Studies 39 (1991), pp. 287-303
57. D. Ortiz, "Saving the Self," Michigan Law Review 91 (1993), pp. 1018-1022.
58. A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, second edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 220.
59. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 179.
60. See, for example, C. Taylor, "Hegel: History and Politics," in M. Sandel (ed.) Liberalism and Its Critics (New York: New York University Press, 1984) pp. 177-199, esp. p. 182
61. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, pp. 25-52.
62. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 250;
63. see also R. Scruton, The Philosopher on Dover Beach: Essays (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), pp. 302, 308, and 326.
64. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 251.
65. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 193.
66. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 414.
67. C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 117.
68. For an argument against such claims, see A. J. Cohen, "Liberalism, Communitarianism, and Asocialism," The Journal of Value Inquiry 2000 (forthcoming)
69. For related discussions, see Neal and Paris, "Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique: A Guide for the Perplexed," pp. 421-425
70. J. Friedman, "The Politics of Communitarianism," Critical Review 8 (1994), pp. 297-340, esp. pp. 313 and 318-319.
71. Much as Thomas Hobbes takes as a premise of his argument the claim that we all want safety and John Locke takes as a premise the claim that we want a known, settled law and an indifferent judge to settle disputes.
72. Some argue that the normative project is the primary concern of communitarianism. See, for e.g., A. Honneth, "The Limits of Liberalism: On the Political-Ethical Discussion on Communitarianism," Thesis Eleven 28 (1991), pp. 18-34, esp. p. 19
73. W. Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 256. I argue against the communitarian normative project elsewhere (see my "Liberalism, Communitarianism, and Asocialism," and my "Liberalism and Communitarianism on Anomie and Self-Respect," ms.).
74. I. Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 118-172, esp. p. 132 (essay originally published in 1958).
75. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 238.
76. For arguments against communitarian romantic views of history, see C. Harvey, "Paradise Well Lost: Communitarian Nostalgia and the Lonely Logic of the Liberal Self," Philosophy in the Contemporary World 1 (1994), pp. 9-14, esp. pp. 10-12
77. R. Howard, "Cultural Absolutism and the Nostalgia for Community," Human Rights Quarterly 15 (1993), pp. 315-338
78. J. B. Schneewind, "Moral Crisis and the History of Ethics," Midwest Studies in Philosophy Volume VIII: Contemporary Perspectives on the History of Philos- ophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 525-539
79. and especially, D. Philips, Looking Backward: A Critical Appraisal of Communitarian Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
80. Philips provides the lengthiest and most historically informed discussion, looking at early America (pp. 24-80).
81. medieval Europe (pp. 81-121), and ancient Greece (pp. 122-148). He provides a good distillation of his analysis on pp. 149-156.
82. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 251.
83. Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism, pp. 90-91
84. I take Aristotle's position to be both stronger than MacIntyre's and Taylor's and more amenable to liberalism. For a reading of Aristotle conducive to my own view, see F. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
85. see also C. Rapp, "Was Aristotle a Communitarian?" Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17 (1994), pp. 333-349.
86. Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism, p. 106.
87. C. Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985b), p. 206, italics added.
88. C. Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 86.
89. Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences, p. 206;
90. see also his Sources of the Self, pp. 25-52.
91. At one point Taylor seems to recognize this tension. He tells us that "an articulation can be wrong, and yet it shapes what it is wrong about" (C. Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 38
92. see also Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pp. 11-12. One might try to argue, in this way, that although liberalism misdescribes our society, that very misdescription has contributed to the current make-up of society, so that it would not be surprising if it displayed individualist aspects. This, though, is to admit that it now (at least partially) accurately describes us. The same can be said of Sandel: "In our public life, we are more entangled but less attached than ever before. It is as though the unencumbered self presupposed by the liberal ethic had begun to become true" (M. Sandel, "The Political Theory of the Procedural Republic," in R. Reich (ed.), The Power of Public Ideas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 109-121, here p. 120).
93. Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Science, pp. 105, 287, and 311.
94. In my "Communitarianism, 'Social Constitution,' and Autonomy," I call this the "genetic particular social constitution" thesis.
95. M. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," Political Theory 12 (1984), pp. 81-96, here 83.
96. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pp. 179 and 181.
97. M. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 13.
98. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent, p. 203.
99. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," 87;
100. see also Democracy's Discontent, pp. 262 and 205.
101. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,p.65.
102. See, for example, S. Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
103. and N. Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991).
104. This is largely undefended in Sandel's earlier work. In "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," for example, he claims that the unencumbered self cannot be a member of a constitutive community (see p. 87). This makes sense, but even with the assumption that we are unencumbered (or, at least, see ourselves as such), only leads to the conclusion that constitutive communities cannot survive, not that civil society cannot survive. His argument in Democracy's Discontent, however, is somewhat different. There he seems to claim less that liberalism presents a portrait of the self that is ultimately untenable, and more that a liberal political order itself is untenable because of the vision of the self it requires (see, for example, p. 262). Although both aspects are present throughout his work, their importance and prevalence in his thinking seems to have been reversed.
105. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," pp. 92 and 94.
106. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent, pp. 24 and 323.
107. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 150.
108. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p.220
109. See MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, pp. 179-180
110. and A. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), p. 127
111. (esp. pp. 145-148) and pp. 201-202. For injustice as disobedience to authority, see Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 157.
112. This is implicit throughout his discussions of strong evaluation and personhood. For an interesting statement on these matters, see C. Taylor, "Replies," in J. Tully (ed.), Philosophy in the Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 213-257
113. the relevant pages here are pp. 249-253. Both Kymlicka and Weinstock (to whom the just-mentioned pages reply) argue that liberalism provides better for self-respect and strong-evaluation than communitarianism does. See D. M. Weinstock, "The Political Theory of Strong Evaluation," in J. Tully (ed.) Philosophy in the Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question, pp. 171-193.
114. See also O. Flanagan, "Identity and Strong and Weak Evaluation," in O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (eds.), Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 37-65.
115. This indicates a third reason to suspect that communitarianism relies on an independent aspect of persons. "Human beings, like the members of all other species, have a specific nature; and that nature is such that they have certain aims and goals, such that they move by nature towards a specific telos" (MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 148, first italics added). His invocation of the Aristotelian concept of telos and the "specific nature" that has the telos as its goal pervades MacIntyre's work (see also Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 130 and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 66). When discussing the Aristotelianism he favors, he notes that: "Within that teleological scheme there is a fundamental contrast between man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-as-he-could-be-if-he- realized-his-essential- nature" (After Virtue: Second Edition, p. 52). This "essential nature" talk sounds decidedly divine - and not social - in origin [but see W. Lund, "Communitarian Politics and the Problem of Equality," Political Research Quarterly 46 (1993), pp. 577-600, esp. pp. 583-584].
116. See footnote 19.
117. Again, see footnote 19.
118. This paragraph owes much to Kymlicka's discussion in "Liberalism and Communi- tarianism," p. 193. Again, for related discussions, see Friedman, "The Politics of Communitarianism," pp. 303, 308, 312-313 and 317
119. Neal and Paris, "Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique: A Guide for the Perplexed," pp. 343-349
120. R. Beiner, What's theMatter with Liberalism? (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1990), p. 31.
121. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 213;
122. see also Walzer, "Liberalism and the Art of Separation," p. 324.
123. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 216; MacIntyre's discussion of"characters" early in After Virtue supports the argument from description. He uses "character" as a technical term to refer to cases where "role and personality fuse in a more specific way than general; in the case of a character the possibilities of action are defined in a more limited way than in general. . . . characters merge what usually is thought to belong to the individual man or woman and what is usually thought to belong to social roles." He claims that "One of the key differences between cultures is in the extent to which roles are characters" (p. 28). It would seem that characters are the ultimate communitarian persons: their entire way of being is nothing other than what society determines their roles to be. Interestingly, he recognizes that this varies between cultures. Moreover, he is careful to recognize that any individual who is supposedly nothing other than his roles may in fact be at odds with those roles (on p. 29, he talks of an ordained priest who goes through the ministerial motions but whose own beliefs are not in line with those of the church). If one can be at odds with one's roles, one is not one's roles.
124. H. Haste, "Communitarianism and the Social Construction of Morality," Journal of Moral Education 25 (1996), pp. 47-55, here 51.
125. For whether this ability is necessary for persons in Taylor's account, see Weinstock, "The Political Theory of Strong Evaluation," pp. 174-176;
126. Taylor, "Replies," p. 249.
127. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 215.
128. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 221.
129. Recall MacIntyre's endorsement of what he sees in "ancient and medieval worlds, as in many other premodern societies": "the individual is identified and constituted in and through certain of his roles, those roles which bind the individual to the communities in and through which alone specifically human goods are to be attained; I confront the world as a member of this family, this household, this clan, this tribe, this city, this nation, this kingdom. There is no 'I' apart from these." Social ties "constitute the given of my life" (MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 172 and 220).
130. For his explicit statement against determinism, see A. MacIntyre, "Determinism," Mind 66(261) (1957), pp. 28-41.
131. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 31.
132. In my "Communitarianism, 'Social Constitution,' and Autonomy," "Communi- tarianism, 'Social Constitution,' and Autonomy," I call this the "sustaining general social constitution" thesis. See also Miller's discussion, in Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics, of the "natural priority of the polis" (pp. 45-56).
133. particularly the "completeness interpretation" (pp. 50-53).
134. To fit it into MacIntyre's talk of "narratives," "characters," and "roles," I would call this "role-determinism." In this sort of determinism, one's actions are determined by one's roles where these are in turn determined by one's narratives. Indeed, MacIntyre may accept this, claiming that it "obliterates" the distinction between rational (and hence "free") action and determined action. See MacIntyre, "Determinism," pp. 40 and 35.
135. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 152.
136. See Kymlicka, "Liberalism and Communitarianism," especially pp. 182-185
137. W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), especially pp. 15-19 and 47-52. In brief, Kymlicka argues that (1) certain paradigmatic liberals did not hold such a view and (2) such a view is absurd, so to attribute it to anyone who doesn't explicitly state it is too uncharitable. The view is absurd as it leads to the conclusion that if I keep choosing I am made better off - even if my choices "undo" each other.
138. Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society,p.87.
139. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 39.
140. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 32.
141. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 35.
142. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 37.
143. As with MacIntyre, there is a way out for Taylor, but it leads to the same conclusions we were led to with reference to MacIntyre: either the communitarian accepts role-determinism or he allows for independence of individuals. The argument would run parallel, substituting "discursive web" for "narrative."
144. This paragraph borrows from my "Communitarianism, 'Social Constitution,' and Autonomy," σV.
145. This requires that she leave all community; if she simply leaves one community for another, she can have her personhood retained. It is not the case that her personhood would necessarily be fundamentally altered by changing communities - it may be that both communities sustain personhood in the same way.
146. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 173
147. and Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, p. 33.
148. One commentator writes: "communitarians ⋯seem to have no politics" (Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalis, p. 9).
149. Indeed, MacIntyre has said "I give my political loyalty to no program" [in G. Borradori, The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rortty, Cavell, Maclntyre, and Kuhn, tr. R. Crocitto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 151].
150. This is not to say that a more full-bodied agenda is not complicated. Indeed, communitarianism has been used to argue for various political actions - some of which are mutually contradictory. For example, while Taylor and Sandel have argued (see Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, pp. 112-118
151. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," pp. 91-95) for decentralization of power (!) so as to make smaller governing bodies which people can identify with, others use communitarianism to argue for a more powerful central government. United States President Bill Clinton, for example, appealed to community to justify nationalizing health care. So too, in an appearance on the MacNeil-Lehrer News- hour (11/15/94), Richard Rodriguez encouraged Americans to identify themselves with the nation rather than seeing themselves as atomistic entities. Like Taylor, he believes that liberal individualism is the cause of social problems. Unlike Taylor but like Clinton, he believes we can identify with the nation as a whole to combat those problems.