American democracy revolves around two central visions: equality and unity. When Americans have pursued these ideals in moderation and balance, they have flourished. But because equality and unity exist as ideals, they can be striven for but never achieved completely. Further, they can be abused by zealous followers. In the years after World Ward II, the governing elite of the time—an elite of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and traditionalist men—let the unity ideal corrode into McCarthyism. In the 1950s, a reformist elite sprang up to check the abuses of the anti-subversives, and with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 this elite came into control of the Executive Branch for the first time. The Liberal elite is multicultural and has egalitarianism as its defining vision. The various Clinton administration misdeeds, and the acquiescence of Liberals to them, demonstrated that, no less than the Traditionalists before them, Liberals could also befoul federal power.
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John B. Parrott is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science, Kutztown University, Pennsylvania.
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