Beyond left and right

Two conflicting ideals animate American political debate: our rights as individuals and our responsibilities as members of society. From both conservatives and liberals we hear arguments for extremes of unrestrained individualism and suffocating statism. Do we all have the right to behave as we please, or must morality be legislated in the interests of the community? Should we be left on our own to succeed or fail financially, or should government shield us from risk (and control our pocketbooks)? In this penetrating book, A. Lawrence Chickering describes the breakdown in dialogue that underlies the crisis in American politics. Surveying major domestic concerns - economic justice, racial and sexual equality, protection of the environment - Chickering concludes that no effective response to these and other issues is possible until we resolve the larger dilemma of how to reconcile rights and responsibilities, freedom and order.^ Chickering faults both Republicans and Democrats for their preoccupation with the politics of the centralized state. Washington-based politics, he argues, has become hopelessly disputatious, corrupt, and remote from the concerns of America's people. It is "po