ABSTRACT
In his luminous essay “In Search of a New Public Philosophy,” which opened the first version of The New American Political System, Samuel Beer asked what had replaced the New Deal as a broadly acceptable doctrine that both guided the definition of problems of economic inequality and indicated where through action by the federal government a solution might be found. 1 Turning to the Port Huron statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, Beer noted the advocacy of “self-cultivation, self-direction” in “a participatory democracy” designed to bring people “out of isolation into community. 2 Here, in the 1960s, the combination of individualism (the self that was to do its own directing and cultivating) and collectivism (the bringing out of individuals from isolation into community) was made manifest. How, if this bid for a public philosophy were accepted, we may ask, could self-direction (the isolated individual) be joined together with group direction (the participatory community)? This chapter traces the influence on the broader political system of the egalitarian political culture that attempts this very task.
