This companion to Chapter 6 (Communitarian Individualism) explores how America’s long tradition of physical and social mobility served as the engine of its unique ideological synthesis: liberty in motion, constrained by voluntary obligation. Drawing on historical data, cultural memory, and contemporary signals—from Nomadland to declining driver’s license rates—it argues that as Americans stop moving, they lose not just opportunity but identity. When mobility fades, so too doe

The American Ideology is not a fixed doctrine, but a system of tensions—between liberty and equality, and between national authority and democratic participation. Our founding documents institutionalize these tensions, giving the United States a moral and political order that is deliberately calibrated, not perfectly resolved. Understanding these axes is the key to understanding America itself.

Why have the institutions most central to American political life—the Democratic and Republican parties—functioned for so long without the anchoring force of ideology? Perhaps it’s because the parties already had an ideology at their disposal—one they didn’t invent, but inherited.

What is ideology? This post traces its origin from Enlightenment optimism to modern misuse, and argues why understanding it is vital to American survival...

Reader Guide: What Is Ideology? Origins, Misuse, and American Application

I have been worried about the health of the American Ideology since the topic itself captured my imagination thirty years ago.