One Man's Consensus

...These include the sometimes controversial practices of private employers and public agencies, especially schools and taxing authorities, not to mention local issues involving civil liberties...

...The absence of this information leaves Wolfe's results vague...

...To begin with, Wolfe puts so much emphasis on the value consensus he discovered that he sometimes writes as if those he studied represent the entire American middle class—and that it, in turn, speaks for the whole country...

...The methods of both produce impressive majorities who want to help the poor, even as they support welfare reform and other punitive measures that are making them ever poorer...

...Reviewed by Herbert J. Gans Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University Alan Wolfe is one of the country's most thoughtful sociological essayists, particularly on matters of public morality...

...Moreover, a growing share of major campaign funding not supplied by economic interest groups comes these days from ideologically extreme—notably conservative and ultraconservative—fat cats and foundations...

...For example, the expected large majorities opposed same-sex marriage, and thought that inner-city ills are "largely due to people's lack of personal responsibility for their own problems...

...It is likely that some of his findings reflect ephemeral attitudes affected by question wording or relevant local and national news items...

...For his new—and as always, wellwritten—book, he has interviewed a national set of suburbanites, focusing particularly on their feelings concerning "God, family, country...

...Indeed, what seem to be missing from Wolfe's study are specific and concrete responses to questions about the morality of mundane but divisive matters...

...Unfortunately, the country's future will not be determined by how much middleclass Americans have in common, but by national and international forces the middle class, and the rest of the population, will have to cope with...

...The problem is compounded by an emphasis on interviews, for even when ably conducted they tell us only what people say they do, not what they do...

...For that reason alone, I wish Wolfe realized that the truly important issues in public morality are not about values—they are about what people do for and to each other, and what powerful elites do to all of us...

...It is particularly low given efforts to ensure participation using letters and phone calls...

...Nonetheless, he feels strongly about the overarching agreement he says his data demonstrate and opposes people, particularly liberal intellectuals, who do not share the values that emerge—or who raise issues not supported by his interviewees...

...It is entirely possible, for instance, that some of Wolfe's interviewees supported political candidates whose positions they largely did not agree with, but who voted right on low property taxes...

...One Man's Consensus One Nation, After All: What Middle-Class Americans Really Think About God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left and Each Other By Alan Wolfe Viking...

...Yet liberals cannot be underrepresented if the whole is to be called "one nation...

...Wolfe concedes that there are "strong divisions in middle-class America," and adds that "one could even, if one so desired, call them camps...

...384 pp...

...Contemporary American politics, for example, seems increasingly less responsive to the consensus Wolfe presents...

...Nearly half even doubted that "if you work hard and follow the rules you will get ahead...

...Wolfe's pronouncement of a national consensus earned him immediate hosannas from a number of mainstream journalists (who like such unity even as they make their living reporting the country's political and other conflicts...

...He tells us, too, that the people who wound up in his carefully constructed sample are from the "'more comfortable, if not rich part of the middle class...

...But the National Opinion Research Center, arguably the most respected organization of its kind, shows that about 45 per cent of its respondents continue to describe themselves as working class...

...Most troubling is Wolfe's apparent failure to ask people about their actual behavior, although we know from decades of social science research that people frequently, if unconsciously, adapt their values to fit their actions...

...In fact, he seems critical of almost anyone who engages in ideological debate...

...His conviction is that "if middle-class Americans have more in common rather than less, we should be prepared to take a less apocalyptic view of America's future...

...His favorite bugaboo is "culture wars," a term he uses broadly to describe diverse economic, cultural and religious conflicts...

...Since Wolfe does not tell us what questions he and his assistant, Maria Poarch, asked, we cannot know how often he really studied people's basic values...

...Were they the most suspicious people, or the most doctrinaire, or the least traditional...

...In any case, despite his tone, Wolfe himself writes in his Introduction: "I made a conscious effort to overrepresent conservative and Christian communities in the South and West, so as to avoid the possibility that highly educated people who are interested in public affairs and who tend to be more liberal would dominate the interviews...

...His professional and managerial interviewees (40 per cent of his population) are clearly in an upper-middle-class income bracket...

...And how many people give interviewers their noblest politically correct sentiments about things like public education, then lobby against higher school budgets...

...At the same time, though, an impressive majority felt that "there is such a thing as being too religious," and half the respondents said that "families without fathers are just as good as any other kind of family...

...others perhaps derive from what might be called "ideals"—beliefs detached from the problems and disagreements of everyday life...

...Put simply, he proposes that liberal as well as conservative intellectuals and other elites should "stifle" their arguments—as Archie Bunker used to say—and acknowledge the values that, according to his data, make America one nation...

...We have no idea how their deeds accord with their statements...

...The experts I consulted agreed that this was not a high enough rate to permit generalizations...

...24.95...

...Consequently, one has to wonder who made up the uninterviewed 75 per cent, and what they might have said had they cooperated...

...Many are nostalgic for a simpler, morally unified America they believe existed in an unspecified past...

...How many were actually unwilling to be interviewed...

...Even those who did respond hardly present a uniform picture...

...I am surprised that Wolfe the sociologist does not understand that debating such conflicts is one of the roles intellectuals play...

...they are the sort often obtained by pollsters...

...The same rigidity shapes the underlying political message of his book...

...More significantly, Wolfe reports that his response rate was "roughly 25 per cent...

...Wolfe's most prominent finding is that a basic national consensus exists about the moral topics he considers fundamental—many of which used to be called motherhood values...

...Equally important, Wolfe finds that middle-class Americans are neither very ideological nor easily swayed by extremists of the Left or today's various Rights...

...The latter is a common misconception along Main Street...

...Instead, they prefer to adapt to changing conditions, to what he calls middle-class morality writ small, although their responses to his interview questions suggest they also continue to subscribe to a number of the values of traditional middle-class morality writ large...

...This accounts in part for the disparity between people's stated values and the way society operates...

...In recent years, not only have a growing number of politicians holding extremist positions been running for office on the Right, but opportunistic ones have taken to echoing them because citizens with extreme views are easier to attract as volunteers and campaign contributors...

...Journalists are notoriously undereducated about social science research methods, however, and did not see that One Nation, After All has some deficiencies which affect the conclusion embedded in its title...