The Spirit of Community : Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda

Communitarianism is a movement, founded by Amitai Etzioni in 1991, whose adherents are united in the belief that the West must balance their passion for individualism with a new sense of social responsibility.. America needs to move from me to we. In The Spirit of Community, renowned professor and former White House Fellow Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the Communitarian movement, lays out a blueprint for how in the 1990s Americans can move forward - together. The Spirit of Community calls for a reawakening of our allegiance to the shared values and institutions that sustain us - from our marriages and families to our schools and our neighborhoods, and extending to our nation itself. In proposing a new balance between our rights as individuals and our social responsibilities, this controversial, groundbreaking book articulates the emerging social attitudes of the nineties. We have many rights as individuals, Etzioni declares, but we have responsibilities to our communities, too. The right to be tried before a jury of our peers, for instance, is connected to our willingness to serve on one. We as a nation have in recent years forgotten such basic truths of our democratic social contract. And what we need now is a revival of the idea that small sacrifices by individuals can create large benefits for all of us. We must have the moral responsibility to respect our families and fight to preserve them, to value our children and their futures, and to be willing to espouse and teach commonly held moral values. Etzioni faces the tough issues that arise when the rights of individuals are weighed against those of the community, from free speech versus restrictions on hate speech to the right of police to conduct random checks of motorists' sobriety, from drug and HIV testing to mandatory national service. A movement that has already attracted the attention of policymakers as varied as Al Gore, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jack Kemp, and Henry Cisneros, Communitarianism provides a call to action and a perceptive analysis of American politics and society today. And The Spirit of Community is vital reading for any American who is engaged with the future of the country in the next decad

A regular guest on "The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" and NPR, Etzioni explores the rapidly growing grass-roots political movement that calls for a new balance between individual rights and social responsibilty. "Shows us . . . how a philosophy based on shared values and mutual understanding can restore our nation's promise and moral leadership."--Sen. Bill Bradley.

"America needs to move from me to we. In The Spirit of Community, renowned professor and former White House Fellow Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the Communitarian movement, lays out a blueprint for how in the 1990s Americans can move forward - together." "The Spirit of Community calls for a reawakening of our allegiance to the shared values and institutions that sustain us - from our marriages and families to our schools and our neighborhoods, and extending to our nation itself. In proposing a new balance between our rights as individuals and our social responsibilities, this controversial, groundbreaking book articulates the emerging social attitudes of the nineties." "We have many rights as individuals, Etzioni declares, but we have responsibilities to our communities, too. The right to be tried before a jury of our peers, for instance, is connected to our willingness to serve on one. We as a nation have in recent years forgotten such basic truths of our democratic social contract. And what we need now is a revival of the idea that small sacrifices by individuals can create large benefits for all of us." "We must have the moral responsibility to respect our families and fight to preserve them, to value our children and their futures, and to be willing to espouse and teach commonly held moral values. Etzioni faces the tough issues that arise when the rights of individuals are weighed against those of the community, from free speech versus restrictions on hate speech to the right of police to conduct random checks of motorists' sobriety, from drug and HIV testing to mandatory national service." "A movement that has already attracted the attention of policymakers as varied as Al Gore, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jack Kemp, and Henry Cisneros, Communitarianism provides a call to action and a perceptive analysis of American politics and society today. And The Spirit of Community is vital reading for any American who is engaged with the future of the country in the next decade."--BOOK JACKET. Here Etzioni argues that we in the West must balance our passion for individualism with a new sense of social responsibility. He calls for a re-awakening of civic pride and a new awareness of the values and institutions which help to sustain us Communitarians call for a re-awakening of civic pride and a new awareness of the values and institutions which help sustain us through the uncertainties of the modern world. This work sets out the communitarian political agenda for the 1990s.