The Five Elements of American Political Culture

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While some of the world’s prominent countries, such as the United States, Great Britain, France and even Japan, support democracy, there are always cross-national differences created by political and economical culture. It is interesting to see how the United States differs from the rest of the other countries. The United States is unique because of the five elements of the American view of political culture. The five elements of American political culture are liberty, equality, democracy, civic duty and individual responsibility. Liberty is another word for independence and freedom. The thirteen American colonies at the time of 1776 were in conflict with Great Britain. The thirteen original colonies wanted to unionize and become a new nation, thus being the United States of America. As ‘independence’ is in the title, the United States wanted liberty from Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence represents freedom from Great Britain. It represents America as a free country and no longer under authority of Great Britain. As the Declaration notes in talking about liberty, liberty is in fact very important for political culture. Stated in the Declaration, “These United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states” (Wilson, pg. A3). The Constitution of the United States also highlights the importance of liberty. Declared in the preamble or introduction, it says “We the People of the United States… secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and posterity” (Wilson, pg. A4). Liberty is special. The writers of both the Declaration and the Constitution knew that liberty is special, important and very rare. Not a lot of countries have liberty, freedom and independence to be an individual country... ... middle of paper ... ...sidents typically receive less support and lower job approval percentages than the first. Again, political ideologies play a part in determining the public opinion poll results. Mostly democrats approve of Obama’s job at 79%, a plus 2% increase from last week. While democrats are up, independent and republicans are down, for 33% and 12%. It is amazing at the statistics they get from these public opinion polls. From Gallup, more nonwhites and blacks approve Obama’s job with nonwhites at 63% and blacks at 84%. Roughly, while only 32% whites approve of Obama’s job. While 42% approve his job at this time in February, let us see if Obama can make a push to earn some more respect. It is still early in the year, but as Gallup says “more presidents tend to decline in their second term than their first”. Let us see if Obama can end the President second term slump.

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