An initial question arises on the supposition that consciousness must flow of communication (Seidman
1989). Interaction and reason may develop simultaneously on the process of social rationalization, but the
capacity for reason must exist for any communication to take place, and that is enhanced by labor power.
Critical communication rationality would seem to support that. Social bonding may rest on validity
criticism, but while interaction relationship requires effective communication there is no reason to take
the idea of rational consensus as supportive of that to the extremes of relativism, cultural or otherwise.
Short of that, there clearly is solid basis for validity vindication as the foundation of 'communicative
competence,' but the dichotomy structured between the individual self-interest of social actors and the
primary end of mutuality is flawed in the premise that the two are not or cannot become compatible. And
if perfected communication intimates freedom from any coercion whatsoever, it could only evolve in a free
market interchange, in spite of assertions to the contrary (Braater 1991, Hay and McCarty 1994). Kantian
ethics may indeed be monological, but the categorical imperative can logistically be attained only within
'market' frameworks. That obviously cannot be his point since, even short of a tyranny of a majority, a
degree of coercion is inferred.

A 'discourse ethics' which assumes that truth must be universally acceptable to all interests furthermore
would require what Madison knew was not possible, a world of angels. The 'colonization of the life world'
nevertheless is a developing situation. Systems emergent for control where communication has been
complicated by a disruption of shared values have become problematic since such systems arise out of the
diminution of rationality by a subversion of the general will through expansive public sector regulation of
the life world. The ensuing legitimation crisis is therefore not simply because of a chasm between
communication and material production where the latter world distorts the former (Habermas 1984,
Braater 1991). Exactly the reverse causation is implied, and furthermore is assumed in the association
geist argued of our civic faith.

An important aspect of Carey's Association principle is that it does not absolutely require overt
communication of a perfected nature except at the most limited levels of technical expertise requisite for
exchange, although the forces of exchange will militate in that direction. At the same time, it forms the
basis for enhanced communication, even across cultural or national 'languages.' Peculiarities of issues of
the time produced a structure of opposing institutions, north and south, that led to the Civil War.
(Kruman) In contemporary society, emerging 'progressive liberal' constituency coalitions may be creating
a different form of opposing institutional structures which are sharpening cleavages within the United
States. This will be even more certainly the case to the extent that they succeed in creating an alternative
'new convenant' to accompany it. Party structures in the U. S. have generally tended to be rather non-
doctrinaire, perhaps out of the nature of the institutional structures which promulgated the two party
structure. When this has developed into dichotomous philosophical characteristics bond to opposing sets
of self-interested coalitions in disregard of the general will, serious dislocation has been the result, as the
case of the only such concrete example in our history, the Civil War, attests. Yet that seems to be what is
developing out of the public sector and dependency growth of progressive liberal policy. The
underpinnings of the public community in this country provided by our institutions of faith, both sectarian
and civil, as Bellah and Newhaus suggest, may be effectively undermining the public sphere. It may be
being driven towards an open rupture as the public sector subverts the public sphere or community.

Elections may have been functioning in our system over recent decades at least in a sort of pentacostal
manner, successful campaigning amounting to a coalition building process of 'speaking in tongues'
(among other elements such as retroactive evaluation, etc.). Tongues of fire appear over the heads of
especially Presidential candidates who are thereby able to marshal the support needed for victory. That is
not, however, to suggest irrational patterns of voting based on purely emotional and not cognitive
responses by the electorate. The capacity of the geist of association to span the chasm developing between
public sector and public sphere as the emerging dichotomy widens the gap may be stretched to the point of
an inability to effectively forestall a legitimation crisis. At the same time, though, the efficacy of the
potential rationality of voters should not be dismissed or underestimated. The Rosetta Stone quality of our
public faith may mean that if most of us are not multi-lingual, we at least are capable of comprehending
much in Mozart's operas although we may not be fluent in German or Italian. In addition to that, the
languages we speak may not be so mutually exclusive as might be supposed. They may be of a set --
romance languages, as it were -- such that in considerable measure we understand more than assumed. An
examination of these 'languages' suggests basis for such an assessment, both in terms of common and
divergent aspects and comment upon them. Neither should it be overlooked that, at least in Bellah, the
cacophonic languages were secondary, nearly everyone also conversant in the primary language of our
overarching political culture.

Not only is there considerable symmetry among the 'languages' of our society, at least in some of the
manifestations, but they may, in fact, represent merely variations on a theme, in spite of differentiation
which some have read into them. The differences of alternative interpretations of each language may
actually be termed 'dialects.' The Biblical language, for example, is generally tied to Puritanism, but there
is disagreement as to whether it is best characterized as conducive to citizenship and community, liberty,
and an ethic of virtue and work (Scaff 1973) or by intolerant oligarchical sterile tyranny, or worse (Grub
and Billias 1978). Historians such as Palfrey have held the first view; others such as Charles Francis
Adams and Brook Adams, the second. Both may be equally valid, the apparent contradiction indicative of
some of the multiple paradoxes of this, as any, society's culture, illustrating the dialect notion. Illustrative
of the commonality idea is the suggestion that Madison, for instance, may have indeed 'appropriated' the
term 'republican' from liberal discussion (Fowler 1991, Matthews 1995), but such an application is far
from unreasonable. The debate over the scale of a society required to sustain a republic is of this species.
In THE FEDERALIST, the argument was offered that the scale of the new nation would offset the fear of
faction which was of such concern to them.

Representative governance may be perceived as necessary in any event due to the impracticality of
mass decision-making which renders purer democratic forms archaic and unworkable. The tyranny of
face-to-face democracy, as practiced in Puritan small town meetings under the discerning eye of the
clergy, poses serious constraints on its efficacy. It is also important to understand that the commercial and
incipient aspiring industrial capitalist society which the Framers wished to create would be dependent on
such scale. Without it, there would be inadequate basis for the level of development which they sought by
design, and without which the improved living standards and greater equality which have been the result
simply could not have been.

The view of Jefferson as a radical communitarian democratic liberal and humanist (Matthews 1984)
would have precluded this very development. A further basis for the growth of American capitalism was
its stability, which would also have been undone by a more or less permanent constitutional convention as
well as by the ward level democracy he preferred. And the individual atomism which some have
contended would have been the inevitable result of a self-interest seeking society is a pre-eminent more of
liberal society (Mc Swain 1984), though varied interpretations of it have been suggested (Mill 1977,
Sardek 1984, Delaney 1994). Abbott's argument that such structures would inevitably bring corruption
(1991) are joined by others convinced that the real locus of power had to be local (Matthews 1989, Fowler
1991). Such atomism would diminish individuals (Matthews 1989) and the public arena would also
denigrate their lives as humans (Fowler 1991, Selznick 1994).

The liberal democracy described as a language would have precluded the access to greater equality
which the republican language helped produce. If the republican language verges on Habermas' call for
resuscitated public sphere it could not do so except as attached to market economies. The various strains
of liberalism and republicanism are resolved in their perceived differences in the American case. The
problem is demonstrated by Hofstader's observation that it was framed in order "to use property as if
property were the end in and of itself." The rationale for market economies (Downs 1957) has also been
seen as a cause of political imbalance in democracies, and further underscores the balancing of interests
considered by Madison. The entire point is to provide the material means for development of civic
competence and virtue.

If liberalism is aggressive self-interest, republicanism is certainly no less so. While problems in seeing
this have been raised (Matthews 1989), suggesting rather that the public access has precluded all but a few
from participation and therefore a less fulfilled life, since most are also delimited in the private sector as
well (Matthews 1989), it may actually be correct to argue that republicanism does not force
egalitarianism, but that would be self-defeating, and in fact, coupled with the capitalism, it has created it.
Liberalism may well be the more pervasive of the strains of thought in America, but not the progressive
liberal cycle of today's politics. This may contribute to the language problem by its speech distortion,
though it may not be as 'ancient' as the biblical strand, perhaps even developing out of it. In any event, all
three of these represent 'self-government.'

The homo civicus in Jefferson ostensible representation of civic virtue (Matthews 1984:83-7) contains
some economic problems. The 'ward republic' may have been workable in his idealized agrarian society,
but in modern mass industrial society where mutual interdependency is constantly heightened, it would be
a sentence to political, and economic, impotence, in terms of actual political power and in economic
power toward raising levels of labor power, as is necessary to human existence and progress. Thus,
Jefferson's preference would have foreclosed the possibility of the economic base requisite for the supposed
desired end. Perhaps ironically, such community structures may be feasible as the communications
revolution proceeds, but it must be a matter broached with caution. And the idea of the permanent
constitutional convention would be a potentially dangerous concept, at least, opening the door as it would
to coups by any emergent elite. We have what conceptually and functionally is the same thing, without the
problems inherent in a more formally structured such entity, in actual Constitutional process
-- the amendment process. Equality, too, is difficult unless that is assured not to infer 'redistributive
justice' which would be catastrophic for progress and therefore continued existence of the republic as of
the species.

As limiting as such reasons as these expressed may be for the usefulness of these three languages in
analysis, this is even more of a difficulty for the other two, conservatism and radicalism. One does not
have to travel a great distance with Edmund Burke to accept his belief that:

" ... political institutions form a vast and complicated system of prescriptive
rights and customary observation, [and] these practices grow out of the past
and adapt themselves to the present with no break in continuity, and that the
tradition of the constitution and of society at large ought to be the object of a
reverence akin to religion, because it forms the repository of a collective
intelligence and civilization." (Sabine and Thorson 1973:258)

Nor would that have to reject the validity of natural law. In fact, it could support it, though Burke does
not think so. It is also duty out of connection which holds his public sphere together, rather than self-
interest or consensual agreement. But the 'great primeval contract of eternal society,' drawn on by such as
Russell Kirk, draws a bond across temporal bounds which places great importance on 'spiritual
dimensions of community' toward restraint of excess appetites in men. And yet, that same theme is overtly
expressed in Henry Carey's THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE. There are some rather
intolerant tendencies which can be seen in conservative thought, but need not be seen as any European
and Caucasian and Protestant consensus prevalent at the Framing and scarcely existent any longer.
Puritanism has some commonality in such regards as toleration of critique with conservatism, but being in
'contact' with tradition need neither demand change for its own sake nor tolerate inordinate tampering
with tradition. Radicalism seems to be a language less influential on American society which may be
peculiar for a country born of revolution. But the parameters of radicalism seem to have been too narrowly
defined and drawn. The capitalist republic may be, in fact, far more 'radical' than any form of socialism-
Marxism-leftism could possibly be. It is a strange suggestion, indeed, that either of the groups meeting in
Philadelphia (in 1776 or 1789) or the brave souls gathered at Lexington should not be construed as
'radical.'

It may be heresy to hold that individual self interest pursuit which some suggest must irrepressibly
degenerate toward tyranny, together with requisite notions of private property, are constitutive of virtue,
but if such is the substance of real Virtue, it may be the essential quality of a capitalist republic, as it forms
the sinews of community or the Association principle.

Habermas wants to reconcile individual autonomy with the collective believing that a human proclivity
toward mutual understanding through communicative rationality is the key while rejecting self interest as
functioning in any such way as both Adam Smith in his 'concord' and Carey with 'Association' portray in
their ethics. But as such, the reconciliation already exists, the social glue of civil religion in America with
its mutuality geist, sustaining it. There is a mystic mechanics operative which informs Adam Smith with
Liebniz, with Carey's Association completing the identity. The language barriers may not preclude the
functioning of the process, the operation functioning the more smoothly out of the romantic syntax of
commonality which mark them.

America is really a tale of two cities. In one, it is the best of times, while in the other, it is the worst of
times, a legitimation crisis looming in the balance between the two, or in the extent to which the latter
holds precedence. That is, in fact, a principle theme is Newt Gingrich's recently published TO RENEW
AMERICA, throughout which the geist of our public faith identified here echoes. In some very real ways,
those two cities are at war. Some would call it a culture war, and in a sense it is, but it runs deeper even
than that, to the very spirit of humanity. For that reason, it can be characterized as a religious conflict, and
to the degree that it involves our sacred beliefs, practices, and structures, it can be identified as a holy war.
In fact, this jihad might be typified in its contrasting views of human nature as the same battle being
waged since the dawn of time, since Ahura Mazda engaged Ahriman, and throughout the course of
human history. It is a struggle for the soul of America. The outcome has clearly not yet been decided. It
may be a battle that must be waged as a permanent struggle by each generation for civilization. But to
paraphrase Obie Wuan Canobie as well as other more influential characters, whose faith runs with the city
of Aton, 'May the Geist be with you.'

FOOTNOTES

I. THE AMERICAN CONTEXT

1. Kertzer, David, 1988. Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
p181.
2. Kertzer, Ibid., p 182.
3. Asad, Talal, 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and
Islam. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p 36.
4. Asad, Ibid., p 42.

II. THE FUNCTION OF CIVIL RELIGION

1. Wallace, Anthony F.C., 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View. New York: Random House, p. 52.
2. Weeks, Earl William, 1994. Journal of the Early American Republic, Winter 1994; 14:4, p. 485.
3. Weeks, Ibid., p. 487.
4. Weeks, Ibid., p. 489.
5. Weeks, Ibid., p. 488.
6. Weeks, Ibid., p. 487.
7. Weeks, Ibid., p. 492.
8. Weeks, Ibid., p. 487-8.
9. Weeks, Ibid., p. 489.
10. Weeks, Ibid., p. 490.
11. Weeks, Ibid., p. 490-1.
12. Weeks, Ibid., p. 491.
13. Weeks, Ibid., p. 493.
14. Weeks, Ibid., p. 494.
15. Weeks, Ibid., p. 494.
16. Weeks, Ibid., p. 494.
17. Weeks, Ibid., p. 493.

III. COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY

1. Abbott, Phillip, 1987 Seeking Many Invevtions. Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, p. 67.
2. Abbott, Ibid., p. 67.
3. Abbott, Ibid., p. 68.
4. Abbott, Ibid., p. 67.
5. Abbott, Ibid., p. 74.
6. Abbott, Ibid., p. 87.
7. Abbott, Ibid., p. 101.
8. Abbott, Ibid., p. 49.
9. Abbott, Ibid., p. 50.
10. Abbott, Ibid., p. 50.
11. Abbott, Ibid., p. 52.
12. Abbott, Ibid., p. 57.
13. Abbott, Ibid., p. 55.
14. Abbott, Ibid., p. 58.
15. Abbott, Ibid., p. 58.
16. Abbott, Ibid., p. 53.
17. Abbott, Ibid., p. 53.

III. COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY (cont.)

18. Abbott, Ibid., p. 63.
19. Telfer, Terry. Dickinson Studies, June 1992, p. 37.
20. Abbott, Ob cit., p. 128.
21. Abbott, Ibid., p. 122.
22. Abbott, Ibid., p. 124.
23. Abbott, Ibid., p. 161.
24. Abbott, Ibid., p. 133.
25. Abbott, Ibid., p. 169.
26. Abbott, Ibid., p. 170.
27. Abbott, Ibid., p. 172.
28. Abbott, Ibid., p. 156-60.
29. Abbott, Ibid., p. 158.
30. Abbott, Ibid., p. 158.
31. Abbott, Ibid., p. 11.
32. Abbott, Ibid., p. 4.
33. Abbott, Ibid., p. 4.
34. Abbott, Ibid., p. 4.
35. Abbott, Ibid., p. 2.
36. Abbott, Ibid., p. 9.
37. Abbott, Ibid., p. 6.
38. Abbott, Ibid., p. 20.

IV. DISCOURSE AND DEBATE

1. Gehrig, Gail, 1987. American Civil Religion: An Assessment. Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion, Monograph Series # 3.
2. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 1.
3. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 5.
4. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 10.
5. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 11.
6. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 12.
7. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 12.
8. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 13.
9. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 14.
10. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 18.
11. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 24.
12. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 32.
13. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 41.
14. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 55.
15. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 57.
16. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 58.
17. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 59.
18. Gehrig, Ibid., p. 69.
19. Bellah, Robert and Gary Hammond, 1976. Varieties of Civil Religion. San Francisco: Harper and
Row, p. 176.
20. Williams, Peter, 1980. Popular Religion in America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentis-Hall, p. 15.
21. Williams, Ibid., p. 10.
22. Williams, Ibid., p. 8.
23. Williams, Ibid., p. 8.
24. Williams, Ibid., p. 9.
25. Williams, Ibid., p. 13.

IV. DISCOURSE AND DEBATE (cont)

26. Williams, Ibid., p. 168.
27. Williams, Ibid., p. 64.
28. Williams, Ibid., p. 65-66.
29. Williams, Ibid., p. 68.
30. Williams, Ibid., p. 168.
31. Williams, Ibid., p. 169.
32. Williams, Ibid., p. 170.
33. Williams, Ibid., p. 170.
34. Williams, Ibid., p. 171.
35. Williams, Ibid., p. 172.
36. Williams, Ibid., p. 197-8.
37. Williams, Ibid., p. 204.
38. Williams, Ibid., p. 215.
39. Wilson. The Status of Civil Religion in America. p. 8.
40. Wilson, Ibid., p. 15.
41. Wilson, Ibid., p. 20.
42. Wilson, Ibid., p. 20.
43. Wilson, Ibid., p. 20.

V. THE CONSTITUTION OF RELIGION

1. Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, Imprimi Potest, 1995. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York,
Image Books, Doubleday, p. 511.
2. Catechism, Ibid., p. 511.
3. Catechism, Ibid., p. 512.
4. Catechism, Ibid., p. 512.
5. Catechism, Ibid., p. 512.
6. Catechism, Ibid., p. 512.
7. Catechism, Ibid., p. 513.
8. Catechism, Ibid., p. 530.

VI. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

1. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckman, 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, p. 4,5.
2. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 6.
3. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 7.
4. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 7.
5. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 8.
6. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 9.
7. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 9.
8. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 11.
9. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 16.
10. Berger and Luckman, Ibid., p. 18.
11. Feyerband, Paul. Against Method.
12. Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View. New York, Random House, p.25.
13. Durkheim, Emile, (1961). Religion and Society in Parsons, Shils, Naegele, and Pitts, Theories of
Society, Vol. I. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, Crowell-Collier, p. 678.
14. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 678.

VI. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY (cont)

15. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 678, footnote # 3.
16. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 678.
17. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 678.
18. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 678.
19. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 679.
20. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 680.
21. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 680.
22. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 679.
23. Durkheim, Organic Solidarity and Contract, in ob cit., p. 436.
24. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 440.
25. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 442.
26. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 443.
27. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 443.
28. Durkheim, Emile, 1915 (1965). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.(translated from the
French by Joseph Ward Swain) New York: The Free Press, p. 230.
29. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 230.
30. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 231.
31. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 228.
32. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 229.
33. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 228.
34. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 239.
35. Durkheim, Ibid., p. 239.
36. Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard. 1968. The Political Character of Adolescents. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, p. 330.
37. Jennings and Niemi, Ibid., p. 332.
38. Straite, John, Charles Parrish, Charles Elder, Coit Ford, American Political Science Review,1989,
p. 447.
39. Straite, et al, Ibid., p. 450.
40. Straite, et al, Ibid., p. 450.
41. Straite, et al, Ibid., p. 456.
42. Easton, David and Hess, Robert. 1982. "The Child's Political World." MWJPS, p. 233.
43. Easton and Hess, Ibid., p. 234.
44. Swanson, Guy E. 1960. Birth of the Gods, p. viii.
45. Swanson, Guy E. 1967. Religion and Regime: A Sociological Account of the Reformation.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p. ix.
46. Swanson, Ibid., p. ix.
47. Swanson, Ibid., p. 3.
48. Swanson, Ibid., p. 17.
49. Swanson, Ibid., p. 42.
50. Swanson, Ibid., p. 49.
51. Swanson, Ibid., p. 58.
52. Swanson, Ibid., p. 233-41.
53. Swanson, Ibid., p. 232.
54. Swanson, Ibid., p. 249.
55. Swanson, Ibid., p. 258-9.
56. Swanson, Ibid., p. 246.

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