Tough Medicine for a Sick America : Sick of Liberal and Conservative Failures Sociologist Amitai Etzioni Called Together His Friends a Few Years Ago and Came Up With a Big New Idea--Communitarianism, a Prescription for the We Decade

THE DOOR OF THE IRON SKILLET TRUCK STOP SWINGS OPEN AND A PUDGY, GRAY-HAIRED PROFESSOR is met by the smell of grease and the country & Western sounds of heartache and hard times. Amitai Etzioni, author, activist and eminent social theorist, takes in the scene like, well, a sociologist. Dozens of truckers jam the counter under a sign that warns “Drivers Only.” Dressed in flannel shirts, jeans and cowboys boots, they hunch over plates of chicken-fried steak and talk about the weather and the economy. As he picks over the nearby salad bar and then moves to a table, Etzioni notices everything.

“You see that section for truckers only?” he asks as he sits down. Etzioni’s speech, flavored by his native Germany, sounds a bit like Henry Kissinger’s. “The drivers are a community, and that special section supports them. They happily yield part of themselves to the group. We feel better when we have firm, reliable connections with others. But today the connections are strained to the breaking point. That is why we are saying it is time to consider something new.”

Etzioni is on the road in Virginia, pitching his version of something new--a growing political force that is supposed to be the Big Idea of the ‘90s, the antidote to “Me Generation” greed and the cure for America’s cynicism, alienation and despair. It is called the communitarian movement, and ever since Etzioni coined the term in 1990, he has been trying to use it to ignite a revolution of caring and civic duty.

A plump, slightly stooped man in a rumpled, off-the-rack suit, the 62-year-old Etzioni, with his softly creased face and earnest, brown eyes, looks more like a tired CPA than a fiery revolutionary. But his ideas, and the movement he now leads, do suggest radical change. Etzioni wants Americans to surrender some of their liberty and self-interest in the name of the community and the public good. In little more than a year, this idea, shared by a small group of lawyers and academicians, has grown into an influential intellectual force. Meanwhile, the professor has become a media darling and star of the highbrow lecture circuit.

Earlier in the day Etzioni had debated the president of the American Civil Liberties Union at a lawyers conference in Colonial Williamsburg. She had charged him with a dangerous “majoritarian” assault on individual liberty. He had argued that desperate times “call for something beyond the pale.” Now, at the Iron Skillet, Etzioni continues to make his case. America is in the middle of a slow-motion collapse, he says. The evidence includes a fivefold increase in the crime rate since 1960, recession, drugs, broken families and voter apathy.

Everywhere, people are yearning for “community,” for security, a connection to others and a sense of purpose.

The Communitarians propose something very different from the usual political movement. They don’t care about electing specific candidates or promoting special interests. They refuse to reduce their ideas to simple “sound bites.” And they will seize any proposal, from the Right or the Left, that might promote the public good. They would, for example, fight drugs with expanded testing in the workplace and drunken-driving checkpoints. They would try to preserve the family with better social services and tougher divorce laws. And they would curb selfishness and greed with mandatory community service and “moral education” in the schools. Americans are ready for these changes, Etzioni adds, because their fears about national decline have reached critical mass.

“We need an awakening of values, of caring and commitment,” he explains as he picks at a salad. “The Communitarians are saying this is possible; in fact, it is inevitable.” Etzioni gets excited as he speaks. He waves his fork, he talks faster and louder, and pretty soon he sounds like Professor Don Quixote, pursuing an impossible dream.

But he is no idle dreamer. In less than two years, Etzioni and the small group of intellectuals who developed the communitarian philosophy have attracted a large audience and prominent backers. Etzioni has received moral support from economist Lester Thurow, theologian Harvey Cox and 1980 presidential candidate John Anderson. And two foundations have volunteered a total of $50,000 in grants. Last summer, White House aides invited Etzioni to present his ideas over breakfast. In the fall he ran a communitarian teach-in on Capitol Hill that attracted a large audience of senators and their aides.

Communitarian-flavored ideas are popping up in the speeches of presidential candidates. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton used the movement’s favorite word--”responsibility”--20 times in a recent address that outlined his proposal for a communitarian-style “new covenant” between government and the people. The entire anti-chic campaign of another Democrat, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, is based on a cold-eyed realism and the communitarian-style values of sacrifice and commitment. Tsongas has been telling voters “this is where the brutal part starts,” and advocating increases in some taxes and programs to rebuild American business.

Of course, the success of any political campaign depends on the national mood. Ronald Reagan did not create the feel-good, conservative surge of the 1980s. Rather, he gave voice to what was already in the public mind. Communitarians believe that today’s national mood is marked by despair over social problems and disgust with the politics of both Republicans and Democrats. They are probably right. Willie Horton politics and 1980s avarice have left the country feeling dirty, dismayed and discouraged. Almost every political conversation today begins with the assumption that idealism is dead and that most of our serious problems--health care, homelessness, economic decline--cannot be solved by the current political system. In this climate, Communitarians are convinced that millions will respond to the call to sacrifice and simply do good.

“This is not happening because I am good-looking and work hard,” Etzioni jokes. “What we are saying about values and commitment attracts interest because people can no longer tolerate things as they are.”

Etzioni’s idealism and hope are infectious. Raised in a cooperative settlement in Israel, he speaks with profound conviction about the benefits of close communities. But there is also something unsettling in this crusade. While appealing for cohesion and caring, the Communitarians would take away certain freedoms and rights. They would sacrifice small liberties for the sake of security. And in their rush to do good, the Communitarians may well trample the individual. Their movement could create the “baby boom” generation’s version of repressive, 1950s-style conformism.

“But we’re not saying we should take away important rights,” Etzioni insists. “We are just saying it’s time to talk about balancing rights with responsibilities, to bring back the idea of community standards. We just want to get the dialogue started.”

LEAVING THE IRON SKILLET AND GETTING BACK ON THE ROAD TO HIS HOME in Washington, Etzioni recites the evidence of public frustration that convinced him that the time had come for a new movement. Voter participation has declined to the point where in 1988 the turnout was barely 50%. During the same period, the number of voters identifying themselves as independent of either major political party has climbed from 23% to 36%. Surveys on the public mood have shown a similar rise in anxiety and alienation.

The disaffection afflicting so many Americans can be traced to the turmoil of the 1960s and ‘70s, Etzioni adds. “In the 1960s we broke bonds. We got rid of a lot of old ideas and institutions that were racist and sexist and should have been eliminated. But we destroyed the good with the bad, like respect for the family and community,” he explains. “We were left with a moral vacuum, which people have tried to fill with ‘me-ism,’ materialism--all kinds of things that don’t work.”

These problems were described in persuasive detail in “Habits of the Heart,” a 1986 bestseller by sociologist Robert Bellah, now a Communitarian sympathizer, and several colleagues at UC Berkeley. Bellah’s team found ordinary Americans to be cynical, overworked and profoundly isolated. They concluded that rampant individualism had produced a society of vast material wealth and gaping spiritual emptiness. A precursor to the communitarian idea, “Habits of the Heart” documents Americans’ increasing emphasis on private life and their gradual abandonment of community and public concerns. It finds the end result of this trend is a damaged “social ecology,” a human environment that fails to meet basic needs such as safety, education, employment and housing.

Like all feelings, the widespread alienation revealed in Bellah’s book is difficult to quantify and describe. But it is shared, in varying degrees, by city dwellers who see their neighborhoods in decline, by suburbanites who hunger for some connection to their communities and by those passed over by the economic boom of the 1980s. These people sense that supportive communities are in decline, that honesty and morality have disappeared from the political arena and that the country has given up trying to solve problems such as poverty and crime.

Etzioni became disillusioned with the political process when he served a one-year stint as senior adviser to the Carter Administration. Under Jimmy Carter, he discovered that it was impossible to get politicians to consider doing what was morally right instead of what was politically expedient. He blamed this problem, in part, on the business groups and special-interest lobbies that fill campaign war chests with cash. On this point Etzioni agrees with former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., who has made his attack on special interests the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.

“The political parties have been bought out,” Etzioni says with a sigh. “It’s almost impossible to find someone who is honest. Learning that was a scarring experience.” After leaving government, he wrote “Capital Corruption,” one of his dozen books, which concluded that “Washington is corrupt to the core.” Later, he would even leave the Democratic Party, convinced that it was irredeemable. (The dedication in this book suggests the origins of Etzioni’s obsession with traditional values. “For . . . my parents,” he writes, “who taught me there is a better way of making it: Observe the rules; work harder.”)

Etzioni was scarred again in 1985 when his wife was killed in an auto accident as she was driving to the airport to pick up the youngest of their five sons. On the way home from Williamsburg, as he passes the highway signs that point the way to Washington National Airport, Etzioni says that his wife’s death reminded him of the importance of supportive communities and the vulnerability of all human beings.

“There was ice,” he says sadly. “It takes a second.”

During his time of grief, he leaned on family, friends and colleagues. When asked to reflect on that experience, Etzioni seems stumped by the question. He is, by his own admission, a man ruled by his head, not his heart, and he is uncomfortable talking about the tragedy. “I am not all that introspective,” he confesses. “I may be the only one I know who hasn’t gone through analysis. I don’t generally think about these things, but I will try.” He pauses for a long moment.

“How did I handle it?” he asks rhetorically. “I didn’t do anything, really, for two years. Then I used a little gimmick the ethicists have. You ask yourself: ‘When it’s all over, what do I want people to say about my life?’ When people think about it that way, they get into action.”

He began in Washington by gathering a group of scholars at George Washington University, where he teaches, to discuss ways of rebuilding the nation’s moral infrastructure. Those first Communitarians included Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, a leading expert on family law and civil rights; political scientist William Galston of the University of Maryland, who was issues director for Walter F. Mondale’s presidential campaign; Benjamin Barber of Rutgers, who oversees a pioneering community service program, and ethicist James Fishkin of the University of Texas. All believed that America needed fresh thinking--and a moral revival--if it was to solve its serious problems. And they committed themselves to developing the intellectual base for such a movement.

Since then, Etzioni and the others have struggled to turn their fuzzy notions about the need for social renewal into concrete proposals. They settled on a name for their philosophy and founded a quarterly journal called The Responsive Community, which is published in Washington. (The magazine’s subtitle, Rights and Responsibilities, is also its central theme.) The journal has served mainly as a sounding board for specific policies developed by the inner core of communitarian thinkers.

Many of the proposals are concerned with social welfare issues: Mandatory public service for high school and college graduates. Expanded government day care and medical programs that recipients would “pay” for with a surtax or voluntary service. Courses in “moral education” in all public schools. Liberal family-leave policies for workers, and tougher divorce laws to encourage couples with children to work harder at reconciling before splitting.

Other communitarian ideas confront a wider range of concerns: Programs to trace the sexual contacts of people with the AIDS virus. A ban on private gun ownership. (Citizens would be paid to turn in their weapons.) Campaign-financing reforms to limit the power of big-money interest groups.

All of the communitarian proposals have been accompanied by heated moral arguments. Medical ethicist James Childress wrote that people with the HIV virus have a moral duty to society to notify their sexual contacts. Although studies show that fewer than 10% do inform their sexual partners, most AIDS activists oppose notification programs as a dangerous violation of the right to privacy.

In Barber’s proposal, he described mandatory public service for students as a way for communities to ensure that citizens fulfill their moral obligation to society. Barber would force students to “volunteer,” because “those most in need of training in the democratic arts of citizenship are, in fact, least likely to volunteer on their own.

William Galston, citing the devastating effects divorce has on children, suggested that couples have a moral duty to work harder at staying together. Despite the destructive effect that bad marriages have on families, Galston believes that, on balance, the community has a moral right to ask couples to try harder--and should adjust divorce laws to require couples with children to spend one year attempting a reconciliation before splitting

This willingness to make moral arguments is a recent development in academic circles. “In the ‘60s and ‘70s people became reluctant to make moral judgments, to say something was right or wrong,” notes Etzioni. “Everything was considered an individual choice, and all values were supposed to be equal.” By the dawn of the 1980s, television preachers and other staunch conservatives were practically the only ones claiming to make moral arguments in the political sphere.

The preachers and others were right to make morality part of politics, Etzioni argues. “Their concerns were valid, and we have focused on some of the same issues,” he says. “Their problem was their solutions. They were authoritarian in the way they wanted to dictate behavior. But they weren’t wrong to focus on morality. It is possible to tell people there is something morally superior, and we shouldn’t be afraid to do so.”

A case in point is the care of young children. Society has a stake in children because they represent the nation’s future. “And there is a mountain of evidence,” Etzioni adds, “that suggests they are not doing well.

“You can stone me if you want. But I have a moral duty to say that if parents don’t bond with that child, especially during the first two years of life, under most circumstances there’s going to be hell to be paid--and we’re paying for it. If you want to have children, take care of them, dammit, instead of buying another VCR.”

While these ideas may seem radical to some, the Communitarians believe they appeal to the basic moral sensibilities of millions of citizens. “The fact is, people tend to agree on about 80% of the important issues,” explains Etzioni. In the case of abortion, for example, polls indicate that a majority would support a “pro-choice” policy that also discourages late-term procedures. Similarly, he says, most people are so concerned about crime that they would readily accept the inconvenience of police checkpoints in drug-infested neighborhoods.

In general, Communitarians are saying that somewhere between individual rights and the power of the government lie the broad interests of the community. These interests--in public safety, the welfare of children, etc.--have been ignored too long. If something isn’t done soon to restore order and cohesion, adds Etzioni, anxiety bred by economic recession could produce a much more dangerous political movement.

“There is one iron law in sociology,” he says, “and that is, when the pie shrinks, the various factions in society fight each other more viciously. That is the time when the (David) Dukes and the kooks come out of the woodwork to do their mischief.”

There is already some evidence that Americans are so frustrated with some problems that they are willing to take Draconian measures. The Supreme Court has upheld restrictions on the free-speech rights of medical workers advising pregnant women. Several California cities have adopted ordinances barring reputed gang members from public parks. Los Angeles is considering such a law. Washington state is fighting rape by keeping repeat offenders locked in preventive detention, even after they have served their terms. Many colleges are banning certain kinds of speech in an effort to discourage racism and sexism.

These measures reflect the frustration of desperate communities, says Etzioni. “And we are saying that we should do something about our problems now, in a careful way, before even more severe measures are considered.”

ETZIONI HAD MADE THE SAME POINT IN WILLIAMSBURG, WHERE HE HAD BEEN asked to defend his movement before hundreds of lawyers, who had gathered to celebrate the Bicentennial of the Bill of Rights. But his argument did not reassure either ACLU President Nadine Strossen or Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino-rights organization, who also was on the program. Yzaguirre listened carefully to Etzioni and came to fear that the Communitarians are providing rational arguments for limiting the rights and opportunities of those who are not white, middle-class and educated.

“When he talks about the breakdown of our communities, who is he talking about?” asks Yzaguirre. “Hispanic communities are very strong, and people in these communities have a sense of civic duty.” Indeed, Yzaguirre wonders if the Communitarians aren’t really complaining about the declining power of the white middle and upper classes. “David Duke, the isolationism of Pat Buchanan and the Communitarians may be part of the same thing,” he says.

A similar argument is made by Strossen, of the ACLU, who sees subtle bias in the ways the Communitarians approach different issues. Communitarians oppose efforts to censor bigoted speech on college campuses “because free speech is a right that academics value highly,” she says. But when it comes to fighting drugs and street crime, the Communitarians are willing to nip away at the rights of inner-city residents who would be most inconvenienced by the roadblocks and anti-loitering laws that the Communitarians support. “I’m worried that there’s a class distinction being made here.”

Strossen has found herself cast in the role of the Communitarians’ chief critic because the ACLU has been one of Etzioni’s favorite targets. He often talks about “ACLU-niks” as if they were civil-rights extremists. And Responsive Community has made a point of examining cases in which the ACLU has blocked communitarian-style efforts to solve serious problems. One well-known case involved a plan to establish an all-male academy in Detroit to help urban teen-agers stay in school. The ACLU sued, and the academy was scrapped. Another case concerned an anti-drug checkpoint that police in Inkster, Mich., used to clear a neighborhood of dealers in a single day. The ACLU filed suit, the roadblock was taken down and the drug dealers returned.

While these events make the ACLU an easy target, Strossen says the Communitarians have misrepresented the organization at every turn. “Take the all-male academy in Detroit. They don’t tell you we opposed it because the families of girls in that community came to us and said they have substantial needs, too,” she says. The ACLU lawyers weren’t out to stop the experiment; they only wanted equal treatment for females. As for the anti-drug roadblocks, Strossen says: “The Communitarians conveniently leave out the fact that it was the mayor of Inkster who went to court to stop the checkpoint.”

Critics have made the same kinds of charges against the Communitarians’ efforts at an anti-divorce policy. In a long letter published in The Responsive Community, sociology professor Pepper Schwartz of the University of Washington argues that a more compassionate solution to the family crisis would include guarantees of quality day care and a living wage for women who support children on their own. Of Galston’s suggestions she writes: “Women are being told to revise their lives because the family needs them.” The communitarian approach, she concludes, amounts to “a hostage trade: wives for children.”

A more general critique of the communitarian argument is made by historian Stewart Burns of Stanford University. Burns is co-author of a sweeping study of the Bill of Rights called “A People’s Charter.” The book looks at the social forces that have moved Americans to both expand and restrict individual freedom according to the politics of the day. The Communitarians, says Burns, may represent another in a repeating cycle of campaigns to restrict individual liberties in response to apparent threats. Prohibition marked one such attempt; so did the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

“It is an easy out, to choose restricting people, with roadblocks or whatever, instead of taking action to get at the root of a serious problem like drugs,” Burns says. “The drug crisis worsened as we cut money for treatment programs and education. It’s a quick fix, and it may appeal to the middle class to say we need a crackdown. But it’s not going to work.”

“Instead,” Burns argues, “we need to think about expanding rights, such as the right to health care or a quality education.” In granting citizens such rights, society would be forced to fix problems that have festered too long, he adds. “I actually see the problem the same way the Communitarians see it. We do need a revitalization of citizen values and responsibility. But I would achieve it in a much different way.”

At this stage in their campaign, the Communitarians are delighted, rather than vexed, by criticisms of their proposals. Etzioni had suffered some sharp attacks in Williamsburg, but he wasn’t bothered by the opposition. In fact, he seemed energized by the experience. Outside, he had paused to take in Williamsburg. The air was crisp; the sky was bright blue. A crew of gardeners raked the lawns, and tourists wandered about the perfectly painted restoration of a Colonial settlement.

“What happened there, it’s actually a very good sign,” he said before getting in the car for the long ride home. “It means that we have really caught people’s attention. I didn’t think it would happen so fast.”

If it is happening fast, as Etzioni says, it is only because the country is ready. There are signs that it is: A nostalgia for 1950s-style small-town America is permeating much of today’s popular culture. On television, programs such as “I’ll Fly Away,” “Homefront” and “The Wonder Years” all nostalgically recall closely knit communities, and numerous publications have announced the death of yuppie greed and the arrival of a new traditionalism.

AMITAI ETZIONI GREW UP IN the sort of environment idealized by nostalgic--some might say syrupy--television programs and presented as the communitarian ideal. The cooperative settlement, not far from Tel Aviv, where he was raised was populated entirely by German Jewish families who had fled Europe as the Nazi shadow began to spread. His father drove the horse and cart that delivered water to farm families. Little Amitai often went along, riding on the pipe that ran from the barrel to a spigot. In the settlement, every face was familiar, and neighbors shared common values, hopes and dreams. The residents solved their own problems in direct discussions and at community meetings. Etzioni talks about life in that small community in a way that ignores the stifling pressure to conform that is usually present in such close-knit settlements. Ironically, as Israelis adopt a more urban lifestyle, such cooperative communities are becoming fewer in number.

As a young man, Etzioni fought with a small unit in the Israeli underground, an experience he considers “a most dramatic example” of the bonds of community. He attended college in Israel. He came to the United States to attend graduate school at Berkeley and taught at several universities, including Columbia. “Some of the best friends I ever had I met while watching my children in the sandbox at the playground” in New York, he says. “That’s where people came together.”

In those early years, Etzioni began developing the theories on social organization that would become his life’s work. He became a prominent theorist in the areas of institutional and community dynamics, analyzing both how individuals behave within a group and how groups relate to the outside world. Eventually, his books would become required reading for courses in sociology, psychology and social work at hundreds of universities.

Though he is now an internationally known social scientist with great ambitions, a part of Etzioni idealizes the safe, easy community life that was his in the 1950s and early ‘60s. He doesn’t worry about the social pressures that existed in those days. It is a small trade-off for the benefits of a supportive environment, he says. “I never felt constrained,” he recalls wistfully. “Community control, unlike government control, is, in the end, very gentle.”

THE COMMUNITARIANS’ ULTIMATE goal is to see their ideas take root and flourish in the hearts of voters and the minds of politicians. It is not an impossible dream. Substantial social movements have evolved from humbler beginnings. The conservative supply-side economics of the 1980s, for example, began in 1974 as a small chart drawn on a cocktail napkin by economist Arthur Laffer.

Persistent though he may be, Amitai Etzioni will not be the spokesman who will turn communitarian ideals into public policy. But he believes that someone--perhaps presidential candidates Clinton or Tsongas, or maybe New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo or even Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp--will use the language and ideas of the Communitarians to move the country into an era of moral, political and economic awakening. And he holds open the possibility that out of the communitarian movement could emerge a third political party. But for now, it is enough for Etzioni and the other Communitarians to try to rouse the conscience and the imagination of the country.

Such awakenings of the American spirit have happened before. The First Great Awakening in social consciousness occurred before the American Revolution. Others preceded the Civil War and the social-welfare movement of the early 1900s. With each awakening, popular commitment to bedrock social values was revived, and new ideals were added to the political agenda. A communitarian awakening in the 1990s could accomplish the same goals, reviving our optimism, community concern and sense of civic duty.

But in their rush to establish moral law and order, the Communitarians could follow a much darker tradition in American history. Repressive majoritarian movements, which claim to put America first or root out enemies, have also occurred with some regularity. With their talk of paring back certain civil rights and restoring moral standards, the Communitarians echo movements that championed “America for Americans” or the interests of a “Moral Majority.” The reactionary presidential campaign of TV commentator Patrick J. Buchanan may in fact represent this dark side of the communitarian impulse.

Etzioni’s ideas evoke as much worry as they do optimism. But the times, and the standing of the movement’s leaders, seem to guarantee that these concepts will be taken seriously. As the debate begins, Etzioni says the danger lies not in the communitarian platform but in the crisis of confidence that exists today.

“There are two ways to endanger our rights,” Etzioni says. “One way is to whittle away, allow adjustments that diminish them. The other danger arises when you do not attend to the essential needs of the public. Then you invite the kooks to come forward. We have a situation now where some extremely elementary requirements of the community are not attended. That must change.”

Standing on the sidewalk, suitcase in hand, the weary chief salesman of the communitarian cause prepares to go indoors. Then he stops to consider the grand scale of the task he has undertaken so near the end of his career.

“There are some people who want the world to end the day they die. I’m not like that. I want to be remembered for trying to come and make it legitimate to talk about these problems.”