Amitai Etzioni: America's communitarian-in-chief

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Some liberals remain unconvinced, and call the measures that communitarians back in their manifestos and books, and in The Responsive Community, the journal that Etzioni edits--mandatory public service for students and welfare recipients, restrictions on divorce, programs to trace the sexual contacts of HIV-positive people--majoritarian inroads upon personal freedom. Etzioni has ready and unrancorous responses.

'The subtitle of The Responsive Community is Rights and Responsibilities,' he points out, 'not Responsibilities and Rights. Half of the story we tell is about rights, and we put them first. When we as a nation mindlessly multiply rights and ignore the responsibilities that go with them, then we actually undermine the rights.'

At the same time, Etzioni insists that the communitarian essence lies not in this or that policy, but in its call for honest conversation. 'In all these years in the United States,' he says, 'I have never gotten used to the fact that Americans can't seem to find a middle ground between superficial contact and angry confrontation. Community, which we are trying to build, both creates and benefits from dialogue, in which you open up to others, get upset, work things out, and continue together.'

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