Chapter 1 - Decline, You Say?
Probing the culture: National decline, or civic health?
Continuity and Recurrence
A Code of conduct and beliefs
Character as Destiny
Chapter 2 - The Frontier, A State of Mind
An immigrant's frontier
The frontier's stamp
Equality
Personal dignity
Tolerance, forgiveness and second chances
Aversion to extremes; willingness to compromise
Disdain for history and rejecting the past
Self-reliance
Chapter 3 - The Frontier's Dark Side
Criminality
Violence as quasi-ideology
Ethno-cultural discrimination
Chapter 4 - What We Believe
Beliefs, anchoring clipper ship America
Personal freedom and independence
Equality and consequences
There Ought to be a Law
The Constitution, container of beliefs
Chapter 5 - What We Expect
The American Code
Expecting fairness, justice and morality
Defending personal rights
Pursuing of happiness
Questing for perfection
Chapter 6 - The Community, America's Harbor
Individual and Community
Community spirit
The individual alone, the individual apart
Forming associations
Giving and sharing
Cloudy or sunny?
Chapter 7 - Bitten by the Invention Bug
Practicality
Promoting change and improvement
Ingenuity, problem solving and inventiveness
Attraction to challenges
Can-do
Chapter 8 - Knowledge and Ignorance
Why learn more than necessary?
Unreceptive to intellectual curiosity
Indisposed to think critically
Undismayed by ignorance
Uncomfortable with intellectuality
Education to the rescue?
Carving, slicing, molding education
Chapter 9 - America, How Special?
Exceptionalism as faith
America-the-Good
America-the-Dominant
The Good against the Dominant
Democracy as faith
The messianic impulse
The insular stance
How special, then?
Chapter 10 - So, Decline, Upswing or Continuity?
Civic vigor
Equality, justice and opportunity
Inventiveness and education
Cultural vitality
Morality and morals
Ain't broke, can use some fixing
References
Bibliography