Paragraph 9: But in modern America, when you look at real issues where individual rights conflict with group interests, Americans don’t appear to see things this way at all. Over the last few decades, scholars around the world have collaborated to mount surveys of representative samples of people from different countries. The International Social Survey Programme, or ISSP, and the World Value Surveys, or WVS, are probably the longest-running, most reliable such projects. Starting with just a handful of countries, both now pose the same questions to respondents from dozens of nations.

Paragraph 10: Their findings suggest that in several major areas, Americans are clearly less individualistic than western Europeans. One topic pits individual conscience against the demands of the state. In 2006, the ISSP asked the question “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?” At 45 percent, Americans were the least likely out of nine nationalities to say that people should at least on occasion follow their consciences — far fewer than, for example, the Swedes (70 percent) and the French (78 percent). Similarly, in 2003, Americans turned out to be the most likely to embrace the statement “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong.”

Paragraph 11: Such results contradict the message we send when we assign students the work of say, Henry David Thoreau, a follower of Emerson’s who wrote “Civil Disobedience,” or celebrate the bravery of Martin Luther King Jr. They contradict much of the justification for the Second Amendment, whose supporters see it as empowering the individual with a gun to say no to the state.

Paragraph 12: But what about more intimate arenas of life? In 1991, the ISSP asked respondents whether they agreed that “Right or wrong should be a matter of personal conscience.” Americans came in next to last of seven nationalities with 47 percent agreeing, one point ahead of the Norwegians, but almost 20 points behind the Dutch and more than 40 points behind the Austrians.

Paragraph 13:The nature of individualism is complex, however, and there are at least a couple of ways that Americans in the ISSP and similar surveys do appear more individualistic than Europeans. For one, Americans are usually the most likely to say that individuals determine their own fates. What happens to you is your own doing, not the product of external circumstances. For Americans, things are the way they are because individuals made choices.

Paragraph 14:Also, the closer survey questions get to matters of economics and government, the clearer it is that Americans are strong believers in laissez-faire. Americans are much likelier than Europeans to reject government or workers interfering with owners’ authority to run their businesses.

Paragraph 15: Nonetheless, the libertarianism of Emerson does not characterize Americans’ broader understandings of the role of the individual in society. In fact, Americans seem much more willing to submerge personal liberty to the group than Europeans are.

Paragraph 16: Yet, the notions of individualism and liberty have lost none of their rhetorical power in today’s America — we clearly see ourselves as individualists, far more so than Europeans do. How do we explain this contradiction, between the celebration of America as the land of individual freedom and Americans’ actual tendency to favor the group?

Paragraph 17: The answer, I think, is that Americans have historically adhered to a distinctive view of the individual’s place in society, a view that can be called “communal voluntarism.”

Paragraph 18: Americans insist on the reality and value of individual free choice, including, critically, free choice to join or leave groups, be they companies or countries. However, Americans also believe that, once individuals are members of the group, they must be loyal. You could think of this philosophy as “love it or leave it” — with the understanding that you aren’t forced to join and are genuinely free to leave.

Paragraph 19: In the Old World, communities were more commonly imposed on individuals, and constraining. Traditionally, one was born into a clan, ethnicity, church, village, or nation and pretty much locked into it. In the New World, with the noted exception of Indians and slaves, membership became a matter of free choice and voluntary commitment.

Paragraph 20: Americans believe in contracts — or covenants, to use religious language. Our culture insists that if you marry, if you take a job, if you join a club, and so on, you are signing an explicit or implicit contract to cooperate and conform. If the group no longer works for you, the door is open. American-style individualism lies in the freedom to choose; American-style collectivism lies in the commitment to the group that freely choosing entails.

Paragraph 21: . . . In 1630, John Winthrop, who would be the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, addressed his shipmates sailing to the New World. They were a mix of Puritan refugees and those simply traveling to seek their fortunes. He urged each one to submit to the group: “We must be knit together in this work as one man...[W]e must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes...our community as members of the same body.”

Paragraph 22: Communal voluntarism characterized the Protestant congregations that sprung up all over the United States in the late 18th and the 19th centuries. They provided the archetype of the American community — freely formed but highly absorbing. Americans are especially likely to switch denominations and churches, but also to be religiously enthusiastic members of the ones they are in.