Huntington, Samuel P. "American Ideals versus American Institutions." Political Science Quarterly v. 97, n. 1 (1982): 1-37.

Throughout the history of the United States a broad consensus has existed among the American people in support of liberal, democratic, individualistic, and egalitarian values. These political values and ideals constitute what Gunnar Myrdal termed “the American Creed,” and they have provided the core of American national identity since the eighteenth century. Also throughout American history, political institutions have reflected these values but have always fallen short of realizing them in a satisfactory manner. A gap has always existed between the ideals in which Americans believed and the institutions that embodied their practice. This gap between ideals and institutional practice has generated continuing disharmony between the normative and existential dimensions of American politics. Being human, Americans have never been able to live up to their ideals; being Americans, they have also been unable to abandon them. They have instead existed in a state of national cognitive dissonance, which they have attempted to relieve through various combinations of moralism, cynicism, complacency, and hypocrisy. The “burr under the saddle,” as Robert Penn Warren called it, and the efforts to remove that burr have been central features of American politics, defining its dynamics and shape, since at least the eighteenth century and perhaps before. The question now is: Will the gap between ideals and institutional practices and the responses to it continue to play the same role in American politics in the future that they have in the past? Or are there changes taking place or likely to take place in American political ideals, political institutions, and the relation between them that will make their future significantly different from their past?

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