Americans

Firstly, Walzer argues the need to maintain the openness of immigration and to oppose government policies targeted at restricting the flow of external immigration - Americans are all immigrants and it would be wrong to permit some and turn back others; secondly, he suggests the need to strengthen the public school system to assist in its purpose of teaching history, the democratic political system as well as the shared immigrant experience; thirdly, Walzer pushes the need to recognize and help nurture the sources of public political competency as well as the need for social universal health care; fourthly, he advocates the absolute requirement that the state retain neutrality in its activities, persuasions and its composition to an ultimate general - and therefore non-specific ethnic, racial or religious - character; fifthly, Walzer envisions in his perspective of American pluralism the need for increasingly participatory politics; and lastly, as part of this vision, to not allow the system be overcome by the evident "silliness and intermittent nastiness" that is part and parcel of multicultural democracies
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             This pluralism is not merely a matter of multi-ethnicity, it is also a matter of political expression and understanding. As Walzer puts it, "Americans are communal in their private affairs, individualistic in their politics". The plurality comes not simply from differing heritage, but from the way Americans choose to live; "for support and comfort and a sense of belonging, men and women look to their groups; for freedom and mobility, they look to the state". In some regards, this is what makes Americans unique, in others, it acts as a fair indicator of their liberal origins and aptitudes. However, Walzer suggests that the individualistic tendencies of liberal America also act to undermine both the plurality of cultures and the singular citizenship; "both are threatened by a radicalized ideology of individualism and an anti-politics of privatization".