ABSTRACT
American multicultural democracy is populated by groups with very different understandings of the major values that have historically served to integrate divergent ethnic groups. Many Americans think of one's democratic ideals as the cement that binds American national identity. National culture clusters, then, are defined by the unique composite of specific value ideals central to a society, the relationship of the cluster elements to each other, and the range and specific location on each of the core value ideal continuum. Successive waves of immigrants—Irish, Hispanic, Asian, not all of them Protestant by any means—found a place by accepting and building on what then truly became a national American cultural elements. In fostering the values in the home, at school, and in occupational networks the groups not only reinforced these "traditional" American cultural elements, and the codes that supported them, but furthered the psychology that sustained them.
