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The Myth of American Individualism

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Shain seriously argues that the ideals of the American Revolution lacked political individualism. In reality, he sees the principles forwarded by the Founders opposing 'political theories that gave priority to 'the liberty, rights, or independent action of the individual'' (Shain 21). He sees the primary political goal of the revolution as cementing the communal power to determine the consciousness of the individual. But suddenly, out of nowhere, he observes that 'shortly, after the War of Independence (which ended in 1783), however, some of the nationalist elite began to turn away from communal ethical goals' (Shain 113). Surprise, surprise! Could this sentence be the source: 'And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it' (Locke Par. 97). Or maybe this one: 'I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumber' (Paine, Common Sense). And how does Mr. Shain explain the evolving American Romantic? He characterizes a whole literary movement from Melville, Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, to Twain and Crèvec'ur as 'a small group of exceptional Americans' (113).
Coming from an existentialist background, I reject Shain's argumentation as profoundly as Marx opposed Hegel ' but, of course, the other way around. I think his argumentation is inconsistent and weak. Even the Puritans had a sense for individualism (see e.g. the poetry of Anne Bradstreet or the experiences of Mary Rowlandson). Mr. Shain defers too much in order to argue his Aristotelian logic. There is, furthermore, no philosophical discussion about determination vs. free choice. Names like Althusser or Nietzsche do not appear at all in his bibliography.

How can a book subtitled "The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought" omit the political thoughts and influences of Roger Williams and William Penn?