If the young United States had a mission, it was not to liberate but to expand. From the outset, Americans evinced a compulsion to acquire territory and extend their commercial reach abroad. Expansion made the United States the “land of opportunity.” From the expansion came abundance. Out of abundance came substantive freedom. Documents drafted in Philadelphia promised liberty. Making good on those promises required a political economy that facilitated the creation of wealth on an enormous scale.

As the Industrial Revolution took hold, Americans came to count on an ever-larger economic pie to anesthetize the unruly and ameliorate tensions related to class, race, religion, and ethnicity. Money became the preferred lubricant for keeping social and political friction within tolerable limits.

If one were to choose a single word to characterize the American identity, it would have to be more. For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire, which it does in  part through the distribution of largesse at home [Congress] and in part through the pursuit of imperial ambitions abroad [Executive Branch].

As individuals, our appetites and expectations have grown exponentially. The collective capacity or our domestic political economy to satisfy those appetites has not kept pace with demand. Whether the issue at hand is oil, credit, or the availability of cheap consumer goods, we expect the world to accommodate the American way of life.

It would be misleading to suggest that every American has surrendered to this ethic of self-gratification. Resistance to its demands persists and takes many forms. Yet dissenters, intent of curbing the American penchant for consumptions and self-indulgence, are fighting a rear-guard action, valiant perhaps but unlikely to reverse the tide.