Credit should be given where it is due. By blending an abundance of natural resources with powerful elements of science, technology, managerial innovation, individual freedom, entrepreneurial speculation, hard work, and personal profits, America's modern economy has outproduced all other forms of economic enterprise in history. As a result, many Americans are equipped to sustain a level of health and comfort that few are inclined to relinquish. Not surprisingly, poorer states around the world hope to achieve a similar measure of material success.

On the other hand, the tale of citizenship highlights predicaments that will not go away. First, that consumerist aspirations, and the economy which makes, promotes, and sells commodities, create a wide range of social and economic problems. Second, that addressing such matters is difficult, because Americans tend to overlook the systematic practices which generate them and therefore lack motivation to pull together in a republican fashion to improve the quality of community life.

The Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorilla

All this suggests that only a paradigm shift can energize citizens and direct them to where political action should take place. Americans usually regard civil society as benign and even beneficial. Before the Revolution, they came to believe that religious pluralism does not threaten the general welfare. Later, they decided that the realm of work is harmless and fruitful. And finally, they all along tended to accept immigrants who would adopt republican values.