much of a consumer market one can command, one is forced to share our capacity to work and provide services with others. Therefore a way to successfully confront our current economic and social predicaments would be to reclaim this old American value that defines the quality of our existence in terms of the practical contributions of all members of our community. This way of life is foreign to the wastefulness of contemporary postindustrial society, for it focuses in a sustainable way on the progressive reproduction of both an individual and the society in which she lives. It encourages citizens to take a critical look on the nature of their lifestyles since the latter have serious practical and moral implications for the whole society. It tends to discourage excess as matter of general ethics but also associates a healthy human spirit with a healthy communal and ecological context. Such a society ensures that human beings are masters of their history.
Though such a work of spiritual revolution need not be conducted “from above,” for any American national leaders trying to restore American spiritual and socioeconomic health, a task to which our current President has strongly committed to, making such a work of cultural recovery part of one’s very being represents one of the best strategies available to them. For America’s founding ideals can reform the internal constitution of our leaders in ways that can benefit our society, whose well-being ultimately reposes on the ability of our leaders to minimize their personal ambitions and allow their skills and vision for the long-term progress of our society to guide their decisions. If Plato’s solution to Gyges’ sociopathic inclinations is an appeal to transcendental ideals that