Not much has changed since then as far as being wasteful goes. In fact, it’s gotten worse. Sure Americans recycle. We talk green and want to save the polar bears. But Americans still remain as wasteful as ever. A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council released this week found that Americans “waste 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s.”

The spirit of John Hancock and his gang of aristocrats——optimists all who risked their lives and property as signatories to revolution——is rare. Regrettably, that optimistic spirit——that spirit that drives all American progress——has been at historic odds with an uncharitable impulse among the American people: a selfishness that paradoxically afflicts both the afflicters and the afflicted, as we see in this election season.