That would have shown that the Middle East situation resurrects a dilemma conservatives have explored for decades: that is, the ways in which American culture undermines American politics. American-style capitalism seemed to triumph with the end of the cold war, but when markets have been opened to free enterprise, all too often they have yielded a flood of consumer goods and cheap entertainments more than the circulation of democratic ideals...How does a society thrive when its mainstream culture fosters adversarial and irreverent behaviors?

              Thus repines Mark Bauerlein as his mind grapples with the apparent contradiction between popular culture and democratic values. But it should not come as a surprise that the deluge of market goods and the ungracious behavior they inspire are what is driving this country. Adam Smith noted that people are selfish and vain above all else and it is that vanity that keeps the economy humming smoothly along. The adversarial demeanor that the culture engenders is nothing more than the clashing powers of our collective vanities. And it all works out. Smith proposed from his observations on the free market that an invisible hand would be responsible for the good of all but only if people pursue their own interests. Does the process sound familiar? The result will be a balance, much like how our federal government divides sovereignty. The fact of the matter is we cannot prevent culture from eroding at the national character. John Adams tells us why.
                 Once a country sets upon the path of wealth and riches nothing will bring it back to its first principles of frugality. People quickly forget what it was like to live a life absent of any luxury and get caught up in the high life. In 1819, at the twilight of both their lives, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson where discussing in their remarkable correspondence their wariness of corruption in public affairs. Jefferson's thoughts hearkened back to ancient Rome where he saw the citizens of that republic fall prey to a debased, irredeemable senate. Adams did concur that Rome had an awful political system but he had the utmost faith in the American constitution steeped as it was in the British tradition. He did doubt, however, any nation's capacity to restore it's infant principles once success crept in. "Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminancy, intoxication, extravagance, vice, and folly?" In the alluring glow of riches, memories of the difficult, demanding past fade away.
                 Wealth's ability to render obsolete those classical republican virtues sounds so discouraging but it should not dampen one's spirits. As a conservative, Mr. Baurlein should understand as well as any other that conservatism recognizes the evanescence of purity. As George Will reminds us: "Thoughtful conservatives—meaning those whose conservatism arises from reflections deeper than an aversion to high marginal tax rates—are conservative because they understand how thin and perishable is the crust of civilization, and hence how always near society's surface are the molten passions that must be checked by force when they cannot be tamed by socialization." So too are conservatives aware of how chimerical it is to think that men will adhere to qualities of character that are perceived to only belong back in the revolutionary days, where doubtless Baurlein has seated high culture. Yet one need not think Americans will lose their morality in the crazyness of commercialism. Many still strive to preserve those positive habits, the dignity of religion, the attitude of political detachment through solid work ethic. Instead, by such efforts, "let us hope", as Abraham Lincoln put it, "that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away."