We live in an age of petty hopes and persistent conflicts. Take first our hopes. In the book The Real American Dream, Andrew Delbanco traced the history of the scope of American dreams—from the “holy God” of the Puritan founders, to the “great nation” of the nineteenth-century patriots, to the “satisfied self” of many today. With some modifications, America may be in this regard indicative of trends in most societies that are highly integrated into the global market system. The idea