If there's a distinctly American burden to bear beyond the extra 20 pounds so many of us carry around anyway, it would be balancing our dream of unlimited freedom with the fact that unlimited freedom is only good in moderation. Most of the time, we just forget the moderation part and grab on to what unlimited freedom we can.

This is what separates us from Canadians: even when we work as a team, we give awards for individual achievement. This is what makes us eat and talk much too loudly in restaurants sometimes (especially noticeable in Europe), because we're so special and independent.

Ever since I returned from a month in Australia and New Zealand, I've been impressed anew with the abundance of America. Simultaneous with that abundance, however, is a really unattractive failure to appreciate or manage it very well. We have more than enough for everybody, but we throw most of it away because it's hard work to do something productive.

The relative scarcity of goods in even rich countries like Australia and New Zealand produces a pulling-together and sharing ethos, while our mega-abundance sends us off in different directions trying to over-achieve each other by ever greater factors of ten.

I guess, in the end, independence and moderation are incompatible, though not mutually exclusive. The ancient Greek ideal of moderation didn't forbid excess, it wisely allowed a little excess to counter-balance all the moderation it preached. The modern American ideal of independence sends us down a road toward excess though over-achievement and over-consumption, with all thought of moderation way over there someplace.