today

... America is understood as the place in which freedom is construed as a matter centrally, perhaps exclusively, of individual liberty (as opposed to the achievement of the power to do or be something in particular - for example, to be more fully human or more properly faithful). Most Americans exercise their liberty by pursuing happiness and satisfaction in the private spheres of family life, consumption, and enjoyment. Larger workplace and public identities are taken to be instrumental to satisfactions in these more private spheres, unless, of course, some people just happen to enjoy political work or quasi-familial workplace friendships or workplace activities. The business of politics in America is the fair reconciliation of competitive individual and factional interests. There are not enough goods to go around to enable everyone to satisfy every preference. Government hence properly sets up rules of fair competition, including centrally the laws of property and person and the laws of contract, fair trade, workplace safety, and nonexploitativeness.

Richard Eldridge
Cavell on American Philosophy and the Idea of America
in "Stanley Cavell" Cambridge University Press, 2003