Our nostalgia tic also explains a lot. Americans have always been apt to think of America as the best place on Earth—but also that it used to be so much better, more pioneering, more charming, more virtuous, more authentic. People imagined in the 1700s that it was better in the theocratic wilderness of the 1600s, then in the 1800s that it was better back in the 1700s, before the racket and speed of factories and railroads;
