a culture in pursuit

"The novelty of America, in other words, lay not in the perennially restless pursuit of happiness, but in the extension of that pursuit to an entire culture on a scale hitherto unknown."  Darrin McMahon

Reading McMahon after Cullen on both the "Dream of Home ownership" and the "Dream of the Coast" provides the proposal above with very specific images of Americans on the move.  I think, of course, of the promise of happiness that drew and draws many immigrants to the USA.  That promise is certainly of happiness built upon a minimum combination of liberty and prosperity whether the prosperity is built upon a Midwestern homestead or public education or a job.  It is also the case that generation after generation of Americans continue to rush toward an open future in the expectation that happiness is to be found in the West, on a gold claim, or by moving into one's own house.  Whatever the goal (happiness or status or possessions), or the means of reaching it, rushing toward is the vivid image of Americans that I take from Cullen and this sentence from McMahon.

Americans are on the move, going fast, even if we're only going around a track in a car.  (See my previous post.)  Is this is our characteristic, national being?  Is the basic sentence to be written about us: see Americans run?  If so, perhaps that is why Weber (quoted on p. 358 in McMahon) wrote: "in the field of [capitalism's] highest development, the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport."