"A comparison between Teddy Roosevelt's America when the WASP ethos was in flower with George Bush's relativistic, "One Nation under Therapy" America is striking."
So true. Even in the Fifties and Sixties that ethos at its best was still evident. In our small town when I was growing up there was an elderly Protestant man, a retired lawyer, who used to shovel the sidewalk in front of his house after every snowfall. Then without fail he would shovel the sidewalk of the two spinsters across the street. He was a good neighbor, who embodied the WASP ethos in the most quiet, unassuming way, a real gentleman.
Wow, a lawyer doing manual labor (same could be said for a lot of "professionals"). Sounds like a very honorable man. Sadly, I think that is largely a bigone era.