In Search of America's Soul

THERE IS a cartoon on Page 82 of Aftershock, the Wall Street Journal Business bestseller, that shows a couple meeting their investment advisor and saying, "We were wondering if now would be a good time to panic." As we searched for America's Soul it was impossible not to see this worry among Americans even as they tried to hold on to the heroism of the past. But their brashness failed to inspire hope in the triumphant cult of the American Dream that some economists were insisting was over. Most people, said the writers of Aftershock, cannot imagine what the future will be. The book and a lot in the news media are mournful reminders that "things are not going back to how they were before" and they echo the lament of two other prominent American writers that America had fallen behind in the world it invented. Would it come back? The cartoon summed up the dismal state of the American society as it struggles to recover from more than a decade of wars, from a Congress that a majority of Americans do not trust, and from a worsening racial environment dramatized by the killing of the black teenager Trayvon Martin.