"Freedom is perhaps the most resonant, deeply held American value... Yet freedom turns out to mean being left alone by others, not having other peoples' values, ideas or styles of life forced upon one. But if the entire world is made up of individuals, each endowed with the right to be free of other's demands, it becomes hard to forge bonds of attachment to, or cooperation with other people, since such bonds would imply obligations that necessarily impinge on one's freedom." - Robert Bellah
(The progress of individualism, it turns out, shades easily into fragmentation.)