associating with others,'' (Hirschman 9). Individualism has long been understood as pervasive in America. The drafters of the constitution, for example, felt the populace needed governing in part because of a general tendency to place themselves first which left them “unthinking” with regard to the good of the collective whole (Grabb, et al. 1999). Alexis de Tocqueville, observing Americans in 1831 on the 9-month tour that served as the basis for his famous Democracy in America, also worries about the individualism he observes. Americans believe they “owe nothing to any man . . . they acquire the habit of always considering themselves standing alone, and are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands . . . [D]emocracy . . . throws him back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart” (620). The rise of American industrial centers in the 19th century set the stage for capitalist individualism which promoted the idea that every man was working for himself in competition with others. But niche forms of individualism were taking shape elsewhere, too. Individualism had diverse champions and took different forms between, for example, emerging oil barons on the East Coast and cowboys on the Western Frontier (Grabb et al. 1999). McCarthy’s critique in No Country is primarily concerned with the mode of individualism that emerged from the American West, where lawlessness and isolation instilled a fierce independence for which anthropologist Francis L. K. Hsu coined the phrase “rugged individualism.” To Hsu, rugged individualists operate as lone moral agents. If capitalist individualists believe that their personal success accrues benefits to society more broadly, the rugged individualist refuses to consider the greater good, and cares only about their own success or wellbeing. To Hsu, rugged individualists are “driven to treat all other human beings as things to be manipulated, coerced, or eliminated, if they happen to get in the way” (Hirschman 10). The America that is the setting for No Country for Old Men was targeted by Ronald Reagan’s campaign which appealed to the autonomy so many found aspirational. Campaign promises to shrink government by cutting social welfare programs were premised on the idea that Americans should be self-reliant, and that government assistance served only to hold them back from realizing their potential. Assistance from the government was publicly stigmatized as a moral failure, an indication of weakness or laziness on the part of citizens who fell for a “trap” of dependency (Reagan 1987). The campaign espoused the idea that its citizens should strive for self-reliance at all costs, as government “intervention and intrusion” in Americans’ lives was the root of the socioeconomic problems they faced (Reagan 1982). It was styled on the idea that government should be immune from the moral responsibility to provide assistance to its citizens, an ethos that came to define social relations of the subsequent era. Self-reliance became the highest virtue, even when it was directly at odds with social responsibility. 99
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