That’s what makes speculators a perfect target: by going after them, Congress can demonstrate to voters that it understands their pain, and at the same time avoid doing anything that might require real sacrifice from Americans. Our dependence on foreign oil, together with the fiscal fecklessness that has helped reduce the value of the dollar, means that there is no easy way out of where we are. But in an election year that’s hardly a message that anyone in Washington is going to deliver.

From the archive:

In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”. He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself. But many voters would rather not suffer at all.

More on suffering:

In the 21st century, we "shy away from death," she says, and we tend to think of a good death as a sudden one. Not so in the 19th century. Dying well meant having time to assess your spiritual state and say goodbye -- which is difficult to do if you're killed in battle.

What's more, there were so many dying: some 620,000 soldiers in four years. As a percentage of population, Faust says, that's "the equivalent of 6 million Americans today."

How could the culture not be changed?

... Her early work centered on the intellectual arguments of slavery's prewar defenders. She wanted to understand how whole classes of people can get caught up in a shared worldview, to the point that they simply can't see.

Continuing:

In the spring of 1863, Lord & Taylor in New York, down on Ladies’ Mile, opened a “mourning store,” where the new widows of the Civil War could dress their grief in suitable fashion.

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

Bush: first of all, we have said that whatever we do... will be legal.