  Santayana’s focus is on the individual, and the role of the state is to protect and to enable the individual to flourish. The goal is not something far off to be worked toward. It is not a task to be accomplished and then supplanted by another task, as is often the case with American enterprise does. Rather it is the celebration of life in its festivities. It is Aristotle’s practical wisdom: structuring individual life as it is, living it joyfully, and assuring that one’s commitments are conducive to the delights of the intellect and consistent with the demands of the time and tradition. It is the exercise of one’s free choice, shaping one’s life through material well-being, but doing so to appreciate the poetic, dramatic quality of our own existence. To rush through life and die without the joy of living, that is the tragedy of American life.