Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

In the book’s next-to-last chapter, Hirschman argued that Americans were actually less prone to expressing voice in this way than citizens of other countries, mainly because they were so accustomed to dealing with objectionable situations by exercising a less taxing option: the resort to exit. In a frontier society founded by rootless pioneers and blessed with an abundance of land, people were used to dealing with problems that arose in the community, shop, or church by finding somewhere new to live, work, or worship, which obviated the need to vocalize dissent.