George Santayana writing in Character and Opinion in the United States (1918):

Even what is best in American life is compulsory – the idealism, the zeal, the beautiful happy unison of its great moments.  You must wave, you must cheer, you must push with the irresistible crowd; otherwise you will feel like a traitor, a soulless outcast, a deserted ship high and dry on the shore.  In America, there is but one way of being saved, though it is not peculiar to any of the official religions, which themselves must silently conform to the national orthodoxy, or else become impotent and merely ornamental.  This national faith and morality are vague in idea, but inexorable in spirit; they are the gospel of work and the belief in progress.  By them, in a country where all men are free, every man finds what most matters has been settled for him beforehand.”