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e of the settling of the continent, when thousands of Native American Indians were killed, their lands were taken, and much of their culture was destroyed. The frontier experience of aggressiveness began when the first colonist settled on the east coast of the continent in the 1600s. It ended in about the 1890’s when the last western lands were occupied. 本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供As one frontier area was settled, people began moving farther west into the next unsettled area after another, Americans moved across an entire continent, 2700 miles wide. They came to believe that it was their destiny to control all the land, and eventually they did. Americans see the aspects of the frontier, their beliefs, as good, inspiring examples of traditional American values in their original aggressiveness and rude form. The rush for gold in California, for silver in Montana, and for fertile land in all the western territories provided endless stories of aggressiveness. The competition for success, which was rarely more colorful or adventurous, also shows the root of aggressiveness. When it was announced that almost 2 million acres of good land in Oklahoma would be opened for settlement in April 1889, thousands of settlers gathered on the border waiting for the exact time to be announced. When it was, they rushed into the territory in wagons and on horseback to claim the best land they could find for themselves.[1](P321)

In aristocratic European nations, the American frontiers left behind the material wealth and comforts of the ruling classes that were guaranteed by birth. As de Tocqueville pointed out, the wealthy took these things for granted and placed little importance on material things. The poor people in those aristocratic nations also did not concern themselves with wealth, since they knew that they had so little hope of becoming wealthy or changing their status. In the United States, the idea of equality of opportunity made the level of material wealth of both the rich and the poor much less certain. At any time, the rich might lose some of their wealth, and the poor might increase theirs. 本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供Therefore, all classes in American society thought about protecting their material possessions and looked for ways to acquire more. De Tocqueville believed that this was so much a matter of greed or rather it was a matter of their insecurity. People might be naturally insecure if their material wealth, and that of their children, could change so rapidly either upward or downward during a lifetime, or even during a single generation.[2]So it is extremely important both to rich American and poor American to increase their wealth and material comforts. Unlike many countries, where the love of material things was seen as a vice, a mark of weak moral character, in the United States it was seen as a virtue: a positive incentive to get process and a reward for successful efforts. This kind of virtue causes the endless development of aggressiveness in American culture. The aggressiveness has been an urgent and useful instrument for Americans to satisfy their acquisitive demands of wealth and material things, and became a necessary part of American culture. The expansion of McDonald is a steady evidence of aggressiveness of American culture.

It is the pursuing of material and wealth that has made up the moral value of American culture and caused its aggressiveness, which can be perceived clearly in McDonald’s culture.

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