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The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery ... and downright venality swallow up the whole society.

In “King Lear,” the illegitimate son, Edmund, says that blaming bad behavior on planetary influences is “foppery.”

All this expensive fashion foppery came at the expense of the poor.

But the Pilgrims, who regarded personal adornment as a species of idolatry, were dismayed by what they saw as the indigenous penchant for foppery.

If America chooses to ignore this due to naiveté, strategic foppery or bean counting, we will be subjects to those powers that are more fastidious and realistic in their approach.