USAmericans have always been "a people so self-centered that we are willing to [fill in the blanks]"

Bob Scheffer almost sums it up in regard to the poor working stiff trampled to death by rabid shopping-bots last Friday morning. I say almost because he assumes these are the people we've become.

clipped from www.cbsnews.com When store officials ordered the mob out of the store because someone had died, many called it unfair, because they said they had been waiting hours to shop....If we have become a people so self-centered that we are willing to step over a lifeless body to get a bargain, we have problems that go beyond terrorists, a credit crunch and bad mortgages.

In many really important respects, we USAmericans have always been that self-centered.

I can't help but notice a mentality akin to that of these shoppers writ large in our history of Manifest Destiny. After all, weren't entire nations of people trampled to death in the (predominantly white) USAmerican self-centered stampede for the "bargain" of their conquered lands?