Blacks, in the conservative view Dillard presents, are the definitive race, and so the greatest obstacle to colorblindness and race-free individualism.
They can see that the beautiful ideas we are peddling - democracy, free speech, individualism - bring considerable negatives with them.
There's a kind of melancholy and fragility about the book despite its subject matter (the brutality of Manifest Destiny and free market individualism perhaps).
And while most of the 131 million members of the civilian labor force are not Internet titans or wear-what-you-want free agents, individualism is ever expanding, especially among those who invent lifestyles for everyone else: Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley.
This was the era of the cold war and, in popular terms, Spassky represented the Soviet subsidised system that had ruled international chess for decades, while Fischer embodied the spirit of American free market individualism standing up to communist collective might.
Mawlana was not only a mystical and idealist Sufi but he was also a person who had been free from individualism and personal passion.
For these defenders of free-market individualism, rights are playthings of the middle-class.
The battle lines are now between a deracinated free-market individualism and a social communitarianism that believes in mutual responsibility.
But other residents said "Gangnam Style" had accurately captured the split personality of an area that embraces an American-style free-spirited individualism while also trying to keep a Korean identity.
But in a country that prides itself on free-market individualism, the state's role in the auto industry has proved a controversial issue, as the BBC's Paul Mason reports.
Free will and individualism are, he says, illusions.
