...With reference to American democracy and the Western, it becomes a question of "how the bourgeois virtues, especially the domestic virtues, can be said to get a psychological grip in an environment where the heroic and martial virtues are so important," or, how do you get bloodthirsty gunslingers to act like responsible citizens, especially when being a gunslinger is so goddamn much fun?
It's a worthwhile question, especially given the current disjunction between the rationalist assumptions behind most present political philosophy and science and the crazy people actually running (and voting for) the government. John Wayne's face, the very image of self-anointed authority, is as likely a place as any for answers.
...Long ago, Leslie Fiedler pointed out that there's always something childish in great works of American literature, where running from civilization is a way of fleeing the dominion of women and dodging the burdens of responsibility, maturity, and marriage.