ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the articulation of neoliberalism with U.S. secular religion through a close look at the television series The Men Who Built America. Working from a critical rhetorical perspective, I argue that, in its coverage of the lives and times of a handful of famous industrialists, the series offers a uniquely neoliberal conception of what is great about the United States. Additionally, the series functions didactically, coaching viewers to adopt bourgeois virtues that produce economic success in our system, even as they perpetuate many of our most painful social problems. Finally, the series draws from and perpetuates an ideology that erases labor and laborers from the process of capitalist production, thereby aiding in the exploitation of working people.
