Our Daily Bleg: What's a Responsible American to Do?

The average responsible, fiscally prudent, law-abiding American can be forgiven for feeling not just battered by the recession but also confused. In recent months, she has simultaneously been frightened into tightening her purse strings while also being scolded for not buying more things so that people can keep their jobs. She is also told that the recession isn’t her fault personally and yet she is made to feel as if she’s bearing more of a brunt than the people who are at fault.
A reader named Carolyn Norton, a “WebSphere Lead Serviceability Architect” for IBM, writes with the following bleg (explained here; send your own request here) that in the kindest possible way gets to the core of the issue:

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
So I’m asking. What can/should we do? Spend? Save? Grow a victory garden?