[anon291]

> American individualism has existed for multiple generations

Can you back this up? Because a review of historic American literature would make our modern age of hyper-individualism 'self-help', etc, seem like a completely foreign culture.

[hollerith]

Societies tend towards an organizing principle, and liberty has been the organizing principle of the US since its founding no less than the interests of the German race was the organizing principle for the Third Reich and anti-capitalism was the organizing principle of the Soviet Union.

(Democracy was seen by the founders as way to protect liberty more than liberty was seen as a way to protect democracy.)

"Don't tread on me," was a slogan of the American revolution. Ditto, "give me liberty or give me death." For many decades, drug addiction raged in the US while heroin and cocaine remained legal because a Federal law against the free trade in these drugs was seen as an unconstitutional curtailment of the individual's liberty. The starting of a Federal income tax was likewise held up for decades on the same argument.

Again, liberty has been the main organizing principle of the US since its founding, and I'd be a little surprised to learn that there are Americans with IQs above 110 that do not know that, but I guess some people are too busy to learn about history and politics.