We are, judging by our values and actions, a very
materialistic and individualistic society. We have a common value which suggests people
should "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps", take care of themselves and their
families, and ask for little from society. This probably originates in the days when
government was absent (on the frontier, for example) and the population more scattered,
and you were forced to be self-reliant or you didn't
survive.
In the recent health care debate, there seemed to
be little concern on the part of many that 1 in 6 Americans had no health insurance at
all. There is an underlying, usually unspoken, feeling that if you are poor, you
deserve to be poor, or that if you take state aid, you must be
lazy.
Our Charles Darwin "Survival of the Fittest" attitude
is a large part of our history, and apparently, it is very difficult to overcome.
Surprising, because Americans are overwhelmingly patriotic about
country, they just don't translate that pride, somehow, to their
own society and its people.
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