Misguided Individualism is Destroying American Democracy

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

There are many reasons why our democracy, and democracy around the world, are in peril, but I want to focus today on one specific aspect that is close to uniquely applicable to the United States: our worship of individualism.

I was moved to this thought by this morning’s Letter from an American by the eminent historian Heather Cox Richardson: January 5, 2025 (OK, late last night’s). She was writing about letters left behind by Green Beret Master Sergeant Matthew Alan Livelsberger before he blew up his Tesla outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas:

Livelsberger’s notes reflect not reality but rather the political rhetoric in which many Americans have marinated since the 1950s: the idea that a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends.

It is no accident, Richardson suggests, that this idea was heavily promoted by Ronald Reagan:

Ronald Reagan made that argument central to American political debate in the 1980s. Joining those who claimed that the modern American state was creeping toward communism, he warned that the federal government was the current problem in the nation. He championed a mythological American cowboy who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/6/2295472/-Misguided-Individualism-is-Destroying-American-Democracy