I read an interesting article today regarding the American obsession with liberty. It traces it, ironically, to our former status as slave owners. Upon reading the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Samuel Johnson suggested that it was the rankest hypocracy for slave owners to be so concerned with liberty. Edmund Burke, on the other hand, suggested that it was not in spite of being slave owners that American colonists were so sensitive to intrusions on their liberty, but because of it! Being in the midst of the evils of slavery, free men became that much more concerned about ever losing their status as free men. As Jedediah Purdy put it, "Slavery made masters uniquely sensitive to any invasion of their independence." So just as Australia's former status as a penal colony has had effects on the character of its people that echo down to today (distrust of religion, tall poppy syndrome), America's history of slavery has made us hyper sensitive to any intrusion upon our liberty, even when such intrusion is done "for our own good", ie to provide universal health care. How many times have non-Americans on this very site been completely flabbergasted with the controversy in the US over healthcare? The people of most other nations see it as a service the government should provide, but many and perhaps even most Americans see any expansion of government as an infringement on their liberty and react viscerally. Thus Obama and the Democrats, in their quest to provide univeral healthcare, have unknowingly stepped onto a trip wire in the American psyche. We have Tea Party activists coming out in droves to protest in Washington and across the nation. We have people screaming and yelling insanely at town hall meetings. We have Democrats losing elections in the blueist of blue states. Consider the fate of the last two presidents to attempt healthcare reform. Nixon was run out of office before he could implement his reform back in the seventies. Clinton lost both houses of congress and went on to be impeached. Now Obama is experiencing a backlash he never expected and the Democrats control of congress is in serious jeopardy just one year after Obama's historic victory accompanied by massive Democratic gains. Americans are very jealous of their liberty and define it much more expansively than most other nations. Any politician or political party that is perceived to be infringing upon it, even with the best of intentions, is stepping into a buzz saw. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/10/an_american_obsession_with_freedom_104706.html
The American insistence on liberty derived from the culture of the Lowland Scot Presbyterians who pioneered the country. It had fuck-all to do with slavery other than their own, and was not found among other slave-owners so much as among the northern Reds and similar folk. Not the army, these days. And try taking Medicare away from them. Or ambulance service. Or the Veteran's Hospitals. Freeways. Airports. National parks. You'll get a visceral reaction pretty quick. Insults removed? One missed: See, Obama and the Democrats are assumed to be not in possession of "the American psyche". It's something they trip over, unknowingly. The crowd-that-cannot-be-described (description is insult, I am informed) is in possession of "the American psyche", as identified with the tendency to confuse consensually acting in the common good with objectionable encroachment by government, and react violently to fictional assertions of such encroachment by famous media figures, due to their nature as people-not-in-possession-of-factual-information, people-somewhat-handicapped-in-the-evaluation-of-data-due-to-being-differently-mentally-abled, people-accustomed-to-exhibiting-physical-responses-involving-noise-and-wholly-justifiable-of-course-threats-or-damage, people-preferring-to-employ-social-and-political-tactics-more-frequently-observed-among-more-youthful-people, and so forth.
