America and Individualism
America and IndividualismThe United States of America is the land of the free, the land of opportunity, the wealthiest country in the world, a country that half the modern world is modeled after. Its President is referred to as the "Leader of the free world". Thousands of people come to this country every year, learning about the country in hopes of becoming citizens. William Hudson in his book 'American Democracy in Peril ' talks about the seven biggest challenges to this democratic nation.
Individualism can be seen as a gift or a curse, depending on the context in which it occurs. Because modern society finds it important that people think independently, decide autonomously and take personal initiatives, the concept of individualism has acquired a positive connotation. However, individualism is also linked with the tendency to withdraw from social life and turn in towards oneself. Alexis de Tocqueville described individualism as the cool and considered attitude which drives people to withdraw into a small, enclosed world consisting of their family and a few select friends, leaving the rest of society to its own devices.
The most obvious problem stemming from the process of individualism is of a socio-economic nature and concerns the problem of solidarity. If the link between the community and the individual becomes less strong, to what extent will an individual experience social problems, in which he or she is not immediately implicated, as his or her problems? To what extent are people in an individualistic society prepared to consider the problems of others as their own? This is a crucial question for society since it places the legitimacy of many social institutions and political structures in question. Whoever accepts that individualism is a fact will consider political life to be an incessant clash of interests on the part of people who are only in it for the sake of personal power or an increase in personal fortune. While they may be fine, responsible people in private life, in their attitude to government they are like infants, interested only in themselves and what they consume, howling for more, and not concerned at all about the morality of using government as a middleman to forcibly take what they desire from their fellow-citizens. Whereas those people who reject individualism and accept that the point of an election is to choose representatives whom the voters can expect will manage the social institutions in a responsible manner, will have a completely different image of politics.
The Founders believed in men's right to choose the government they lived under, and they believed that to protect the ability to exercise that right, that particular government could not be allowed such a monopoly of weapons as would enable it to control the majority without their democratic consent. In order to prevent tyranny, then, keeping arms and practicing their use had to be a civic duty and a legally protected individual right. They believed a widely-exercised individual right to keep arms...
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