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‘We the people’ is a timeless ideal of American democracy. What’s gone wrong?
(news.berkeley.edu)
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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politics
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They've had individual freedoms and liberties ingrained into their personalities that the 'we' no longer exists. 'Community' only exists as far as it serves the person's goals.
I think this is a large amount of the issue, along with what others have commented. There literally is.a hostile sentiment towards the "common/greater good" in the US if it means individuals have to sacrifice even a modicum of inconvenience. COVID and asking people to mask up was a perfect example of it in action. And that wasn't even entirely a democrat vs red hat cult thing, though the cultists definitely were much more pissed off and loud about it.
It's strange. I spent my formative years in Singapore, a country widely regarded as a 'police state' by most western accounts. But there, I felt the community as a whole had rights of its own, and those superceded individual rights. Then I spent some time in the us, and while it wasn't as bad as it is now, the difference in attitude was stark. Now over there freedom of expression wins out over the community rights. And it's much to their own detriment.