Politics & Culture Top 10 Articles The Need For A New
Individualism TNI January/February 2005 -- America has been the
land of the individual, and most Americans have thought of
themselves as individualists. We still speak favorably of
individual rights, individual initiative, individual
responsibility, individual opportunity, and individual
achievement. But America's individualism is disappearing and
with it our political freedom and the moral foundations of our
society. This is because the economic and political
manifestations of individualism—freedom and capitalism—cannot
stand on their own; they require sound moral ideas of rational
self-interest that are manifest in sound moral character. Those
moral ideas justify this freedom, and that moral character
requires the support of the culture and of institutions based on
those ideas. Today paternalist economic and political policies
treat adults like infants who can't care for themselves without
government help. Those policies, and the morality on which they
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