Survivor!

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 09:04 AM 10/23/00 -0500, kelley wrote, inter alia:
>Further, one influential type of republicanism that we inherited from he 
>18th c, our version of the English Whig tradition, best known in its early 
>form as anti-federalism, was anti state and anti-urban, idealizing the 
>yeoman farmer in all his independence.  <...> A paranoid fear of the state 
>is not something new, but can be seen from he earliest days of the republic.
>

I think more interesting stuff is not mythical roots of this ideology, but
why the English Whig tradition became so "influential" that it obliterated
the traditions of cooperation, guilds and trade unionism other immigrant
groups (e.g. Germans or Scandinavians) brought to this country?  

My impression is that individualism was a relatively marginal ideology
until the government-sponsored explosion of the suburban sprawl in 1950s.
There is an obvoious "elective affinity" between suburban lifestyles on the
one had and romantic individulaism (popularized by Hollywood, esp' "wild
west" genere) on th eother.

Thus the quetsion we need to ask is: "what is the role of people who call
themselves federal government in spreading of individualistic ideology?"

wojtek