> What Americans actually believe is that government actions should not be trusted merely because they are government actions. This is precisely the exceptiona

> What Americans actually believe is that government actions should not be trusted merely because they are government actions. This is precisely the exceptionalism I'm talking about. Americans do not have a monopoly on the understanding that individuals are sovereign and that the government operates only with the consent of the people. The citizens of other liberal democracies are not passive subjects - indeed, aside from selective dogmatism around gun ownership, Americans are far more passive and fatalistic toward their government's abuses and intransigences than the citizens of many other countries. The US political system is as dysfunctional as it is precisely because so few Americans believe it can be made to work. In the absence of a culture in which large groups of people people actively engage in the formal and informal mechanisms of democratic governance, too many Americans instead express contempt and despair and stockpile guns.