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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 405653" data-attributes="member: 4720">Well, for one thing, DON'T attach having laws to being Lawful.  Having lots and lots of laws (as the U.S. does) does not by default mean it's an orderly system (quite the contrary, actually), or that it brings order to the people involved.  But then, the system I've been defending doesn't attach Order to Lawful, either.  You're still mixing several incompatible systems together.Laws do NOT equal Order which does NOT equal being pro-society.Let's ignore all the order & chaos baggage, and use the terms Societal & Individualistic, and I'll address your issues about the U.S... (NOTE: some people might be offended by the below, as there are implicit criticisms of U.S. federal policy since around the year 1800 or so.  If you're offended, I apologize, but maintain that the U.S. was founded ON THE CENTRAL IDEA that the government CAN, and SHOULD, be questioned.  If you don't believe me, ask Jefferson, Hancock, Franklin, and Washington.  They'll tell you  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)Historically, the U.S. was very Individualistic.  The framers of the Constitution based it around providing maximal freedom to the states, because they were well aware that the land was too big to be a true democracy.  So they designed the U.S. as a Republic of little democracies (of course, the states were inconsistent about following through there, but that's another argument).  At any rate, federal government was in charge of very few things.  Some trade regulation, common defense, and making sure none of the individual states got out of line.  In fact, the Constitution exists to STRICTLY LIMIT centralized federal power.  The language includes that all powers not strictly delineated within the Constitution should default to LOCAL government.Just because we've completely screwed that up since then doesn't invalidate their intent.But in what ways did we screw it up?  Well, for one thing, we expanded the powers of the Federal government repeatedly.  The fact that this is a natural consequence of war is really something for which the framers of the Constitution should have accounted.  I think we can let them off the hook on the globalization effects though.  Jefferson was a visionary, but not THAT visionary.Secondly, we repeatedly add and change things that shouldn't be in Federal government purview at all, while refusing to change things that should be changed with the times (in this way, our government is a lot like most organized religions).They also built in a simple mechanism for change.  For some obscure reason, we prefer to ignore that one and pile different, independent mechanisms on top of it.  Oh, wait.  It's not so obscure.  It's so lawyers and politicians can cover their tracks.Furthermore, the U.S. is increasingly into limiting individual freedoms under the entirely false pretense of increasing safety.  I don't know how this strikes all of you, but personally, I'm with Thomas Jefferson when he said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."Currently, the government is embarked on a crusade to remove individual freedoms in favor of what a collection of reality-impaired old men and nitwits think is best for the society.  Unfortunately, society, as a consequence of being unaware of its own history, is quite fine with this.That's in Societal territory.  And, IMO, not very nice.As for welfare states...Welfare does NOT benefit the society as a whole.  It benefits individuals within society, to the detriment of the rest of them.  Welfare recipients are not required to contribute to society in order to receive benefits.  That's anti-society, and therefore Individualistic.  If welfare recipients were required to make a societal contribution (even a small one), it would be Societal - society taking care of its own.  But it currently functions as society caring for indivduals who are not actually part of that society.  So it's protection of individuals enforced upon a society.  Individualistic.Having lots of laws on paper doesn't enter into it.  A defense attorney can knowingly get a guilty murderer or rapist off and turn him loose to wreak more havoc on society, and be perfectly within the law.  In fact, the law requires him to do his best to do so, even though it's clearly to the detriment of society.  That's the law, but it's not Lawful.  Ask a paladin if you don't believe me.</blockquote>

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