Thank you very much Red and Raul. It's one thing that confuses me because most of the EU and the UK and Canada has universal health care. Canada and Germany are federal countries too.
First, we all have to understand the levels of propaganda the US was submitted to during the cold war and the way that propaganda has morphed after 88-92. Anything remotely collectivist or communal oriented has been labeled evil and communist and "rugged individualism" has been exalted in such a way that teenagers from 1980 to 2020 are taught that "it's a free country, you can do what you want". Social responsibility was not taught in many schools and history books in the US have long emphasized the Horatio Alger myth of individuals rising to become billionaires and how free speech means "I can say what I want, whenever I want, wherever I want."
Not only that but since Goldwater or at least Reagan, there has been a strong current that posits that Nazis were left-wing because "Duh, the word socialist is even in their name." Since Goldwater lost, the far-right has been forming and organizing their institutions to push their propaganda (Federalist Society in law, think tanks like Heritage, AEI, lobbyist organizations from the far-right religious like moral majority and other prayer groups, etc).
So you combine the rabid anti-communist propaganda, with a selective, cherry-picked version of history being taught, and a toddler's view of what "freedom of speech" and more means, you get people that are 40-60 that actually believe any form of social responsibility will automatically lead to all the worst totalitarian evils of Mao and Stalin and Hitler.
It also doesn't help that the
anti-intellectualism that historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about in fecking 1964 is still pervasive among large segments of the population. It's why they demonize education so much because they think that learning about any social science from academics or scientists is "Lib brainwashing".
It doesn't help that the US has some pretty nefarious billionaires (Trump, Kochs, Mercers, and many more whose names are not well known) that have been manipulating this situation for personal gain. It's funny because the right-wing always has some billionaire boogeyman (first it was Soros, now it is Bill Gates) that they blame for everything without even looking at the damage of all the right-wing wealth interests.