The US can't afford universal health care. We're too busy spending money on defending ourselves, Canada, and Europe. :tongue:
The first immigrants to the US weren't poor. They were actually rather well-off, naive, and religious zealots.
If you want to understand what kind of relgious fervor they had, read
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards. This piece of excellence in preaching was fairly typical church fare up through the 19th century. To this day, it is taught in schools as a classic example of early American literature.
Americans are largely poorly educated, isolationist (despite our government), and jealous of their traditions. In a country where change happens so frequently, where new people with new cultures continually change the face of the culture, people naturally grasp to hold on to what is familiar to them. They want to hang on to the old ways because that's what they have for cultural identity. Therefore, old ways of thinking die hard among Americans who have been born and raised here for generations. Part of that are the conservative ways of their ancestors, their church, and their belief that America stands for their moral code. These are the people who put Bush in office.
New England is different. While it was the place Americans first settled, they developed a more populist view founded on the maxim,
live and let live, hence New England tends to be the most liberal part of the country. New Hampshire took a different beat, becoming libertarian, but still very morally liberal while being governmentally conservative.
Another group of Americans are largely recent immigrants, brought to the coastal metropolises. Occupants of large cities find that tolerance is necessary to live so close together in such a relatively small space. Once again,
live and let live is the watchword of city living, hence people who live in the coastal cities tend to be more tolerant. They also have a wealth of cultures to help key them into the world outside. Places like San Francisco, LA, Miami, and New York are better connected to the outside world than Peoria, Omaha, and Wichita. These are the liberal areas of the country and while the people may not be any better educated, they tend to be very tolerant. Further, the intellectuals and best educated come to these metropolises for the cultural opportunities they offer and, in turn, generate American culture as people who live in the states know it.
The US has some radically different people living in it. Think of Yugoslavia, or Russia, or Canada. There are plenty of Americans who have nothing in common with Americans just a few hundred miles away. They do not enjoy the same sports, speak the same language, worship the same way, or anything else other than they are Americans. America is a blank slate and you're welcome to come here and the law says you can continue to be whatever you are even if tradition says you need to be Anglo-Americanized.
Unless you're a minority.
So while all this upheaval is going on, we have ethnic underclasses that are just now becoming able to enjoy rights and opportunities that Anglo-Saxon Protestants have enjoyed since the country was founded.
Now, add to that a new wave of immigrants who aren't even European, who are taking the jobs nobody else wants, who don't even worship the right God, wear alarming ethnic clothing (like veils and turans), and who demand the rights of all Americans!
Either you ride the wave of change and embrace it or you resist it with all your might and become reactionary. And those reactionaries are largely the traditional southern and mid-western Americans, the Americans who the movers and shakers on the coasts disparage as, "the flyover states." They do not necessarily see the changes but they see them on TV, hear about them on the radio. Rather than actually partake in the changes as coastal residents do, they feel the changes are being made to happen to them. They're very pissed.
They, and everyone else, are going to be even more angry with the events that lay ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if the US splits a few different ways.
