I was recently watching the Story of England, a documentary on PBS. It's quite good and worth the watch, but one thing that the host, historian Michael Wood, mentioned caught my attention. He talked repeatedly not just of the "rights" of English citizens but also their "duties." In the United States with our libertarian leanings, we are obsessed with our rights as individuals and often enumerate them: religion, speech, press, assembly, petition, gun-ownership, etc.; however, we almost never worry ourselves over our duties as part of a collective. No wonder one nation has single-payer, universal healthcare and the other has something less-than.
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