Also speaking as an European immigrant who's been living in the US for nearly two decades.
Both of you are right. Americans are not more selfish than other nations, individually. Culturally they do tend to hoist self-reliance up on a high pedestal. In theory these traits should be unrelated, more or less.
However, it is a very unfortunate "feature" of the American political system that there are many, many demagogues who take things that are inherently good, virtues one could say, such as self-reliance, and weaponize them to serve the interests of some extremely selfish rich power brokers. Not every time, but in many cases when you hear the word "freedom" in the American political discourse, you might be close to an example of this pernicious distortion of basic notions.
TLDR: Americans, stop obsessing over by now empty slogans such as "freedom", start thinking more about building a society that works well for all its participants.
Both of you are right. Americans are not more selfish than other nations, individually. Culturally they do tend to hoist self-reliance up on a high pedestal. In theory these traits should be unrelated, more or less.
However, it is a very unfortunate "feature" of the American political system that there are many, many demagogues who take things that are inherently good, virtues one could say, such as self-reliance, and weaponize them to serve the interests of some extremely selfish rich power brokers. Not every time, but in many cases when you hear the word "freedom" in the American political discourse, you might be close to an example of this pernicious distortion of basic notions.
TLDR: Americans, stop obsessing over by now empty slogans such as "freedom", start thinking more about building a society that works well for all its participants.