Why the right beats the left in America

Mark Steyn writes about what separates America from the rest of the western world.

At a certain stage socialized healthcare certainly comes into it, states reach a tipping point where the citizens are getting so much from the state that you can no longer have truly conservative government ever again. Or, more accurately, they think they're getting a lot. For what Britons and Canadians pay in taxes for their miserable government health service, they ought to be entitled to three terminal diseases a year.

If I wasn't a conservative before 9/11, I'd certainly be one now. On one side I see decayed, self-absorbed passivity: citizens reduced to junkies with government as the pusher. On the other stand the gun-crazies, the religious Right, the home-schoolers, the flat-taxers and all the rest: you don't have to agree with them on everything to appreciate that, in a new war which not all of the West will survive, they have an advantage over the Swedes and Belgians. A self-reliant conservative citizenry is a better bet than the subjects of an overbearing state.