I don't think it was a personality quirk that kept the US Founders from establishing a new monarchy. It was about education and ideas.
I probably should mention that my parents spent years researching the books that were owned and cited by the US founders. They were reading Cicero, Addison, Arnauld and a large number of writers who were developing the classical liberal theme.
The leading figures of the French Revolution were studying Voltaire, Rousseau. Napoleon studied Machiavelli.
The classical liberal education teaches people to think for themselves.
Modern education, by design, teaches people to conform to groups.
People on both the left and right are starting to favor strong men who can push through an agenda. Trump is the perfect example of a strong man. However, if you look closely, you will see that Pelosi and Biden are skilled at pushing partisan agendas.
So, we had one president who ruled by executive order followed by a second. It is very scary.
I have found Locke and Paine to be instructive in my own political development. I commend your folks on their rational self education, and see it has borne good fruit in your own.
I am beyond being scared by American government. Given the global extent and breadth of the censorship, propaganda, and tyrannical violence ongoing today, I am confident America is just one facet of a far more deadly and sinister polity being imposed.
Thanks!
You are right to be scared of the American government.
The members of the American Foreign service studied in elitist universities and they seem to have developed some destructive ideas about the nature of governance.
Politics inside the United States has become scary. I think the best way to explain it is with the idea of capture. The US has a two party system. It appears that the Democratic Party has been captured by the Radical Left from Europe. The Republican Party has been captured by the Reactionary Right from Europe.
This means that the United States is being ripped apart by the very division that lay at the heart of WW II.
The divisions keep getting louder and more intense and it is negatively effecting the world.
For example, you can ask: Who is Joe Biden's enemy? Joe Biden and the core of the DNC see the Republican Party as their enemy.
Conservatives see "liberalism" as their enemy.
Conservatives in the United States don't even know what "liberal" means. They are simply trained to hate the word.
Locke and Paine are liberals. One cannot talk about Locke to a Conservative because Conservatives have convinced themselves that all liberals are communists.
It is absolutely absurd.
John Locke (1632-1704) was English. He witnessed the Glorious Revolution which resulted in genocide. His writings were highly influential in the American Revolution.
It is sad when such mere connotations so overshadow a words actual etymology and definition that Conservatism, which originally referred to conserving the rights and liberties free societies acknowledge, now is considered to be nothing more than Fascism. Likewise Liberalism, which originally referred to the civil rights of free people and the necessity to tolerate the decisions free people themselves make of how to mutually conduct their personal lives.
I have long considered my self to be a Classical Liberal intent on conserving the rights and liberty free societies protect.
I am neither a Conservative nor a Liberal by the modern understanding of those terms.
I read Locke when still a child. It was formative for me, as one of the first philosophical works I was acquainted with I found both understandable in the main, and just as agreeable. Later, my read of Paine bore that same patina of agreeable rationality.