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Arguably, the manly dignity and self-reliance aspects were a side effect of feudal Europe, or at least an older, aristocratic way of thinking. The Founding Fathers were never interested in mass democracy. Excluding Paine, who was also ostracized in his own time, the closest you really get is Jefferson’s idea of every American man becoming a sort of natural aristocrat by being both yeoman farmers (landed gentry), and brave warriors (citizen militia).
The idea that a nation can even encourage manly dignity and self-reliance, while also validating and giving equal weight to the opinions of lowest common denominator dreck, seems revealed as not well founded in reality. Fulk Nerra, for example, had more of those laudable qualities than probably any American since Andy Jackson. And even Old Hickory probably lacked the cojones to burn Rachel at the stake for cucking him.
This idea is not very aristocratic, it’s thoroughly rooted in middle class democracy. Even in the Middle Ages towns were governed by property holder suffrage electing officials and defended by militias of property holders. The aristocrats were for the countryside.
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While the 20th century mass democracy was a later development, they were explicitly not setting up an aristocratic government ("No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States"; if Paine was the extreme democrat, the nearly-half-monarchist motion by John Adams to call President "His Majesty" was laughed out of the committee.)
History of idea of "dignity" is complicated, I believe it should be traced back up to mashup of Voltaire and Christianity
Speaking of Adams, heres his Thoughts on Government (1776) on how virtuously organized republican government will inspire virtue among the common people:
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I can't really speak to "manly dignity", since I'm not really sure what that means, but self-reliance was never an aristocratic value. It is an eminently middle-class one. One of the notional justifications for aristocratic arrangements was that it enabled the aristocrat to pursue higher callings without having to be bothered about the sordid necessities of life.
Yeoman farmers are pointedly not landed gentry: they might have farmhands, but they work their own land. In a sense, they are agrarian petit-bourgeoisie. The gentry by contrast, manage estates (or, more likely, have it managed for them) of tenant farmers (or slaves, in the pre-ACW US). The idea of doing their own farming would've been seen as distasteful.
I note this not to be pedantic, but to point out that there is a massive, yawning gulf between a nation of yeomen and shopkeepers on the one hand, and an aristocratic one on the other. The former is one that at least permits the idea of universal dignity; the latter is one that sees dignity as a zero sum affair.
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