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Notes -
Well, the Puritans were all into "authoritarian paternalism" as long as they are the authority. The whole flight to America thing has been in large part because they weren't, or at least not the supreme one, so they had to embrace the call for freedom. Which they probably, if the things were set up so that they could exercise unchecked authority, might not. And once the "freedom" as the officially American idea has been established, it has always been an uphill battle to support "yes, freedom, but not like that" - be it guns, speech, drink or everything else, the conflict between the declared (even if not genuinely embraced) ideology and practical lust for power (for their own good, of course!) always surfaces. In UK, let alone Australia, there's none of that.
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