America was founded upon the principle of individual sovereignty that is to say, that each of us is created with the unalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that the only legitimate government that can be instituted among the people would be a government specifically established to secured our unalienable rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Today, the government in all of its many forms and facets that the people must deal with on an individual basis has over the decades morphed into a nanny state, and this very state, can imposed its will, its dictates upon the people, because that state controls and determines in far too many instances crime and punishment, as well as who is continually eligible for benefits and privileges.
There are all sorts of people that reside in America, of which some of those very people, embrace the nanny state, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not, perhaps without a real choice, perhaps not, but in any event these people appreciate in one form or another, the fact that the state will feed, clothe, and shelter them in such a manner that they will live. Then there are others, that don't particularly care one way or another about the nanny state, they may see it as an irritant some of the time, or even most of the time, but for all practical purposes, they are able to conduct their business in a manner that remains acceptable to them. Finally, there are those that are actively and fundamentally opposed to the nanny state, these people are outnumbered, and are in almost all cases outside the power brokers of the state, and recognize fundamentally that the nanny state as an institution is at loggerheads at what America was established for, as well as recognizing that every freedom that is relinquished by the people for security, for sustenance, for whatever, is fundamentally a relinquishment of the sovereignty of the individual.
If, you aren't really responsible for your life, if you aren't allowed or permitted to be responsible for your decisions of any meaningful sort, then, you have for all practical purposes, seized to be sovereign to yourself, but have ceded or relinquished such sovereignty to the state. A state that provides you with everything, is a state that owns you cradle to grave for whatever beneficial possibilities and reasons, to the most nefarious and diabolical ones. There is nothing wrong with a country and its attendant institutions providing a helping hand or acting as an aid to the public, as long as it is recognized implicitly, that the aid desired is more akin to "learning to fish" as opposed to be given fish, which as might be imagined, has strings attached for the continuous acceptance of this gift.
There are many millions of people in this country without much of anything, of which the state as currently constructed and operated, has determined that in order to control and to manipulate thosemasses, so that the elite of this country can maintain its control and exploitation of them, that a combination of fear and lack of economic opportunity, will keep in their place the people, as long as there is a big enough stick to beat the masses back as necessary, and enough sugar, bread, and circuses to amuse them often enough.
A person that lacks control over the most meaningful decisions in their life becomes helpless, and a helpless person will inevitably turn in the direction of that institution that will sustain them and hence lose control over their lives. Whereas it should be recognized that we were created from the beginning with free will, free choice, and hence free decisions, and if we do not assert ourselves to be and to do what we want to accomplish, that freedom will be ceded to the agents that have taken that control from us.