It’s not Individualism vs Collectivism—It’s Democracy vs Totalitarianism

Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

People who see society as a contest between the individual and the collective miss the fact that we exist in families and tribes. We are collective creatures who value individuality. The societies that they call collectivist—Hitler’s Germany, Franco’s Spain, Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia—were strong-man states where a few individuals had the power to control the…