You are bringing up a lot of interesting issues here.

First there is parental care, then there is education, and finally, work in an institution. I never went to high school in the states; but, is the same sort of developmental progress taught in the US? — Posty McPostface

I haven't been in high school since 1964, but this is a basic pattern which is more or less common to all industrialized / industrializing countries.

What went wrong than in the US or what went right for those who value said features of personal freedom and responsibility? — Posty McPostface

Some significant changes have occurred in the political culture since WWII.

Before 1964, the set up looked like this:

On the liberal side, there were "Rockefeller Republicans and northern Democrats.
On the conservative side there were Republicans (some, like the John Birch Society, were extremely conservative) and there were southern Democrats (which included some Ku Klux Klanners).

Liberals could be either social and fiscal liberals or they could be social liberals and fiscal conservatives. Liberals of both parties were progressive. Conservatives were either obsessed with maintaining the racial status quo in the south (southern Democrats) or were obsessed with Communism (John Birch (whoever he was) or Senator Joseph McCarthy (R, Wisconsin). Conservative republicans were almost always fiscal conservatives as well as social conservatives.

Kennedy and Johnson inaugurated the period of The Great Society (increased social spending), the Vietnam War, the decade-long Apollo program aimed at landing men on the moon, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and so on.

The election of 1964 marked a turning point. Very conservative Barry Goldwater (R, Arizona) won the Republican nomination for President. He lost, but in the process he managed to get rid of a lot of the liberal Rockefeller Republicans. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and Johnson won the Democratic nomination in '64, but a conflict that had been brewing for a decade was settled. Northern Democrats, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, had been pressuring the Democratic Party to reform. The issue came to a head in a Credentials Committee fight over the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation vs. the regulars, headed by Senators Eastland and Stennis -- two paleoconservative pro-segregationists. At the end of the committee fight, the MFDP suffered a "pyrrhic defeat". The regulars walked out, the MFDP were not accredited but they sat in the regulars seats, and before the 1968 convention, the Democratic Party changes its rules to bar racial discrimination in voting.

For the most part so far, Republicans and Democrats were still working together on common legislative goals. Major differences, yes, but a lot of consensus, too.)

As a result of the civil rights movement's accomplishments (with the help of Democrats), Johnson's Great Society programs, and other causes, a lot of conservative southern Democrats started shifting to the now-more conservative Republican Party. In 1968 and 1972, Nixon was still quite a bit more liberal than the conservative wing of his party, and he was also a crook. (He said in a television interview, "I am not a crook." Which of course convinced a lot of people that he probably was.)

The 1970s saw a string of events--like gay liberation, women's liberation, legalized abortion (Roe Vs. Wade, 1973), the Watergate Hearings, Nixon's resignation, the (kind of ignominious) defeat of the US in Vietnam--that drove conservatives further right, and made liberals more comfortable.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidency. Reagan was quite conservative, quite a big military spender (greatly increased the national debt with his expensive Star Wars program (high tech war), and a very conservative anticommunist with matching social views. He had 8 years to drive the political process, and his successor (George Herbert Walker Bush--Bush I) had 4 more years to continue.

By 1992 a significant change in the political landscape had been effected. William Clinton served under the new regime of more hostile relations between the two parties in Congress. George Walker Bush (Bush II) served during a period of growing conservative politics, heavily flavored by the 9/11 attack and the aftermaths. The political atmosphere was quite poisonous by the time Obama assumed office, and is continuing to get even more toxic to rational political behavior.

Living in the US for about 10 years thus far, I see a strong anti-social attitude towards government and its responsibilities towards the individual. — Posty McPostface

This is neoconservativism. It's very pro-business, anti-government, inclined to foreign interventionism, libertarian individualism, and such rot. The social contract of neoconservatives looks a hell of a lot different than the social contract a progressive liberal would write and sign.

That some of the people spouting neocon rhetoric have the most to lose from neocon policy, is a conundrum. They've been duped, basically.

I often find myself envying Scandinavian countries and other social democracies over the US and see their effort at promoting a well cultivated individual wrt. to society as a feature/causal relationship/confounding factor that makes them all very high scorers in the HDI (Human Development Index). — Posty McPostface

I understand why you would think that. Bear in mind American Exceptionalism. (EDIT 26.8.17;PC leftists just hate the idea.) But one of the "exceptional" parts of American history is slavery, and the anti-central-government politics that flourished in the south for a long time (and still does).

Southerners weren't just against the central government in Washington. They didn't want to grant too much power to their own state governments, and maybe to their counties, either. A lot of them liked the privatized mini-state of the plantation. Private power. The private domain. Private honor. Private justice. All that private crap.

Southern suspicion of central government created a huge problem for them when they seceded from the Union. If they were going to defend themselves, they needed to have some central authority. But they hated that.

There is a band of states across the northern tier of the US (Washington, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New England, New York... which have followed the Colonial Puritan pattern of emphasizing the importance of collective social responsibility and action. These states tend to resemble Northern Europe and Scandinavia much more than the American south.

Sorry for the long response. It would take several volumes to explain all this fully.

Great summary! (Y)