But this is a new take, I promise.
Alexis de Tocqueville was a French (ex?) aristocrat touring the US in the 1830s. France had overthrown the aristocracy, but hadn't quite worked out a suitable replacement. He was deeply concerned for France's future, and fascinated by what the US was doing without a formal ruling class.
It seems to me that in the nearly two centuries since then, the US and France have almost completely flipped personalities. France has higher levels of "égalité", and so many Americans are butt-hurt about the idea of spending a penny to help anyone else. Consider these two paragraphs from a review of his work:
To the “sick” France of 1835, Tocqueville counterposed healthy America, where attachment to the idea that people should pursue their self-interest was no less strong, but was different. The difference, he thought, was that Americans understood that they could not flourish unless their neighbors prospered as well. Thus, Americans pursued their self-interest, but in a way that was “rightly understood.”
Tocqueville noted that “Americans are fond of explaining…[how] regard for themselves constantly prompts them to assist each other, and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the general welfare.” The French, by contrast, faced a future in which “it is difficult to foresee to what pitch of stupid excesses their egotism may lead them,” and “into what disgrace and wretchedness they would plunge themselves, lest they should have to sacrifice something of their own well-being to the prosperity of their fellow-creatures.”