The American perspective tends to be that you are the system (decentralism), not that it is you versus the system (authoritarianism).
Unfortunately America has also become infested by the idea that punishment creates virtuous people, especially among those with an authoritarian bent. Attempts to outlaw decentralism fail, so they pack all the authoritarianism into those cases where centralized intervention is needed. Hence the rise of zero-tolerance policies for everything. That's how we reach the point where a university opens up a can of ass-whip for a essay that forgot a pair of quotation marks (you can't swing a dead cat in the English department without hitting a sanctimonious liberal).
Unfortunately America has also become infested by the idea that punishment creates virtuous people, especially among those with an authoritarian bent. Attempts to outlaw decentralism fail, so they pack all the authoritarianism into those cases where centralized intervention is needed. Hence the rise of zero-tolerance policies for everything. That's how we reach the point where a university opens up a can of ass-whip for a essay that forgot a pair of quotation marks (you can't swing a dead cat in the English department without hitting a sanctimonious liberal).