Tribalism and individualism are competing forces. America was built on the idea that government existed to protect the individual rights and freedoms of its citizens.

Other nations are built on the idea that individuals exist to protect the tribe. Along with this idea that individuals exist to protect the tribe is the idea that an elite group defines what actions are necessary for the greater good of the tribe.

Western nations moved away from monarchies which were tribal in nature, to democracies designed to represent the interests of the individual citizens instead of the nobility.

However, overtime a "new nobility" has arisen, these elitists intend to reestablish dominance over their respective "tribes" and they do so by promoting fear and insecurity.

While the poor are easy to control. All you need to get them to give up their freedoms is to provide them with their basic needs (entitlements). But the middle class does not need government for their basic needs, so you must create threats to their "security" to get them to surrender their freedom. Political conflict, environmental threats, and crime are all effective ways to undermine security and cause people to trade freedom for safety.

We need to worry less about the threats around the world and focus first and foremost about returning our western governments to the citizens. This can only be accomplished by reducing the share of the economy the respective governments control and to impose term limits on those people in power within our respective government returning them to civilian status and living with the rules they impose on others.

Returning regular citizens rotating in and out of government to positions of power within a reduced government is the best way to protect our individual rights.

To achieve this goal, we need a means to allow the wealthy to enjoy their wealth, but not use it to exercise control and influence over government or the media. Our founding fathers drafted an amazing set of checks and balances designed to protect the rights of individuals, but over the last two hundred years, the enormous power of the wealthy and largest corporations have eroded many of those checks and balances.

We need to figure out how to create a system that checks the power of those not only within government but outside of government and returns it to the citizenry at large.