Ah. See, the thing is, I don't understand.

That was the overwhelming response to last week's bit where I wondered just which "freedoms" Obama and the Democrats were usurping with their health care bill.

With the exception of a few libertarians who wrote to say that our freedoms have been infringed over the course of generations — which is true, though a topic for another column — most conservatives who responded insisted that giving government more authority necessarily means less for individuals. It's not about specific liberties, in other words — its about an amorphous sense of liberty that is violated when government gets too big or too bossy.

SMART REMARKS: What freedoms have you lost?

As noted last week, this fear and this resentment has been a constant throughout American history. At every step of our national journey, the tea partiers' ideological forebears complained that government was infringing upon their liberty. And as our nation grew in stature, government did take on a more pervasive role. The 20th century in particular saw government expand beyond anything the Founders could have dreamed.

But note that this expansion coincided first with the United States' rise as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. That's no coincidence; indeed, only greater government involvement could have created the conditions whereby this hegemony and prosperity could be established in the first place.

Did it come at the expense of freedom? Again, what freedoms? How are you, the citizen, less free — to read and think and speak and write and take action — than you were this time last year, or 10 years ago?

I don't want to denigrate the emotional appeal of freedom (as opposed to freedoms, plural). It's an ancient and very American idea that freedom requires less government; it's the myth of rugged individualism, where we can all hack a living out of the forboding wilderness if we just tug hard enough on the bootstraps and take care of ourselves, rather than depending on government.

But this isn't the Wild West; the frontier is closed. We live in an integrated, multicultural, technologically advanced and economically controlled modern, mature democracy where government must do what benefits the people, as in all the people, the broader society. The nation. That has been true for quite some time; yet still we struggle against it. I suspect we always will.

Yet as a mature nation, we cannot view the nation merely as the sum of its parts, an aggregate of rugged individuals existing out on fringes of civilization and best left alone. Most of us live in neighborhoods designed to municipal standards, drive on state-maintained roads, shop at grocery stores where food is kept affordable, in part, by federal farm policy.

And then we're going to turn around and bemoan the weight of the government yoke upon our shoulders? Give me a break.

I realize many conservatives see the idea of sacrifice — or more sacrifice — for the broader good as collectivist. But the idea that a modern democracy can flourish and preserve the freedoms already established when it's every man for himself is folly. It might, in fact, be the quickest way to lose those freedoms.

The Little House on the Prairie is gone. These days it's the Little House in the subdivision; we may not enjoy the untrammeled liberty of colonial society but this is no longer a colonial society, and our individual freedoms, enshrined in the Constitution, are not threatened by health care legislation.

The frontier is closed.

Except, perhaps, in our minds.