Are Americans becoming jerks? That's the conclusion of one Christopher Flavelle in this Bloomberg piece:

New Gallup poll numbers show Americans increasingly dispute the idea that government has a responsibility to make sure everybody can get health insurance. It's tempting to see that as an indictment against Obamacare, but it might just mean more Americans are becoming jerks.Starting in 2007, the portion of Americans who said the government should guarantee every person enough to eat and a place to sleep started falling, from 69 percent to 59 percent last year. People who said the government should help the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt, fell from 54 percent to 43 percent over the same period.

...

That increased callousness extends beyond Americans' views of helping the needy. In 2007, 60 percent of respondents agreed that people should be willing to pay higher prices to protect the environment; by last year, that figure was 43 percent. The share who said the U.S. should "pay less attention to problems overseas" rose from 76 percent to 83 percent between 2007 and 2012.

...

For Democrats, the challenge here goes well beyond defending an increasingly unpopular health-care law. Their job now is finding a way to convince people that helping their neighbors is still worthwhile, even as the median voter becomes less likely to agree. Compared to that, fixing a website is easy.

I know it is hard for big government liberal types to grasp this but just because Americans don't want government to do something doesn't mean they don't want it done. Government was not intended - at least here in America - to be a charitable organization and it doesn't do a very good job of it. Maybe what this poll really shows is that it is Mr. Flavelle and the politicians he supports who have been outed as jerks. Maybe, after all the boondoggles and bailouts, Americans have decided that government is trying to do too much. Americans still care about their neighbors - unless maybe they are politicians or morally smug Bloomberg opinion writers.