ABSTRACT
The hallmark of a democratic system involves its citizens' right to vote. For this reason, among all the world's nations, the United States is usually considered to be one of the prime bastions of democracy. Possessive individualism first tells us that in order to vote, one must be free; and second, that in order to be free one must be the owner of oneself. Any conditions thought to impinge upon the individual's personal ownership over himself would infringe on freedom, and thus deny such a person the right to vote. The possessively individualistic formulation defines the self-contained ideal and simultaneously establishes the negative self-other relationship that is at the root of the self-celebratory world-view. Most of the people in the West would subscribe to three "natural" ideas: the boundary of the individual is coincident with the boundary of the body; the body is a container that houses the individual; and the individual is best understood as a self-contained entity.
