Rules, regulations and the death of rugged individualism

Last year Chris Snowdon wrote an interesting article for The Free Society.

Australia – the world’s number one nanny state described how a country "once renowned for rugged individualism capitulated to puritanism with barely a whimper".

Today BBC News magazine has a feature that, unintentionally perhaps, supports Snowdon's thesis.

This isn't the whole story, of course, as Australia: What the rest of the world gets wrong clearly demonstrates. Bryant does however make this damning observation:

In the face of this authoritarianism, the supposedly anti-authoritarian Australians are unexpectedly meek and acquiescent.

This struck a chord because less than a week ago I exchanged emails with a journalist in Ireland who told me, without prompting:

We Irish talk a great talk about being rebels, but this country is incredibly conformist. It's actually shocking how disconnected our self-image is from reality.

I'm sure a thesis could be written about this. Any volunteers?