Government in the United States has always swerved left and right amid struggles between business interests and those of the average American, and through most of our history, big business has had the upper hand.

That could never happen, however, without some compliance on the part of wage-earners themselves. While other nations have been more assertive in demanding universal health care and other benefits and rights, the American worker has lagged behind.

Today, as health care reform lurches through Congress, with no guarantee it will ever prove meaningful, we are amazed that average Americans are again allowing corporate power brokers to shaft them -- and, crazily enough, often cheer them on.

It can only be that every American, no matter how common or impoverished, sees himself or herself as one day climbing to the top of the economic heap. That's the American Dream, right? Everybody can and (the dream strongly implies) will make it one day.

In other words, no one has to worry about retirement, universal health care or similar matters, because, of course, we'll all be rich some day. And those taxes that fund such "nanny" programs would only be a nuisance to us. We're all rugged individualists. We don't need no stinking "handouts."

Instead of working together as fellow Americans to provide basics like health care for all, too many would rather hunker down in their little economic fortresses and snarl, "Let ‘em fend for

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themselves" -- usually, with a gun in one or both hands.

The truth is, the American people have always held a strong "public option" when it comes to health care and any number of social issues. Together, people who receive a paycheck -- or unemployment compensation these days -- always have an overwhelming advantage in terms of bodies and votes, and can't help but prevail over special interests unless they are dazzled, duped, uneducated or inattentive.

That is always possible because the other side, with its highly paid spin doctors and strategists, is never caught napping and never stops scheming and spewing PR in deceptive, dulcet tones.

Americans have always had the public option, though; they just rarely use it.