Comment by zamadatix

Much of the US doesn't think of it in terms of proactive vs reactive governance but instead in cultural/moral expectations of how you should "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" to be great. This view is often to the point many see removing the need to pull oneself up from their own bootstraps as removing the ability for them to better themselves (& wasting everyone else's money/freedom/whatever to do so). A soldier and an obese person are examples at polar opposites of that moral spectrum.

The policies just follow that. This comes up in all sorts of areas such as prison as punishment vs rehabilitation.