The trend to prefer safety over freedom in the U.S. really got rolling after female suffrage was universally adopted.  Such ideas are now forbidden to be discussed because of past crimes against humanity.  Women as property was a form of slavery especially in the lower classes.  Had racial slavery been abolished at the founding and the Declaration of Independence stated all men and women were created equal not just all men are created equal the sins of our fathers would not be such a heavy burden on our freedom.  The cost of freedom is not just accepting risks but accepting that all men and women must be equally free.  If you accept slavery of any kind you degrade your own freedom and invite tyranny.

There are risks associated with making people free.  People are not born with the ability to not turn freedom into licentiousness.   Freedom, it turns out, is counter intuitively a prison of responsibility.  In a state of nature freedom means free to be impoverished and insecure.  In a civilized state it often means free to be slaves to our instincts and addictions.

Most people want the freedom provided by civilization without the responsibility.  The paradox of civilization is that the luxury it provides opens the temptation to indulge instincts.  Instincts that evolved for an environment without productivity.  Civilization is unnatural, it requires an environment our instincts are not evolved to be comfortable with.  In nature the environment is easy but unstable and the ability to consume determines fitness.  For civilization to survive the environment must be harsh but stable and productivity determines fitness.  The abstractions of culture create a reality of eusociality that our instincts rebel against.
It's understandable that people formerly enslaved would instinctually rebel against the enslavement of productivity as the foundation of civilization.  That they would be inclined to trust their instincts not the abstractions evolved by their oppressors.  That they would reject the responsibility that freedom requires.  That their insecurities would lead them to value security over freedom.  Especially if they were predisposed by personality in that direction to begin with.

The culture war is a war between personality types.  That it creeps toward being genocidal is not surprising because it arises out of biology.  It is a war between the open, empathic and gregarious against the conscientious, disagreeable and independent.  Although there is great overlap between males and females in personality, in the aggregate females fall into the former group and males into the latter.

As it relates to this discussion it's neuroticism that is the primary motive force.  Neuroticism is necessary in the easy but unstable environment we evolved for.  Females must be focused on security for infants.  In some individuals it is so strong that postpartum depression sets in.   The instinct for negative emotions that in a natural environment makes it impossible for women to ignore a crying baby can lead to infanticide especially if it is combined with social insecurity.
Natural empathy can go terribly wrong.  It's the nature of instinct to be irrational.  To be part of the semiconscious world of intuition.  If they could be overridden by the conscious mind they would not serve their purpose and the species would go extinct.  Females are predisposed to see every victim as an infant in need of security.  That makes them easy prey for authoritarian figures.  Hitler could never have been elected without female voters.  In nature most violence is outsourced by females to dominate males.  This happens by way of social networks, grooming, and low level violence.  In humans network enforcement generally takes place through reputation destruction and ostracizement.  Exactly as what takes place today in social media and internet mobs.  Driven largely by the inability to escape negative emotions.

The first major indication that female suffrage was going to change society was prohibition.  Women tired of drunken irresponsible husbands who left them with little security rebelled.   Instead of addressing the complex social problems that lead to abuse of alcohol they instinctually went after the consumption problem.  Eliminating the physical substance however did not solve the problem.  Instead it destabilized the entire society by corrupting government officials and led to gang control of cities such as we see in Mexico today.  Welfare has had a similar effect turning inner cities into killing fields.  Not every problem is an infant in need of security.  The preference for security over freedom is itself the problem.  Give people too much security and they revert to the easy but unstable social structures we evolved for where physical or networked violence establishes hierarchy not productive competence.

Most of our problems can be solved by returning to the abstract reality of freewill.  Capitalism it turns out is not about the capitalists.  The capitalists in a functional liberal democracy are bound by the morality of the general population.  Capitalism if functioning properly is about voluntary productivity and morality.  It, like all products of civilization, is unnatural.  Nature being entirely amoral.
  
The relationship between voluntary productivity and morality should be obvious but only if you understand that morality like money are evolved cultural realities.  You can't get to morality through instinct or naturalism or even intuition.  Since the foundation of civilization is productivity, being unproductive is fundamentally immoral.   The open and empathic are drawn to naturalism and borderless social structures in tune with our instincts.  Unfortunately in nature their is no dignity or meaning.  Meaning is created through the real abstraction of freewill that leads to dignity through agency and responsibility which in turn provides meaning in an artificial eusociality environment.

Small wonder that our beloved leaders want us cowering in the shadows lest we incur the wrath of the god of death, Covid! How easily are cowards controlled and herded over the precipice!