I agree... Americans don't have it in them. I read somewhere that only 4% of all Americans participated openly in the American Revolution until victory seemed assured. I think it is always like that; the 4% willing to die for freedom, and the rest who will take any amount of oppression because it comes from legitimate authority and will simply march right into the "Mandatory Population Reduction Centers".
I don't think they'll go so far as to accept death, at least not en masse. But they won't defy, or advocate defiance of, the law when it's a few people being rounded up and killed by the many.
Think carefully about the Terri Schiavo case.
Millions of people said she was being MURDERED.
But when it came down to it, nobody was willing to actually ATTACK the authorities to stop the murder of an innocent woman. Was it because she was disabled?
There are millions others who think abortion is MURDER. But they oppose any sort of lawlessness to suppress it.
Now think about the Lynching Era, from the 1880s to the 1910s, when every other day someone in America was lynched, generally publicly, often with great fanfare (official photographers and postcards). There were plenty of people outraged, and motions were put before Congress. But in the end, nobody was willing to turn loose force on the local authorities.
Think carefully, even, about Hitler. Americans were willing to let Hitler devour Europe, including England, and kill whomever he wanted to. It was only a direct Japanese attack and a German declaration of war that finally forced the Americans to act.
Philosophically, Law and the Rule of Law is the very pinnacle of American moral values. Respect for the law supersedes obedience to the tenets even of religion. It's an extraordinary feature of American culture, which certainly does make America a very good place to do business: in obedience to their law, Americans will gun people down in order to protect your duly documented and recorded property rights; they'll evict people from their homes of 70 years if you have a court order that lets you develop their land for your own private business purposes, even if you're French.
Lex dura, sed lex.
About 40% of colonials participated or were loyal to the Colonies. About 20% were Tories. The remaining 40% were fence sitters, waiting to see which way the wind blew.