It was actually right up to the end of the Vietnam era.
A hundred years before we beat England back across the ocean, we had private merchants spend their entire years profits to outfit volunteer militias to go fight the evil French up in what would become Canada. The british were supposed to help with ships to transport the troops, and didn't, they were supposed to repay the financiers, and pay the fighters, and didn't. This happened numerous times in those years leading up to the first American revolution, and even after it was apparent there was NEVER going to be any payback, independent thinkers continued to answer the call to arms. A disorganized group of independent thinkers who were more than willing to put both treasure and life at risk for the greater good of their society.
Fast forward to the first revolution for independence in America. Once again a varied group of independent thinkers came together because they understood the only way they could accomplish their goal was to make individual sacrifice for the greater good and once again they poured their treasure and lives into a venture with no promise of success, profit, or even any reasonable assurance they would have food to eat and weapons to fight the british. they didn't ask what was in it for them, they didn't demand promises in exchange for fighting, they knew without being told that independent sacrifice for the greater good was the ONLY way to the future they wanted.
When Europe became engulfed in WWI we were largely an agrarian society rife with independent thinkers. The federal government didn't have much of a standing army and could barely afford what little military they did have. Our independent society wanted nothing to do with the war "over there", but when it became apparent Germany was going to beat up the rest of Europe, and the only way to stop them was to get involved, the independent thinkers in America once again put aside their individual feelings and beliefs and once again sacrificed their individual desires for the greater good of society. This was also the first time they did it for the global community rather than to protect/insure the continuation of their free thinking, independent society at home. Even though we were woefully unprepared to go to war, the volunteers didn't mind, they trained as best they could with wooden rifle replicas, then boarded ships, went to Europe and turned the tide of the war through selfless sacrifice for the greater good.
WWII was not a lot different from WWI except this time it was not just the volunteers going off to fight who willingly sacrificed for the greater good. People at home worked crushing hours for little or no pay to insure enough bullets and beans were available to our boys, people gave their cars, tractors, forks and spoons to metal drives and their rain boots for rubber drives, even their underwear for nylon and silk drives to support the war effort. Everything in America not going toward the war effort was strictly rationed and it was a point of pride to turn in coupon books with unused coupons in them. Proof that no sacrifice was too great if it helped the greater good. It was the first time every loyal American willingly sacrificed for the greater good and it was a point of intense pride for those who did so because it not only proved what is possible if we all pulled together and sacrificed for the greater good, it also made us THE most powerful nation on the planet.
Sadly, that ethos has been going down hill since the end of WWII. We have devolved into a nation of seriously selfish navel gazers who think only of MY wants, MY needs without a seconds thought about the wants and needs of others. If we do think about the wants and needs of others, it is how to minimize their share so MY share will be even greater. We waste for no other reason than we can, we marginalize those we consider inferior and work hard to marginalize them further because it serves MY selfish ends to do so.
Kids used to wear shirts that told us to NEVER FORGET, these days they wear shirts that tell us MORE ME LESS YOU.
That you are obviously ignorant of the FACT that America was once a place where individual sacrifice for the greater good was not simply the majority opinion, but was revered as patriotic, it's little wonder you would fall for the utter horse apples that proclaim any individual sacrifice for the greater good is proof of a socialist society.
