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How free are people in the United States? @jtlevy — writing from Canada — has an interesting and worthwhile thread. We Americans like to think of ourselves as having more freedom than anyone else. In the big picture, that’s not entirely true.
2. Most people don’t live their lives in the big picture, of course. Take the immigrant experience, for example. Most immigrants to the United States over the last century-plus knew America, & the countries from which they fled. The US would feel awfully free in that context.
3. Also, the big picture is really big, in a country of 330-odd million people. An American who never crosses paths with the criminal justice system, never loses health insurance, & is white (or somewhat lucky) has freedom comparable to anyone on earth.
4. That describes a majority of Americans. More importantly, it describes a clear majority of Americans who vote. US treatment of Central American migrants today would be unthinkable in most European countries; so would gun massacres & mass fatalities from opioids. But....
5....these are remote from the direct experience of most Americans as well, part of their country’s life but not usually their own.
6. Third, remember Jefferson: “...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
7. There are many respects in which America has become markedly less free in recent years. An impotent national legislature, insecurity of personal data, the oppressive threat of crushing debt resulting from unexpected health care costs or student loans, are all in some way...
8....erosions of freedom. They’ve arisen gradually, though, so to most Americans they seem like the long lines at TSA checkpoints — something to complain about, maybe, but not crises urgently demanding change.
9. Finally, consider the American national character, and specifically its great vice: a weakness for self-congratulation and self-praise. This weakness it has always had, even hundreds of years ago. As @jtlevy might agree, it can obscure Americans’ view of outrages...
10....against, let alone erosions of, freedom. The election as President of someone like Donald Trump — “Praise me! Love me!” — is unthinkable without it, but this vice has clouded our vision in more subtle ways as well. It reinforces the hubris of wealth and power...
11....as we saw in the years before a devastating recession caused by inadequate regulation of the US financial services sector, that blighted the fortunes of millions of people. And it prompts us to mistake symbolism for substance, as Barack Obama was frequently wont to do.
12. Some countries in the world today can argue, with much evidence, that they are more free than is the United States. Most of them have national memories of periods in which they were much less free. They may be more vigilant than we are for that reason.
13. But none of these countries is large or strong enough by itself to sustain its freedom outside the context of an benign international environment, of which American power is the principle support. An America that has lost interest in freedom — abroad, or even at home —...
14...is an America whose power cannot be regarded as reliable, and whose example no longer inspires. Inattention by Americans to the erosion of freedom in the United States is thus a danger to freedom everywhere. [end]
