Is America actually more "Free" than most other Democractic Countries?

Great Debates
121

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Maybe a majority of Americans figured out they were right after all, and the hyper-patriotic DJs wrong? Kind of like what I said.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, there was a bit of that. I think there was more than a bit of showmanship by the Dixie Chicks as well, playing up the ‘poor us!’ role, and a bit of over hype on exactly what real world effect all this had on their sales and popularity. Certainly today they are as popular as they ever were (I never liked them, but it had zero to do with their political stance).

[QUOTE=Desert Nomad]
Sorry, but restricting citizens movement does not make us very free.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps you are correct…but I don’t think that this particular aspect is really a priority with most of our citizens. As an analogy, say the government banned fish flavored soda. Citizens can no longer buy fish flavored soda at the market…it’s now a banned substance. Sure, there would be a minority of citizens who would lament the fact that they can no longer buy fish soda, and they would be quite correct in pointing out that this does not make us very free. The majority of citizens would simply not care about this particular issue as it doesn’t impact them.

[QUOTE=fetus]
Here’s a little pop quiz for you. Market forces are the result of:

a. Flying pigs
b. Invisible strings
c. Laughing lagomorphs
d. Laughing leprechauns
e. Societal factors

Wanna hazard a guess?
[/QUOTE]

Either pass the drugs or a translation because gods know what you are getting at here. What exactly is your point?

-XT

122

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Really? I didn’t know that about Americans. Quite the opposite, I thought Americans were supposed too be very superstitious (believing in ‘luck’ and all). Do you have a cite for this contention?
[/QUOTE]

It’s known in Psychology as the Fundamental Attribution Error–fundamental because it’s so widespread. Essentially, you have to say whether you’re referring towards peoples attitudes towards themselves or others, and whether the action they’re observing is positive. A quick breakdown:

I Did Well: It must be because I am very skilled.
**I Did Poorly: **It’s due to context (I didn’t get much sleep last night, etc.)
You Did Well: It’s due to context (You were “in the right place at the right time”)
You Did Poorly: It’s because you’re unskilled.

Essentially, we aren’t very good at deciding where context should play and where personal ability is responsible for resulsts. The above is in general the way the typical Western mind works.

Everything’s on a continuum, not everybody is the same, yada yada yada. But it’s very well established.

123

Also look into the Just World Phenomenon, which states members of individualistic cultures tend to believe that things happen to people because they deserve it.

124

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Perhaps you are correct…but I don’t think that this particular aspect is really a priority with most of our citizens. As an analogy, say the government banned fish flavored soda. Citizens can no longer buy fish flavored soda at the market…it’s now a banned substance. Sure, there would be a minority of citizens who would lament the fact that they can no longer buy fish soda, and they would be quite correct in pointing out that this does not make us very free. The majority of citizens would simply not care about this particular issue as it doesn’t impact them.

[/QUOTE]

By this rationale, you can’t say that people in non gun-totin’ countries are less free if they don’t want to tote guns. Are you sure you want to go there?

If we measure how much freedom we have based on how many people complain, we have one of the least free countries in the world.

125

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
By this rationale, you can’t say that people in non gun-totin’ countries are less free if they don’t want to tote guns. Are you sure you want to go there?
[/QUOTE]

Certainly I want too go there. You are building up a strawman for me…and I don’t want it. I have maintained through this thread that ‘free’ is in the eyes of the majority of citizens perceptions. If the majority of it’s citizens don’t want guns, then they are more free having it this way than having guns imposed on them. And vice versa.

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
If we measure how much freedom we have based on how many people complain, we have one of the least free countries in the world.
[/QUOTE]

Well, Americans like to complain…so I would say that this IS a good indication of a freedom we enjoy.

-XT

126

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Also look into the Just World Phenomenon, which states members of individualistic cultures tend to believe that things happen to people because they deserve it.
[/QUOTE]

I didn’t know that had a name. Cool.

127

xtisme, you’re changing the goalposts a lot in this thread. It’s only an attack on freedom if people don’t really care about it? What about principle? Or the reason the Constitution was written in the first place? A benign dictatorship can do well for years, but that doesn’t mean the people are more free than those within a democracy, which necessarily has checks and balances to cope with things that might not yet be occurring.

(And please, it’s “to” not “too”. Irrelevant to the argument, and not meant to attack you, but the constant recurrence of this typo is driving me nuts!)

128

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Certainly I want too go there. You are building up a strawman for me…and I don’t want it. I have maintained through this thread that ‘free’ is in the eyes of the majority of citizens perceptions. If the majority of it’s citizens don’t want guns, then they are more free having it this way than having guns imposed on them. And vice versa.
[/QUOTE]
That’s kind of what I was initially thinking in response to this whole thread. One of the ways we could define freedom is having a system of government that gives the people a lot of power in terms of changing laws to suit them. The more things that are controlled Constitutionally, the less free I would consider a country to be.

129

[QUOTE=jjimm]
It’s only an attack on freedom if people don’t really care about it?
[/QUOTE]

I didn’t say that. I acknowledged that by depriving us of our chance to go to Cuba we have less tangible freedom than you have, who can go there any time. Most Americans, however, don’t care…its not an important issue to them. That’s the reality.

[QUOTE=jjimm]
What about principle?
[/QUOTE]

I’m big on principle myself. I’m also opposed to most government intervention (being a small ‘l’ libertarian type)…so, I’m not keen on the government telling us where we can go and what we can do. However, most of my fellow citizens don’t care about this particular issue..and most of them don’t feel ‘less free’ because they can’t go to Cuba.

[QUOTE=jjimm]
A benign dictatorship can do well for years, but that doesn’t mean the people are more free than those within a democracy, which necessarily has checks and balances to cope with things that might not yet be occurring.
[/QUOTE]

Well, contrary to popular belief, we don’t HAVE a benign dictatorship. We actually do have a functional democracy (well, semi-functional). If the majority of our citizens thought going to Cuba (just to use this example again) was important…well, then things would change and we’d be smoking fine Cuban cigars in Havana. I’m all for it myself…but until it gets on the radar in the US in a big way it ain’t gona happen.

[QUOTE=jjimm]
(And please, it’s “to” not “too”. Irrelevant to the argument, and not meant to attack you, but the constant recurrence of this typo is driving me nuts!)
[/QUOTE]

Apologies. It’s habit. I’m not a very good writer, as you have no doubt seen for your self…and my grasp of syntax, spelling and such is tenuous at best. Try and ignore the poor grammar.

-XT

130

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
That’s kind of what I was initially thinking in response to this whole thread. One of the ways we could define freedom is having a system of government that gives the people a lot of power in terms of changing laws to suit them. The more things that are controlled Constitutionally, the less free I would consider a country to be.
[/QUOTE]

Well, it’s a trade off. You don’t want a situation where you get a tyranny of the masses kind of thing either. We have a fairly decent balance (well, for most of our citizens…I’d rather it was different, but I’m in the minority) that by and large a majority of our citizens are content with. That IS freedom IMHO.

-XT

131

I don’t know what’s so hard about this. I explained it in several different ways in the last post. I’ll try again, I guess.

Remember when someone said upthread that Korea’s citizens are (about) as free from governmental interference in their lives as we are, but their lives are less free in some ways because of cultural factors–specifically, the fact that family and friends expect each other to conform to rigid social roles? The entire Dixie Chicks thing is just an example of a similar phenomenon in the US, nothing less, nothing more. It’s illustrative of the fact that some peoples’ lives are less free in some ways because of cultural factors, not because of the government. But all of a sudden half of the people participating in this thread are Patrick Henry, screaming for liberty and assigning all sorts of unsavory motives to the person who first mentioned the Dixie Chicks and then to everyone who pops in to defend him. Nobody claimed that the government has anything at all to do with the Dixie Chicks getting death threats and stuff. The point was that each society encroaches on its individuals’ freedoms in certain ways by imposing expectations above and beyond those put in place by the government. This was all crystal clear to everyone when we were talking about Korea, but once somebody mentioned a freedom-limiting societal factor in the United States, you’da thought someone set off a roadside bomb on Pennsylvania Ave.

I don’t think you’re really that naive about the willingness of the Congress to achieve the goals of the people.

132

[QUOTE=tagos]
I hear what you’re saying but in the USA this ‘freedom’ seems to be quickly subject to social and legal sanction when the country is engaged in a bout of collective hysteria like the 1950’s communist witch-hunts or not supporting ‘the war’.
[/QUOTE]
There’s a lot more hysteria about racism these days than there ever was about communism, and the witch-hunt for racists has gone on for decades longer than McCarthyism.

133

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
There’s a lot more hysteria about racism these days than there ever was about communism, and the witch-hunt for racists has gone on for decades longer than McCarthyism.
[/QUOTE]

Which would not be inappropriate if true (it isn’t). The American Communist Party never had a really significant number of members or sympathizers, even at its high point in the 1930s. Racism in America is real and always has been, and much more destructive to our society than Communism, and more deeply planted in our culture and much harder to root out.

134

That’s like saying that the humanitarian crisis in Burma is like the humanitarian crisis at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Come on, now.

135

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
There’s a lot more hysteria about racism these days than there ever was about communism, and the witch-hunt for racists has gone on for decades longer than McCarthyism.
[/QUOTE]
I must be missing the congressional committee whose chairman has claimed to have a list of 205 known racists in the State Department.

Or, for that matter, I must be blocking out the war that has cost 57,000 American lives because of the fear of the theory holds that if one nation falls to racism, its neighbors are next. Look out, Canada!

136

I agree with you in principle (although I believe this concept is not a US invention), but in practice, the US incarceration rate is (one of) the highest in the world. The incarceration rate is probably the single biggest instance where ‘the land of the free’ is on shaky ground. Here in France for example, although the presumption of innocence is in fact coded in law, the right to a speedy trial is purely hypothetical. This means that the state can detain the accused pending trial for periods of more than a year. However, in practice the French per capita imprisonment rate is about 8 times smaller than the US rate. So you might say that the French justice system wields greater powers than the US, but uses them with more restraint. I should also add that French ‘vice’ laws are extremely repressive by European standards, but the ‘turn a blind eye’ principal is generally applied, so the prisons here aren’t full of prostitutes and drug-addicts.

The high-level principles of the US legal system may offer greater personal freedom, but in the application I find the US to be somewhat more repressive than other ‘developed’ countries I’ve lived in. This is particularly obvious as regards sex and drugs. The heavy-handed policing of social behaviors has also created an environment where policing in general is heavy handed - shooting incidents, hand-on-weapon traffic stops etc

Regarding the issue of polygamy brought up by Maastricht, is this in fact illegal in the US ? I don’t know what the legal situation is regarding polygamy is in France, but the practice is certainly widespread, and I’ve never heard of anyone being tried for it. Does the US differentiate between de facto polygamous arrangements and legally sanctioned marriages ?

I would say that the US gives greater freedom in the areas of business and how I dispose of my property. So personal Freedom in the US is somewhat tied to personal wealth. Western Europe gives greater freedom from social coercion and from oppression through violence and poverty. Now if we could just start a new country somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic…

137

The problem is when it’s discovered that Fish Flavoured Soda provides 100% of your daily Omega 3 intake, yet the Government still decides it should remain a banned substance. Sure, most people still won’t care, but suddenly there will be a sizeable number of people who do care, and feel that they are Less Free than their neighbours in North Snowland who can have all the Fish Flavoured Soda they want. (Then again, the citizens of North Snowland may feel they are less free than their neighbours to the south, because their shops are legally prohibited from opening on Sundays, and can only trade between 9am and 5:30pm Monday-Thursday, with Late Night Shopping till 9pm on Friday and opening until lunchtime on Saturday).

I’m not touching the gun control aspect with a 60ft pole, though. :wink: :smiley:

138

To add to the fish-flavoured soda analogy, when I mentioned “benign dictatorship” above, I wasn’t referring to the US. One particular example I had in mind, however, is that of Singapore, which is a democracy in name only. Political dissent is treated very harshly (and corruptly). Yet talk to the vast majority of Singaporeans, and they’re amongst the happiest, most contented crowd there is. Regarding political dissent, one might say of Singaporeans, “The majority of citizens would simply not care about this particular issue as it doesn’t impact them.”

Yet I think we’d all agree that Singaporeans are significantly less free than we are.

139

[QUOTE=Richard Parker]
My understanding is that permits are required for more types of protests and the process is more challenging. Perhaps I’m mistaken.
[/QUOTE]

Speaking as someone who was part of the protest mentioned above, your understanding isn’t quite right. Protests do not require a permit, except in the area designated in London by SOCPA, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. The UK government brought in this law to stop people protesting in the designated area, which is about a square mile in the centre of London, unless they applied for a permit. The police are obliged to grant a permit if applied for, but there still remains the fact that you have to apply. There was an amount of protest as to this law, including by me, which is why I was part of the 2000-strong protest mentioned – that protest was specifically against the SOCPA law.

The major complaint about the law is that a restriction on the right to protest is flagrantly undemocratic, but there are also two other complaints that tend to show up in the arguments of anti-SOCPA campaigners like me. The first is that “protesting” under SOCPA is very, very loosely defined; people have been threatened with arrest for, among other things, wearing a badge or a t-shirt with a slogan on. (The presence of a slogan counts as a protest; it could be a slogan in support of the government!) The second is the pervasive opinion that SOCPA was written as a generic law but in actuality specifically targeted on Brian Haw, a protestor who has for the last five years maintained a static protest against the Iraq war, directly outside the Houses of Parliament. The government don’t like him being there, and have repeatedly attempted to restrict his democratic right to protest there; SOCPA seemed to be another attempt to remove Haw’s protest while appearing to be a generic law. A court, however, ruled that it didn’t apply to him.

Wikipedia has more on SOCPA and Brian Haw, for further research, and Mark Thomas, comedian and activist, has written extensively about the anti-SOCPA protests. I should note at this point that (a) SOCPA specifically applies to only one area of London, and democratic protest elsewhere is not restricted and requires no licence or permit, and (b) SOCPA was heavily opposed in Parliament as well as by the police and the public. I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that the UK restricts speech or democratic protest in general, and SOCPA doesn’t really demonstrate that that state of affairs is changing in my opinion; the most recent news we have is that there’s strong appetite inside Government to repeal the law, if they can work out how to do it without an embarrassing climbdown.

Hope that helps; this certainly wasn’t meant as an accusation that you were wrong, but just another attempt to fight a bit of mistakenness. :slight_smile:

140

About 0.71% of all Americans were imprisoned in 2005, beating out second-place Russia with about .52%. South Africa rounded out the top 3 with about .4%. Those were the only ones that were even close; the average European country had about .13%, with Canada and Australia in the same neighborhood. Cite. (My numbers may be off by .02% or less on either side; I looked at a graph from the cite.)

That may not sound like a big difference, but .71% of the American population is 2,149,710 people (almost equal to the population of Nevada), while .13% of the population of the UK is 109 people.* It’s important to note that a disporportionate number of American prisoners are up on drug-related charges, and that drug convictions are disproportionately high for blacks, Hispanics and the poor compared to the actual representation of those ethnic groups among American drug users. The US is indeed more about individual freedom in theory than in practice, especially the individual freedom of people who are poor, dark-skinned and/or smoke pot.

  • The actual incarceration rate in the UK specifically is higher, but that’s beside the point of this specific example.

I think I’ve covered that in this thread, but I’ll give it another crack: polygamy is illegal everywhere in the US. It’s more prevalent in Utah due to that state’s overwhelming monopoly on Mormonism; the mainstream LDS church itself has given up polygamy, but Utah and (to a much lesser extent) nearby states Colorado and Arizona have some offshoot cults where polygamy is practiced. However, it’s highly stigmatized and heavily prosecuted everywhere. The idea that Americans as a society are OK with polygamy, ritualized sex abuse, and wacko cults is fabricated from whole cloth, probably by some sensationalist media corporation(s) in Europe. In fact, those things are recurring themes in nationwide moral scares here; if anything, we’re over-concerned about them, relative to their actual influence on society as a whole.

Yes. We do have “common law marriage” in some areas, where two unrelated people of opposite gender who live together for long enough are legally assumed to be married, but I’ve never heard of a Jack Tripper being prosecuted for living with two women at the same time. Here in California (and probably in most other states to a lesser extent), every major city has a significant minority of swingers, open marriages, etc., but each person only gets to marry their favorite partner.

I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, the US government doesn’t feel that way, nor do most local police departments IME. Protesting is often a form of Russian Roulette here; I have a handful of protest horror stories from Arizona…