How so? This is something I’ve heard many times from many angles, and I’m curious: how much freer? How do you know? What makes the US freer than the UK, Holland, Germany, Canada, Australia, or any westernized democracy? Honest question, I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong.
Not the point and not the question.
England by which I take it you mean Britain and the rest of the western world does not have the manta of freedom going on. The PR Americans sell and buy is that the US is the bastion of everything free. May be true legislatively to a degree but socially I don’t see it.
I read people here talking about the unfree socialist states in Europe like Holland and the UK. BS to the nth degree IMO.
It’s also a hard question to answer as how do you define free?
Freedom to own and sell property?
Freedom of religion?
Freedom to leave?
Freedom to set up business?
Chances of ending up in jail?
Access to health care no matter who or what you are?
and on and on…
Scule,
Gun ownership is much easier and varied in the US. Carrying of guns or pocket knives is much less regulated in the US. There are more legal types of pornography in the US. In the US there is a right to remain silent and a right not to incriminate oneself in connection with criminal charges (at least as protrayed by British TV crime dramas, it’s not the same in England). Less severe restrictions on hunting in the US. The US has a weaker animal rights movement.
I believe England has less restrictions on nudity appearing in tabloid papers, a lower drinking age, more legal prostitution, and laxer marijuana laws. But that’s about it.
Maybe you could call it a wash. But it sure doesn’t have a high horse to climb onto IMO.
Well, Machetero, I’ve lived in the UK, the US, Hong Kong, and the Republic of Ireland, and the ‘freedom’ of the individual didn’t really differ from place to place.
Entirely personally, I felt the least ‘free’ when I was in was the US. Perhaps my priorities are different, because I prefer a largely gun-free society, but the freedom to not get a gun pulled on me by a twitchy cop because I might be armed, is one that I’m happy not to have. (And surely “The US has a weaker animal rights movement” is an indication of nothing more than the UK’s freedom of political expression, however much one disagrees with the cause?)
jjimm’s point is essential to this question. Not that I’m saying the US is not more free, because it may well be so, but how does one quantify that? In Canada, there are more guns per capita than in the US, despite gun registration. We do have stricter carrying laws though, so how does that get quantified?
Also, we have the right to remain silent too, under arrest. Gays are allowed to get married in most of the country, isn’t that more free than what exists in the US now? We have completely free expression, too (though a radio station was recently shut down by the CRTC because of numerous complaints). So are we more free? I don’t know how to quantify it, but I have a problem with blanket statements like “the US is more free” not because I disagree but because I don’t think anyone can really be sure.
So maybe yojimbo’s points are a good guide to go on. Near as I can tell, and I am no expert on the law, we stack up pretty equally with the US against each criteria, except maybe the health care issue, but I don’t know if that counts as freedom. Someone else care to posit a response?
It will now also requires personnal informations known to the airlines to be transmitted to the US authorities (like your adress, e-mail, the kind of meal you ordered for the flight, etc…), without any guarantees about how these infos will be handled, how long they’ll be kept, etc…
Unfortunately, the EU is about to cave in the US demands and allow european carrier companies to release these infos (despite it being illegal in many EU countries).
Even assuming that you’re right (and actually I doubt you have a complete picture…how many times did I read on american boards that indicted people are assumed to be guilty and have to prove their innocence in France, for instance, or that not having a “you have the right to remain silent” line means that you’re not allowed to remain silent?), I still can’t see how it’s indicative of “more freedom”.
Why being free to smoke pot would be less important than being free to carry a gun, for instance? Or being free to have a same-sex marriage less important than being free to sell “Mein Kampf”? How could you objectively measure jow many “freedom points” each of these freedoms is worth?
I’ve often ran into a lot of assumptions being made about the US by americans, without any actual knowledge of other countries. The US being freer, giving more foreign aid, letting in more immigrants, having a more powerful army, a better healthcare, more guarantees of a due process of law, etc…Which aren’t backed in any way by an actual comparison, but simply assumed… So yes, I’m warry of such statements, and I want them to be backed by some actual comparisons.
And though we can compare things like the number of carriers or life expectancy (immigration is a vastly more difficult issue, by the way. I tried once, and it’s much harder to make comparisons than I originally assumed), it’s essentially impossible for something as subjective as “freedom”. We’re generally unable to compare to which extend we are more or less free regarding a particular issue, we don’t know how if we should compare “in the book” freedoms or the way laws are actually implemented, we can’t decide whether or not a given “freedom” is more important than another one, and we even disagree about what should be considered “freedom”, or a “right”.
So, though it would quite easy to decide if North Korea is less or more free than Denmark, when comparing western democratic countries, it’s essentially a matter of opinions (assuming once again a proper level of information which is often non-existant). The most you can say is “I particularily value freedom X for whatever reason , and I wouldn’t trade it for freedom Y”., and these opinions are of course modeled to a large extent by the social organization in your country, the freedoms you’re accustomed to/ brainwashed about having a strong tendancy to be overvalued, and the freedoms you don’t have appearing not that important.
Personally I think a lot of the freedom comments wrt Europe and America stem from two things: space and taxes.
America feels freer to people that live there because of the vast stretches of land that really no one holds sway over. Driving through the midwest, or really anywhere but the east coast, it’s easy to feel that government is a distant thing. Even the suburbs feel roomier; the endless stretches of mirror image shoulder-to-shoulder homes in many of the UK suburbs for example…
The taxes feel more oppressive in Europe as well. The rule seems to be around half your money to government. Add to that the extreme costs for cars and gasoline (due to taxes), which many Americans equate with freedom, and the “VAT”, and it feels less free when you are there.
Anyway, I think those are the primary feelings that generate those comments. In terms of actual political and social freedoms, I’m sure the case could be argued either way. In fact in many ways there are less “rules” in Europe (sometimes I find America rather strict regarding their social rules).
Its a sad situation for many reasons, not the least of which being that you can’t really bring up this topic without a legion of fools screaming about tin foil hats. The erosion of our rights will continue to go on as long as so many people keep their heads burried in the sand.