Why’s America referred to as land of the free? As a non American, ordinary Americans who are not politicians or powerful billions seem to be in more bondage than some people in some third world countries. Could you share your POV?
Why’s America referred to as land of the free? As a non American, ordinary Americans who are not politicians or powerful billions seem to be in more bondage than some people in some third world countries. Could you share your POV?
2 months ago
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About The Author
In Europe you can go to jail for sharing offensive memes, in America you won’t
Because America was one of the first to break away from the British Empire.
The problems America has are highlighted a lot more than any of the positives of living here. Patriotism has been at a low since the war on Afghanistan and never really came back up so people love to shit on America rn.
Umm… your view is skewed mightily lol.
America has some problems, sure. Every nation does, and we should try to improve. But America is actually pretty sweet! One of the best nations to live in!
You are a non-American. I highly suggest you come visit! Come check out some of our cities, have fun, do the touristy things. Go check out some national parks/landmarks. Go to broadway, or catch a sports match, or enjoy a nice dinner at one of our tens of thousands of great restaurants!
You aren’t American, so your view of America comes from mainstream news. Don’t follow that shit, they make profit by pushing extreme stories because that’s what gets views, clicks, ad revenue. Real life in America is way more chill than all that bullshit.
Come see for yourself! We’d love to have you.
Free compared to most other countries 100-200 years ago. The nickname is starting to wear off.
American here.
It’s a holdover. When we first became independent, we considered ourselves ‘free’. We have things written into our constitution that keep us from things like dictatorship, and it’s held dear that our freedoms are indelible and untouchable.
Of course, tell that to the minorities in race and sexuality who are being persecuted now. Centuries of changes to our government and way of thinking have brought us low in many respects, as a democrat living in a republican state I’ll be the first to admit it.
I’m disabled, have been my entire life. We don’t have free healthcare and therefor I’m stuck on disability instead of getting a job, because if I earn anything worth mentioning my federal healthcare benefits start shrinking and I have to have surgery every few years. So yeah, I feel pretty bound in some respects and like I said before, those in racial, sexuality, or ideology minorities probably want to move to Canada about now.
What freedoms are we missing out on other than public transport and public healthcare?
The problem is you get all your information about america from the media and from reddit. In person it is not nearly as bad here as they make it out to be.
Compared to 3rd world countries, America is pretty cool to live in
Compared to other first world countries, America is not the best to live in
As someone from a third world country Your affirmation makes no sense
If you really believe most Americans are in bondage, why isn’t there some sort of European or UN effort to liberate us?
EDIT to add, liberation is not just military action. It could include granting asylum to us wretched slaves.
Unlike in some countries Americans can do a lot of things which might annoy others but the government can’t necessarily stop them. Americans can also criticize the government and they take that pretty liberally. Some countries that’s possible, some it’s not. It is more possible now in other countries than it was when the US was founded.
Perfect? Nope, far from it. Better than, I don’t know, tanks rolling over you in Tiananmen Square, or getting rolled up in a paddy wagon in Moscow, yep.
I think the fact that the majority of Reddit users are Americans so they have the freedom and time to fuck around on here seems to be not much “bondage”? Plenty of social and political issues for sure though. But find me a country of 400MM diverse people that can work as some perfect utopia. I am convinced it cannot….corruption is just too easy. Human nature cannot be defied.
It’s seen as the land of the free because there are no limits on how high you can soar or how hard you can fall either. If you look at the richest people in the world, 3 of the top 5 and 7 of the top 10 are Americans. The biggest and most influential companies in the world are American companies as well. No other country do you really have the ability to succeed to those heights it would seem. If you fail and bankrupt your company, you can just start another one. People will still give you money. And if you fail and hit rock bottom those same people will look at you and expect you to dig yourself out.
We more or less have freedom, we can say what we want, carry firearms(concealed, but carry), millions of people pour over our borders just to get a taste of “freedom”. I’m proud of America but recently we can’t really say much without others cutting us down on what we say, so that sucks. But we can vote for who we want, say most anything, and go most anywhere.
DAE le europe is le utopia???????
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try asking the roma how they feel about that
I think it’s that there are often more tyrannical/unfortunate countries where living conditions are worse, where there are even less personal freedoms, and where criticism of the government is completely illegal.
The U.S. sure as hell ain’t great, but there are definitely worse places you can be living, even right now.
Because America is not exactly what is portrayed on the news. The news highlights the worst stories all the time. That makes it look like that is all America is
You can tell who developed their entire worldview on reddit. Sad.
Avoiding Nazism and communism
Bill of rights
We are free because of 1A and 2A
So long as we are not threathening someone directly you can say pretty much anything without fear of imprisonment
And if you are a responsible law-abiding citizen you can have a fuckin arsenal which probably has its problems but Americans would rather be on the “too many guns” extreme than on the “too little” side
So long as we can say what we think and can protect ourselves from governments who strive to take that freedom away, that is our definition of freedom
I think people are just okay with the bondage they are in in other countries. There are so many more restrictions on everything in other countries. People just accept that it is what it is. America is the land of the free so if there is anything that constricts us we will complain.
Because, for the most part, Americans are free to pursue what they want.
The government does not put restrictions on people nearly as much as society itself does.
In the USA you have the most opportunity to build wealth and become successful with little government intervention no matter how you look
You can walk up to the president and curse him up and down and be fine. You can’t do that in many many countries.
We have the illusion that we are the most free and in some ways we are and in others we aren’t.
It’s hard to find a country where there is the rule of law and its also incredibly easy to go buy all the firearms you want and carry them about on the street openly. This is a form of freedom regardless lf how you feel about firearms. I mean help me out here reddit, are guns as prevalent and easy to get anywhere else in the western world?
I think a big part of it also is how much and how freely we travel. It’s not at all uncommon for a US family to drive 1000 miles for a vacation. And we drive all over all the time. 2 hour drives are nothing for most Americans. We view this as freedom. You can get into the specifics of a car based country and the morality of that. But I can get in the car and drive 2500 miles in one direction and still be in my country.
I think there’s a ton of recency and confirmation bias too. Lots of places have the rule of law and allow you to curse the president and drive a stupid car. So those aspects aren’t particularly revolutionary.
It’s probably the easiest place to get rich in the entire world and that plays a big role too. Every American feels like we are just 1 break away from inventing the better mouse trap and becoming a billionaire. If you have an idea. If you want to work your ass off to be rich, not sure there’s a better place than the US.
We do encarcerate a lot of people. I’d actually like to hear from Europeans and others on how they feel they might be more free than Americans. I like the concept of freedom and what people consider when it comes to declaring themselves free.
I actually had a foreign boss exolain what american freedom is. Its pretty simple actually:
You are free to succeed or fail. You are free to become who you want to be, to move up or down social classes.
In much of the world, the class you are born into determines what you can be.
This american style of freedom is not exclusive to the US, but we do it really well, and we started it.
America offers amazing opportunities along with soul-crushing hazards. If you’re reasonably smart, healthy and driven, you’ll do alright. But if you have any flaws in health, capability, suffer a trauma or are from a marginalized group, you’re going to have an uphill battle.
That said, every year Americans pay more and get less for their salary. It’s a boiling frog syndrome, and the billionaire class is paying to turn us against each other so we don’t focus on them.
When my grandfather first came to America, his biggest culture shock was listening to the radio and hear someone criticizing the President. Freedom of speech, religion, and press are not things to take for granted in most of the world.
Europe caught up to America in making their countries more free, not the other way around.
Here are some useful indices:
Press Freedom Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
Democracy Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Freedom in the World index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World
An interesting survey that ties into this is this 2021 survey by Morning Consult that measures how many Americans have the *right-wing authoritarian personality*. People who have an authoritarian personality tend to be drawn to demagogic leaders and tend to be bigoted. 25.6% of Americans have authoritarian personality, whereas only 6% of Germans do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarian_personality#Prevalence
I think it has something to do with censorship and the way we view freedom of speech. Like I was shocked when I learned that games like Fallout 3 are heavily censored in Australia. Or that lots of the crappy old slasher movies me and my friends watched in the 1980s were banned in the UK. I honestly thought European countries were less restrictive than America when it came to censorship.
Plus class seems to play a bigger role in other countries than it does in America. Here, no one cares where you were born or what your parents did for a living. I like to use Philo Farnsworth as an example. He was a farm boy who invented the television back in the 1920s. If he had been born anywhere else, it’s hard to say whether or not he would’ve been able to do that. He might not have thought he *could* do that since it didn’t fit his class or social status. I ain’t saying class isn’t important here I’m just saying, “what can you do for me?” usually trumps “where were you born and who were your parents”.
In the US you are free to criticize the government without recourse. You are allowed to say anything or hold any belief without prosecution from the government. You are allowed (with varying degrees of leniency) to arm yourself. And most importantly, and this is something that greatly differs us from European democracies, the Government is framed in such a way that the individual and their liberties supersede the law. Or to frame it in better words, the US Constitution lays out rights and liberties that citizens innately hold regardless of the authority of the government. Where as the majority of European constitutions lay out rights and liberties that the government lets its citizens have. Its a subtle distinction, but it makes a world of difference.
How am I in bondage?
you didn’t read the fine print “America: the Land of the Free…provided that you are rich, white, male, heterosexual, and Christian…..and the home of the brave”
This popularized saying is merely propaganda. Your assessment that working class people are in bondage is correct- we live in wage slavery.
There is a deceptively narrow view of what constitutes an acceptably debatable topic in our politics. This is where the illusion of free speech comes from. You can say ANYTHING within that narrow frame, but many of us are too brainwashed to realize these few topics don’t ever actually challenge the status quo.
For example, we can say terrible foul things about gay people and if they deserve rights or not, and in that way anything goes. But can we talk about unionizing or striking for better wages? The media is controlled by a handful of billionaires, so of course they won’t allow this discourse to be mainstream. Can we explore “radical” ideologies like communism without fear mongering? No! If you even approached the subject as a school teacher, you would be fired immediately.
We have the “freedom” to vote for Democrats or Republicans, but both these groups represent the interests of the rich/capitalists and only seek to continue exploiting the working class. We need class consciousness to be able to realize and define how oppressed we are. The only reason some other countries have even worse conditions than the US is a direct result of our foreign policy.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”
-Emma Lazarus, inscribed at the foot of The Statue of Liberty
The identity of being an American is freedom, a shared delusion bought into by an amalgamation of people to unify them despite their conflicting backgrounds.