America - The Freest Country?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Americans tend to conflate the terms anarchy and chaos. That too goes pretty far back in our "national myth" since we view the early Confederation days as having been too problematic.

Freedom in the USA is mostly freedom "from" as it was put ealier.

Our freedoms are mostly encoded as limitations ON government rather than specific assertions of rights. You aren't really granted the freedom TO do very much, so much as the government is prevented from infringing on your ability to do what you want.


Interestingly, the right TO keep and bear arms is a "to" statement.

[HoreTore]

Americans tend to conflate the terms anarchy and chaos. That too goes pretty far back in our "national myth" since we view the early Confederation days as having been too problematic.

But.... Doesn't relatively many americans define themselves as libertarians?

Anarchy, as a political term, simply means not having a government. What you put in place of it defines your brand of anarchism, it could be unions, extended family units, militias, etc.

But then again, american libertarians seems to enjoy putting people in prison, while a true anarchist would have an extreme hatred against putting anyone in prison....

[LittleGrizzly]

On the point about Prisons in America they do have privately operated prisons which (not sure about this bit) have thier value based on the amount of prisnors they have... (as the goverment pays per prisnor)

So privately owned prisons certainly want more prisnors then all you need is a corrupt officail (or campaign contributions as thier called) and all of a sudden a crack down starts and thier rolling in money....

I watched an intresting documentary called the drug war the last white hope and it talks about alot of this stuff...

[Ironside]

On the point about Prisons in America they do have privately operated prisons which (not sure about this bit) have thier value based on the amount of prisnors they have... (as the goverment pays per prisnor)

So privately owned prisons certainly want more prisnors then all you need is a corrupt officail (or campaign contributions as thier called) and all of a sudden a crack down starts and thier rolling in money....

I watched an intresting documentary called the drug war the last white hope and it talks about alot of this stuff...

Private prisons are only a few % of the total US prison population. While propably not helping (due to the reasons you described) it has more to do with the war one drugs combined with "tough on crimes"= long prison sentances, "personal responsibillity"=there's no such thing as structural societal problems that causes crimes and "prisons a rehability centers"= what kind of whacky lefty ideas is this? Prisons should be punishment centers that you fear not some freaking R&R.


As I hinted about in the other thread, as there's such a thing as too much freedom, how does good freedom look like?

[Furunculus]

Americans tend to conflate the terms anarchy and chaos. That too goes pretty far back in our "national myth" since we view the early Confederation days as having been too problematic.

Freedom in the USA is mostly freedom "from" as it was put ealier.

Our freedoms are mostly encoded as limitations ON government rather than specific assertions of rights. You aren't really granted the freedom TO do very much, so much as the government is prevented from infringing on your ability to do what you want.

Interestingly, the right TO keep and bear arms is a "to" statement.

this would appear to be a characteristic of common law countries, the principle being that you define the few things that cannot be done, rather than recognise and regulate the many that can.

Don't confuse freedom with independence either. A 17th century frenchman had less freedom but more independence than a 21st century London City financier.

It's a balancing act. A fun fact, the European country with most legislation text is actually Spain. It is also the european country where less legislation is enforced as a percentage of the total. As usual, quality and quantity do not go hand in hand.

I would have a lot more respect for a government which enforced a very small amount of legislation rigidly and without exception than Spain.

Personal freedoms-wise, well, we're getting less and less. In that sense Somalia probably is the freeest place on the planet.

agreed, and again this may be a symptom of a civil law system where an attempt to define all the freedom to's results in a flood of laws which are then treated with contempt by the subject populace.