Do you live in the home of the brave and the land of the free?

Question

Do you really believe the propoganda and chest beating? To me you seem to be very much controlled. You have to wat until you are 20 to have full adult rights, England has them at 18. You are restricted to driving at pitifully slow speeds. You police are bullying and abusive when they pull you over for minor offences like a broken tail light or something like that. You are controlled about what you can drink, where you can drink. You even had a government that attempted prohibition. You can only gamble in certain states. You have no political freedom as demonstrated by McCarthyism and the Hollywood black list. Your government spies on you, makes companies like Google tell what you are looking at on the internet. The FBI know everything you do and keep lots of files on you.

Are you free?

Martin, no England is not much better although people are legally adult earlier, we never had prohibition and we can gamble in and city but we still lack freedom. The different is the way that Americans are so pruod of being free when they are not.

Professor Lombardo, first you are assuming that you could, always a dangerous assumption but very easy from the keyboard, second why would you wish to do that? Are you upset by the truth?

MI, the point is that in England we know we are controlled. The difference is that apparently Americans don't know.

MI, the point is that in England we know we are controlled. The difference is that apparently Americans don't know.

MI, the point is that in England we know we are controlled. The difference is that apparently Americans don't know.

About me saying 20 about gambling and alcohol when it is actually 21, I wasn't sure whether it was 20 or 21 so I went on the safe side. 21 is even worse. I agree that the USA is a great country to live in and that other countries have restrictions too. What I don't understand is why you sing about being free when you are clearly not.

CJ. I am not saying that you are not as free as many other countries. I am saying that you are not free enough to call it the land of the free. I am not saying England is better overall, The tax and the size of our houses are terrible, just like you said, although home ownership is probably a bit higher than you think it is.

Answer 1

There is no such thing as freedom. It's an illusion. There are laws that prevent people from doing anything they want. If people want freedom, they want anarchy. No government, no laws. If someone wants to kill you, they can, and there's nothing anyone can do. In a truly free country, you can walk into anyone's house without knocking (and they're free to do whatever they want with you). There would be no lists, no prisons, no bank accounts, no schools, etc. Wow, sounds fun. True freedom has no order, really. If you have a job, you're not free...although you are free to quit your job if you want. It's funny how people talk about how much freedom they have, but their lives are always bound by laws and rules.

Answer 2

Yes we are free. Are you telling us that England doesn't have laws and you think your government doesn't keep an eye on you? Keep dreaming my friend. You had to dig pretty far back for some of your claims and others are just silly. All police are not bullies or abusive. I've been pulled over for stuff and have never been bullied by an officer. Most times I get a warning which is just a friendly notice that you have something wrong with your car or you get a ticket for a more serious offense. Pay the fine and go on your way.

I do agree that the drinking age doesn't make sense. If you are old enough to vote and serve your country in the Armed Forces you should be old enough to drink.

We have political freedom as is evidenced by the strong opinions on Y/A.

edit to add: I don't believe it is about control. The laws on drinking and gambling are there to limit behaviors that can get out of control and cause great harm. While I may not agree with the gov't controlling personal behavior I have no problem with them. Laws are made to keep a society free. Any country without laws will self implode. It is not a control issue to me but if you feel controlled so be it. If you don't feel free because of your laws to bad for you. The laws on drinking, gambling, and motor vehicles do not impede my freedom but helps to protect it.

Answer 3

ADD: Freedom is an idea. Democracy is an idea. We say we are free because we hope to be free. We live on the premise that the hope of freedom should drive our way of life. True freedom, in the form of government, would be anarchy as someone else pointed out. External events, and internal events, cause us to reduce the freedoms that we hold dear. But every person in America wants to be free. That is why we are the land of the free. Not because we are. But because we have dreams of being free.

Original Post: Can't we say that each country (not just America and England) have their own pros and cons?

I agree that we have pitifully slow speeds. That doesn't stop us from having bad drivers! I agree that British police are a lot nicer.

But prohibition was a long time ago. In case you didn't hear, it failed and we got rid of it. McCarthyism went away a long time ago also. Not sure what you mean by the Hollywood black list except that I am never invited to any of Brad Pitt's Parties. As far as the FBI and Google, I don't think I am that important. And so what if they did. It would be a pretty boring read.

But I guess what it comes down to is do you believe the propaganda and chest beating of your own country? I only ask that because you asked me first. And, yes, I do believe it for my own country. It is pretty cool to live in.

"Democracy is a terrible form of government. But it is better than all the rest." - Winston Churchill

Answer 4

You make some interesting points. I'll take them on one at a time.

Actually, you need to be 21 to have full adult rights. You are correct that such a relatively old age is ridiculous. It used to be you could drink at 18, and fifty years ago a lot of southern states let you drive a car whenever your parents allowed you.

Your next point is unintentionally funny: "You are restricted to driving at pitifully slow speeds." Well, partially that is due to gridlock traffic. Compared to a city like Prague, the U.S. has very little useful public transportation because the cities and suburbs were never designed for them. And the speed limit? Well that was designed to save gas.

Police abusive? Yeah, they sure are. Some of them need a good talking to..... uhhm, if you know what I mean, (wink, wink)

The drinking age is ridiculous. Europeans have far fewer problems with teens going wild on alcoholic binges because it is not "forbidden fruit". This is the problem with all of the U.S.: everything is so puritanical that people go a little crazy. By trying to make everything sanitized and perfect, we just screw it up even more.

Gambling? That brings up another point. I don't know why, but Americans seem to have less self control than people in other countries. As I've said before, a European teen might smoke a little pot, drink a few times when he's 16, etc., but in general they handle things pretty well, and the incidence of teen pregnancy is drastically lower than in the U.S. Simply put, Americans act irresponsibly.

Here is something that will surprise you: you are wrong about McCarthyism. I, just like everyone else always assumed that Joseph McCarthy was some rotten degenerate who took delight in tormenting people and pushing his weight around. However, in a newly-declassified document called the Venona Report, the truth is revealed: the U.S. government had secretly cracked the code the Soviets were using to communicate with their operatives and sympathizers in the United States. Hence, by the time McCarthy put someone on trial, he already knew everything they had done. In the vast majority of cases, they were absolutely guilty, but McCarthy couldn't use the evidence he had without tipping off the Soviets that we had broken their secret code. Can you imaging how galling that must have been for him? I always had wondered if there weren't more to this story because I once had read a quote from JFK (President John F. Kennedy) in which he very vehemently defended McCarthy. It seemed odd. Now we know why.

Government spying? Well, a lot of that is just nonsense. We have a new, strong provision against terrorism called the Patriot Act, and I defy anyone to produce the name of even one person who was inadvertantly harmed by it. A lot of people mistakenly believe some guy is sitting at a desk listening to your phone conversations. This is a joke. Very sophisticated computer programs are sifting through billions of conversations looking for PATTERNS which suggest terrorism, such as frequent phone calls between two numbers where one of the numbers is suspected of having terrorist ties. This is not an invasion of privacy. No one is listening to grandma Sally talk to her niece in Des Moines Iowa.

Yes, we are free, as free as we can be under the circumstances. No system is perfect, but we keep trying.

Answer 5

I'm freer in the United States than I would be in most countries around the world. I enjoy a standard of living not known to most people in the world. The US isn't perfect, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be, either.

Also, you clearly don't know much about American laws. You're an adult at 18 years old in the United States. That's the age you can vote, smoke, enlist in the military, and consent to sex (although the age is lower in some states) and other contracts. You have to wait until 21 for drinking and gambling. And in most states, 16 is the age when you can obtain a driver's license. But even if you were correct, and you're not, do you think TWO YEARS makes the difference between "free" and "unfree"? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Look at the abuses of your own government before you make sweeping judgments of mine. There's not one thing on your list that hasn't occurred in some form in the UK.

Answer 6

And this is coming from a Brit, where bars close at 11 PM and which has been labelled the 51st state? Come on, all of our countries have advantages and disadvantages. Also, if I dare say so, your complaints about the United States are highly exaggerated. Yes, we tried prohibition, but if we look at the United Kingdom's long history, what foolishness did it try? Europe? I love Germany, but Frederich the Great once considered banning coffee because its rising consumption was cutting beer revenues.

We all have our plus and minus points. And ya, I do feel like I live in the "land of the free." Perception is reality.

Answer 7

I can carry a gun, work where ever I want, and no one tells me what or when to do anything as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
you must be on crack to think that Americans don't have adult rights at 18, the only thing a 18 year old cant to is buy alcohol. and you need to be 21 for that, where the hell do you get 20.

Answer 8

What planet do you live on?

Since when do we grant "adulthood" to those who are not adults? It's a proven fact that most 18 year olds are not yet responsible for many adult things, and we set the age of 21 for most things such as drinking alcohol, and getting credit cards, etc. Is that your problem? We don't let teenagers drink? Maybe we want our kids to be older and more responsible, rather than teenage drunkards, as you find in Europe.

I was a police officer, and I did my job. And did it well. We didn't "bully" anyone, especially for minor offenses. When we do our jobs we expect to do so without physical confrontation, or verbal abuse. And when that does occur, we handle it appropriately. Unlike your country, our police are not handcuffed. We're able to go out and do our jobs. And if you've not worn the uniform of a police officer in the US, then I suggest you keep your mouth shut until you have.

We do not drive at "pitifully" slow speeds. Most interstate speed limits are set at 70 mph. How fast do you want to go? Why should we allow speeding and the disregard for the safety of others? We're not doing this to oppress US drivers, we're doing this to keep our roads safe. Since most Americans own cars, unlike the Brits and other Europeans, we have more of them on the road. So we have to keep the roads safe with some kind of responsible legislation.

You talk about our government? If I recall, you have to pay to drive a car into London as a tax because it can't handle vehicle traffic. Quit being so backwards and improve your highways, and then you wouldn't need to tax your people to death.

Let's talk home ownership. How many working class people in England own their own home? Few. Mostly the wealthy, and that's it. The rest have to rent these little apartments that you could barely fit two people and a damned dachsund in! At least we can have home ownership here in the US, because we're not taxed to death like you are. Here, we are citizens, not "subjects". There is a difference.

Our government doesn't "spy" on us. They spy on foreigners who come here to do us harm. And the majority of the American people are for it. How can we protect ourselves if we don't have real-time intelligence? No one is invading our privacy.

As for the internet, I do think it needs to be regulated more. There is too much that can happen, I agree with you there.

I have lived in the US since birth. And I've not had any problems with the FBI. If you are breaking the law, or threatening the interests of this country, THEN you have a problem with the FBI. And if you think Britains intelligence services don't have a jacket on you, you're sadly mistaken!

Over 200 years ago, we kicked Britains butt to get out from under their government. And rightly so. And we didn't like it then, and what you have is no better now. I'd be damned if I'd live in a cracker box and pay a large percentage of my income to your government and live like a pauper! Your queeen would be living in a tent if the American people had anything to do with it.

We're freer than you, bet on it!

Answer 9

I used to.

Answer 10

Your country is of course free to launch military attacks against any country it wishes, free from need for UNSC approval, or world public opinion, to remain in others' lands for as long as it wishes, looting their wealth, raping their daughters, killing their sons and fathers, and free to stockpile the most horrendous WMD that world history has ever seen, or imagined, accusing the others for fake accusations.
Do you still think USA is not a free land?