> "land of the free"
That just means we're legally afforded more individual liberties than most (if not all) other countries.
That just means we're legally afforded more individual liberties than most (if not all) other countries.
There's some variance, but there's also a large amount of variance in laws between states within the USA.
And, to the extent that citizens of other "western" nations enjoy legal rights typical of republican democracies, it's because the US set the trend in the 18th century. At that time, the concept of a creedal nation obtaining its legitimacy from a governing document, in it providing checks & balances to limit the power of government, along with a bill of rights that guarantee broad protection of rights pertaining to speech, bearing arms, impartial trial, privacy (searches and seizures) — was truly unique to the US. That it is now commonplace in the West is a testament to one of America's many lasting contributions to the world.
Since I know that someone is going to reply “like what?!?” here’s an example I recently learned about: it wasn’t until 1963 that public defenders were widely available as a result of a supreme court ruling. So equal protection under the law was clearly not available before 1963. We all know the rich Can afford better defense to this day, but can you call it justice if you don’t even get a lawyer?
Contemporary example: drive west from el paso for an hour or so, today. Well, not today, but when it’s safe to travel. The border patrol checkpoint along i-10 will check your papers if you’re visibly latinx. Freedom!
1) the US has unique protections of individual liberties (free speech, associations, arms)
2) the US has systematic repression of certain minorities, especially among the police (the vast majority of which is illegal and just inadequately prosecuted)
> Since I know that someone is going to reply “like what?!?” here’s an example I recently learned about: it wasn’t until 1963 that public defenders were widely available as a result of a supreme court ruling. So equal protection under the law was clearly not available before 1963. We all know the rich Can afford better defense to this day, but can you call it justice if you don’t even get a lawyer?
Right, at the risk of diving into a rabbit-hole of negative vs positive freedoms — the US was never ever the land of positive freedom. It has always been the land of negative freedom, and uniquely so. You can dislike the implications of that all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the US truly is the land of negative freedom — and that's not a normative statement.
No country on the planet is absolutely free. The US just happens to be the most negatively free country.
I would classify a public defender as a mitigation of an impingement on negative freedom rather than a bona fide positive freedom. There are surely other countries where you have less of a chance of being harmed by the courts, because they compensate for their general infringement of freedom by giving you better protections to defend yourself from it.
> The US just happens to be the most negatively free country.
The US has some of the most draconian copyright laws in the world. Are those outweighed by something else, or should we dispense with this notion of "most" ?
Yes, and for most people in America, this is unquestionably the case.
> I would classify a public defender as a mitigation of an impingement on negative freedom rather than a bona fide positive freedom. There are surely other countries where you have less of a chance of being harmed by the courts, because they compensate for their general infringement of freedom by giving you better protections to defend yourself from it.
It's debatable that the US public defender system somehow mitigates this impingement less effectively than any other Western country, indeed most western countries have similar public defender systems.
For the sake of argument, even if we were to accept that premise...the majority of Americans spend far more of their lives exercising the uniquely strong negative liberties extended to them than interfacing with the one aspect of American life in which a globally uniform impingement of negative rights is allegedly mitigated the least.
> The US has some of the most draconian copyright laws in the world. Are those outweighed by something else, or should we dispense with this notion of "most" ?
The US's copyright laws are on par with those in most of the Western world. All EU countries are signatories of the Berne Convention, and the copyright length in the US is the same as it is in France, Singapore, Switzerland, South Korea, Italy, UK, Australia, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark...
Maybe you should start questioning it. AFAICT, people in other developed countries enjoy comparable day to day freedoms.
> It's debatable that the US public defender system somehow mitigates this impingement less effectively than any other Western country
The original argument you engaged with was about a complete lack of public defenders in the past.
> The US's copyright laws are on par with those in most of the Western world
Empirically this is not true - eg most VPN providers prohibit torrenting on US exit nodes. And international copyright infringement inducers (eg Kim Dotcom) aren't prosecuted strongly in their own countries, but rather extradited to the US.
Overall, this refrain of "freedom" is actually blinding and counterproductive. And this doesn't change when it's limited to "negative freedom". Unquestioning assertions of "We're #1" erode our rights - detailed critiques preserve them.
Heck, for a while people weren't even allowed to ...drink alcohol...