Do you believe that the United States is truly free?

Definitions are required especially in politics

what does ‘truly’ mean?

what does ‘free’ mean?

Without agreed-upon measures, how can this be discussed?

Even with the definitions, an unbiased opinion is impossible

I think so. I can go anywhere I want, do anything I want. Doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences, but I can do and say what I want.

While it holds people in jail without charge and without trial it isn’t entitled to consider itself truly free.

Yes and no, but I think as time goes on we’re losing some of our rights because our government is getting too big, the rich hold all of the power (oligarchy, here we come) and America is slowly turning into a militarized police state.

Doug Stanhope on Freedom

The United States is in ways more permissible, as said before, it is hard to say how free it is without a definitive standard for free. Here we an do a lot without the government intervening but even if the government doesn’t intervene there are things you cannot do or say societally without them raking you over the coals

@DrasticDreamer I have to disagree. It was far more of a police state prior to, say, 1970. God, remember Kent State? I can’t even find anywhere that the guy who shot the two unarmed kids dead, Sgt. Myron Pryor, was ever even disciplined.

Police are having to mind their P’s and Q’s far more today than ever before.

@Dutchess_III I still think it’s going that way again, in certain ways. There are a large number of police who break the law in horrifying ways and completely get away with it.

It’s against the law to protest without permits now, for the most part, and if you enter the streets and disrupt anything – which is exactly how peaceful protests make a difference since it brings attention to problems – the police attack you and arrest you. The police are also equipped with much more powerful weapons now, and they come to protests in riot gear – even ones that have shown no signs of violence. They have tanks. They spray people doing sit-ins with pepper spray 10 inches from their face, they shoot and kill unarmed people all the time, they protect each other in cases where they shouldn’t. I could go on and on, with video after video and solid proof of how common police brutality is. It’s either going the same way again, or it never even got better. We’re blatantly spied on by our own government via email and telephone and we’re told it’s for our own protection. Americans are not as free as most would like to believe.

It’s those video that are going to make things better for us, and police held more accountable.

I am not at all worried about the government “spying” on me. Only those with something to hide need to be worried.

@Dutchess_III It’s not about the need to be worried. It’s about having your privacy completely violated. I have nothing to hide, at all, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t and shouldn’t, completely piss me off.

And why do you put quotations? The NSA flat out admitted to reading people’s personal emails who weren’t, in any way, associated with terrorism, domestic or otherwise. It’s not something that they tried to hide. After a certain point, anyway.

People lose their freedom, bit by bit, when they’re so willing to hand it over. You shouldn’t be okay with anyone reading your emails or potentially tapping your phone, even when you’re innocent.

It just doesn’t bother me, @DrasticDreamer. It just doesn’t.

Now, if people start going to jail for simply dissing the president, then I’ll get angry.

@Dutchess_III It should, but to each their own.

@Dutchess_III Whether we feel we are ‘innocent’ or not doesn’t matter. If you live in a democracy you have a duty to hold the government to account.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemoller