America... Land of the free?

This is something that I have been struggling with, over the last few days. A friend’s casual remark, that called America the land of the free, was what set it off.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on reddit, especially the economic sub-reddit, and am amazed at what I’ve been reading. Over the last few months, with the tanking of the stock market, and collapse of the banking sector, as well as the bail-out have been events, have been the source of lots of frenzied activity here. Not only are the articles informative, but the comments have been interesting. What has been surprising is how pro-market the redditors are, but at the same time, they want stronger regulation by the regulatory bodies. This was just the starting point for my quest.

Their Anthem, might call them the land of the free, but I’m quite skeptical, just how true it is. They might have declared that all men are created equal, but somehow that did not include women and blacks for quite some time.

America has done quite a lot of stupid things when it comes to freedom. And I’m not talking about the things done by G.W.Bush. Remember a guy called Joseph McCarthy? Or remember what happened to the Japanese people living in America during WW2?

Nor is America very free when it comes to sex and what not. If you look at their codes, to prevent the corruption of the Youth, like the Hays Code or the Comics Code Authority, you’ll be surprised. Things got so out of hand, that the authorities were not allowing the publication of a comic, because it mentioned that the story was told by a wolfman. Never mind that the name of the story teller was Marv Wolfman.

And if you look at the things they are doing with respect to science, it’s even scarier. Just yesterday, the Illinois legislature, declared that Pluto was a planet, as far as Illinois was concerned. In other news, in Oklahoma legislature a resolution was proposed, banning Richard Dawkins from speaking at a University.

There is this strange belief that somehow, America, is very special in the world because of its History and ideals and freedom. It is called American exceptionalism. I’m thinking more and more that it might be a lot of propaganda, and you know what? I’m not the only one.