But right now America is factually less free than either Europe or my own country. You simply do not have due process anymore. Most of the protections of your constitution have been interpreted away to nothingness.

I just don't see how these so called valuable principles have actually materially served your people in being able to protect or defend the values you claim to hold.

Faith is fine, but you do need to evaluate ground truth at the end of the day. Outcomes matter.

That’s just propaganda. If we didn’t have due process, Donald Trump would be in jail. Or, if you think he’s the reason we lost it, half the Biden administration would. The idea that the legal system has somehow melted down in the last nine months is just scaremongering.

Norms are being violated, for sure, and the courts are being pushed to determine the bounds of the law. I won’t say I’m a fan of most of it, but it’s a far cry from lack of freedom.

I don’t know what your country is, so I can’t respond, but if you can be locked up over a social media post (assuming reasonable exemptions like direct incitement to violence) you’re not free. You just have been told you are.

The keystone freedom is free speech and almost nowhere else truly has it. It’s a spectrum for sure, and Europe is a lot closer than, say, China, but we’re the far extreme.

Any good outcomes also come from that same freedom of speech. It’s a double-edged sword, for sure. You have to take your anti-vax movement along with your Wikipedia.

> That’s just propaganda. If we didn’t have due process, Donald Trump would be in jail.

Well your country does still offer its protections for the wealthy and powerful. It's just regular people have less of it than we do in freer countries.

> Or, if you think he’s the reason we lost it, half the Biden administration would. The idea that the legal system has somehow melted down in the last nine months is just scaremongering.

I see this as coping, to be honest. Americans simply have been told that they are the vanguard of freedom for so long that they cannot imagine a world where their freedom is somehow lesser than others.

But as someone who grew up in America and emigrated out, I can tell you for a fact that Americans are less free than Canadians.

On average, the Canadian government gives itself less of a leeway to abuse people.

If you insult a police officer in America, that officer can abuse you and take away your rights and the probability of consequences for that officer is far lower than the probability in my country.

My country doesn't have a constitution that protects me from unreasonable searches and seizures, but yet, Americans have less protections from unreasonable search and seizure despite their constitution - due the loophole of civil forfeiture.

In your country, your government can pass a law to criminalize you, and then that makes it legal for the government to turn you into a slave. That's not allowed in my country.

Speedy trials in your country are only reserved for the rich.

Americans simply have less freedom than the rest of the first world. It's extremely hard for them to accept because of the propaganda they've been subject to.

But as someone who grew up all over America, and has seen and lived and experienced more of it than most Americans, I know for a fact that they are wrong.

If you don't have the money to pay for freedoms in America, you have far fewer than someone from my country does.

Yeah again, this is all a cartoon. Cops everywhere now have body cameras on nearly all the time. Freedom of speech gives us the right to video them and they can barely do anything in public anymore without five people doing so. Contempt of cop beatings still exist sometimes I’m sure, everywhere, but it’s hardly a thing most people are exposed to. If we were having this discussion in 1975 I’d grant you this point, it’s dramatically reduced now.

I was prosecuted for a misdemeanor when I was 18 and broke. I got a free lawyer (as the constitution says) who did a great job and the whole thing was over in a month. I was not rich. I don’t know what TV shows make you think our government is just locking people up willy nilly, it isn’t. (Our drug laws lock a lot of people up, but they aren’t that different or more draconian than most places, just the number of people who do drugs is, and there are countries that execute people for drug offenses that are misdemeanors here.)

The government cannot pass a law to criminalize you, criminalizing things is never retroactive. I assume by the slavery thing you mean prison labor. That actually is in the constitution, and is crazy. We’re working on it. Same with asset forfeiture.

The idea that because we have some areas in which we are less free than other countries we are less free in total is ridiculous. The fact that you say things like “Americans don’t have due process” is a strong indicator of internalized propaganda.

And I’m not some flag waving patriot American Exceptionalist by any means, I’ve traveled quite a bit more than most. But the one thing we do best is individual liberties. It’s why we’re where we are in the grand scheme of human history and Canada is basically just our suburb enjoying all of the benefits (national security with next to no defense budget, unlimited free trade a short truck ride away) while avoiding the cost.

Although we are disagreeing, I hope that this is not in an antagonistic sense - I do find this conversation interesting because it's not often the opportunity arises to discuss this topic.

As someone who was raised American, went to American schools, lived and breathed American culture for over the decade I went from child to adult.. moving away and living and breathing Canadian culture has been an enlightening experience.

Getting back to the topic..

These rebuttals really fall flat to my ears. They sound like technicalities that are constructed to paper over the underlying reality. My feelings on this topic aren't from propaganda, but from having experienced how people feel, act, and behave when I was growing up in America.

It's only after I moved to Canada that I realized that most Americans have to live in fear of police. Police are able to break laws at whim, and abuse people's rights, and the mechanism for resource is so inaccessible to the average person that it might as well not exist. I thought this was normal and didn't detract from "freedom" when I was growing up.

Now, this happens in Canada too, but on average they are _less_ able to abuse people. They still do, but the government and society does a better job of ensuring consequences in more of those situations.

The institutionalized pipeline to slavery that exists in America doesn't exist in Canada. Now, this one is something that affected me less on a personal level, because that institutionalized pipeline is targeted largely at black people, and I'm not black.

That said, if I was black, and in America.. the processed plant flower I'm lighting up and enjoying this saturday in my basement would be very much a direct threat to my freedoms. That would be enough, in many parts of America, to brand me as a dangerous threat to society. And it would be enough for my freedoms to be taken away by the state, and then for my labour to be rented out to private companies against my will.

This is not a hypothetical circumstance. This is a reality that tens of thousands of Americans live. This is on the ground reality.

But really for me, the emotional aspect is how people just live in less fear of the government here. Their government, on average, abuses them less. It's less capricious. It's less mean to them. It doesn't step on them as much as the American government steps on Americans.

But you do have to live and breathe it to understand the change in mentality.

> But the one thing we do best is individual liberties

This is a cultural mythology. An earnest review of the evidence shows that America is, in real terms of delivering liberties to its people, at the back of the pack of the cohort of first world nations.

> It’s why we’re where we are in the grand scheme of human history and Canada is basically just our suburb enjoying all of the benefits (national security with next to no defense budget, unlimited free trade a short truck ride away) while avoiding the cost.

I'm not too concerned about the place of Canada in "human history". The human suffering it seems to entail to gain that acclaim seems not really worth it.

You're entirely right about your other points though. Canada has benefited greatly from the US's economic engine. In fact, I think part of the reason Canadians enjoy more freedom than Americans is because of this.

It's adjacent to the American market, but segregated enough to make it a much smaller market. This has historically made it less interesting for powerful commercial interests to come meddle in Canadian political affairs and laws, and over time that means Canada has been able to protect its individual liberties better.

That pressure to undermine freedoms through loopholes, creative interpretation, and just straight up ignoring some of them.. that hasn't been as high in Canada, and that's definitely a circumstantial reality having to do with its proximity to the USA.