Is there a political movement for more freedom is the US?

38 comments

1. Take all of those so-called rankings with a huge grain of salt. Not saying they are always wrong, but they are far from scientific. They set up their metrics with a specific result in mind and make sure they get it.

   I’m sure the places ahead of us are great places to live and the citizens enjoy their freedoms as they see them. That’s how it is supposed to work. That doesn’t mean I want to be more like them.

2. “””Freedom””” indexes are subjective and prone to biases. If I have an issue concerning a problem here, it isn’t because I was persuaded by these indexes

3. What does “more freedom” even mean in this context? That’s an extremely subjective statement that can be interpreted endless ways.

4. What does “more freedom” mean to you, OP?

5. It depends one which particular legislative event is eroding whatever freedom. You’ll see “movements” addressing abortion laws, for instance, same with gun laws (either for or against). But it should also be mentioned that that the US as a whole is comprised of 50 states with state laws that may not apply elsewhere. So someone in Colorado may not be very enthusiastic about joining a movement about a law in Alabama that takes away rights when that law or political environment doesn’t exist here. Though things like that do affect who we may choose to vote for.

6. Those are not objective rankings. These groups are typically politically motivated and funded by groups with agendas.

   Example: That site rates Canada and the UK as more politically free than the US. Trudeau went authoritarian against protestors during COVID and is being sued by civil liberties organizations.

   https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/595387-director-of-canadian-civil-liberties-group-says-trudeau-overstepped-by-invoking/

7. “Freedom” is a nebulous concept. There are political movements for specific things but that’s too vague

8. If anyone took those completely arbitrary rankings as the basis for a political movement I’d never stop laughing at them.

9. There is not a specific and discernible effort to raise our rankings on things like the freedom index, because those rankings tend to be politically motivated and/or very biased.

   Keep in mind, as well, that the American conception of freedom is very different from many other countries. Our version is quite anti-government. As a result, it focuses a lot more on something called negative rights, which address the things that the government (and private organizations, in the minds of some) *cannot* do to citizens. A classic example is right in your post; the government cannot limit what citizens say or express. Another example would be the second amendment, which guarantees that the government cannot limit the arms that a citizen may own. This stands in contrast to positive rights, which address things that the government (or, again, organizations) *must* do. A classic example would be that the government *must* provide housing, healthcare, or a basic income.

10. Broadly speaking, libertarianism.

11. > you guys are below Canada, the UK and Switzerland on the freedom index

    This is not a ranking most Americans would take too seriously. “Freedom” is a nebulous and subjective concept. That being said “Freedom” is often a tagline for politicians.

12. If you work for them, congratulations. You got me to tool around their website for a bit. It’s pretty standard for international groups to use definitions for things like freedom that confound us. For example, you mention how the US has more freedom of speech than Canada, UK, and Germany. And for that, this organization takes us down a couple of notches. Their version of freedom likes to regulate speech.

13. Various movements fight for more freedom for various marginalized group

14. None of those websites are remotely credible. Every single one is done based on political motivations, even the home grown ones here. Take for example Canada, Canada just passed bill C-11, a law that lets the Canadian government control what is shared on online platforms based on how ‘Canadian’ the content is. Canada now has the single most restricted internet and presses in the west and has many glarling flaws that make it extremely unfree. Trudeau’s massive power over reach, the stacked nature of their Parliament, and the unique ethnic power given to the Quebecois. Canada is clearly less free than America yet because someone wants to make a point so they are given a higher ranking on some random website.

    Long story short that all those are trash and why don’t all those other countries have movements to get more freedom like America?

15. The Libertarian Party is the only political party that advocates for more freedom in all areas.

16. freedomhouse.org

    Yeah, that sounds like a totally unbiased and scientific source that is completely transparent on the universally agreed upon definition of freedom and all that it entails.

17. Their definition of freedom often includes “positive rights,” which I would disagree with being rights at all, and the mark of freedom.

    So I don’t believe that index at all.

18. We value the freedom to do something vs. the freedom to be protected from something. This will cause us to score lower on “freedom” index. Then you need to consider we generally don’t care what the rest of the world thinks of us.

19. When we get into western, developed countries the difference between like #1 and #20 or whatever is relatively slim.

    But I’m not particularly concerned about these lists. I mean in Switzerland and France its effectively illegal to be openly Muslim, yet they rank higher than us. Because reasons?

    So yeah if you are native born (and white) French or Swiss, I’m sure your degree of freedom is really high.

20. The US got dinged for Roe V Wade… and we’re outranked by several countries where abortion is outlawed.

    I can’t fucking believe I read that.

    “America Bad! Be like Europe!!”

21. depends in what aspect you mean. Gonna be controversial but in the pro-2a community, the real pro-2a community, who are largely in support of LESS gun control/regulation we also generally speaking are in favor of less government oversight and more power to the people.

    Which is to say the government should only exist to serve the people and do good by the people, not do by their own will’s and make laws and regulations that favor themselves as a priority and the people as a second thought.

    Should be made wholistically clear when i say “pro-2a community” i do not mean republicans or any one side. The nature of the pro-2a community is that whatever gets less regulation/less gun control comes as a priority first – whatever shitty politics you have, left or right, comes second if not entirely last.

22. > But according to freedomhouse.org you guys are below Canada, the UK and Switzerland on the freedom index

    Well if freedom house says it it must be true. There’s no way they use subjecrive criteria to make a list where a country that has hate speech laws, mandates use of the French language, and banned the sale of handguns is more free than the United States or anything.

23. We definitely need greater positive liberty, but that would first require a change in leadership and collective mindset in the US to embrace the reality of necessary wealth redistribution.

24. A lot of European countries have speech laws that would be unfathomable in the US. We have very broad constitutional protections for speech, art, and expression. We don’t have hate speech laws or anything like that, and I’d advise anyone who wants them to consider that they sound good because you think that they’d only be used in ways you approve of, but that’s naive and incorrect.

25. Define “freedom”

    I personally think libertarianism, which is the primary political movement advocating for what they call “freedom” in the US, is nonsense and many of the Founding Fathers would think it’s nonsense as well.

    Freedom is subjective. I would personally enjoy a Social Democrat movement in the US, but we hardly have one.

26. I am curious exactly, what could I do in Canada, UK or Aus that I can’t do in the US? Last I checked Canada was arresting peaceful protesters, France was arresting people for bashing macron online and I can guarantee none of those countries free speech laws even compare to the US.

27. That’s such a vague standard. There are certainly movements to expand certain freedoms, but nobody is measuring their freedoms based on freedomhouse.org and their rankings, with a stated goal of improving our ranking on a website.

    Certainly there are people fighting for freedoms: LGBT community fighting against restrictions and for rights against discrimination. Women fighting for abortion rights. Liberals fighting against conservative education restrictions in places like Florida. Conservatives fighting for gun rights and protections of speech on social media. Ranchers fighting for freedom of grazing rights in the West against the Bureau of Land Management. Defense Lawyers everywhere fighting the Death Penalty, calling for expansions in 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment protections, fighting to end cash bail, fighting to end forced prison labor, and more.

    But as to whether these are related to freedomhouse’s rankings and how they’re related to freedoms that exist or don’t in other countries, that’s not really a motivating goal for social change. People push for things they value, not for comparisons to Germany

28. No. We are already at the pinnacle of freedom. If an online site does not see that, then who cares.

29. Yes the elimination of arbitrary gun laws that don’t make anyone safer

30. The Uk? The country where you can get arrested for what you say?? Yea no

31. More than just “some” ways.

32. Doesn’t freedomhouse.org rank Hong Kong as the freest country? The country that’s getting all of its rights stripped from it by China?

    Yeah…not going to take them too seriously.

33. Those metrics aren’t good for much beyond benchmarks. Like, I’m sure Norway has a much higher freedom index than Brunei, and that’d be for a good reason, but at the best of times these things are like IQ measurements-worthless once you get down to similar numbers. When one guy has an IQ of 110 and another of 112, with how subjective and inaccurate all those measurements are, can you really say which is smarter? It’s like that with these rankings.

34. Define “freedom.”

35. Libertarian

36. I couldn’t give a shit

37. Not sure why you’re getting so much backlash on here! I’m sorry for that. Yes, of course there are still many political movements for freedom in the US. There are movements just about everywhere in the world. A few are LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights, gun laws, etc. People fighting about it every single day to try and make a change.

38. Not a single one of these indexes factor in the 1st or 2nd Amendments. Once you factor in things like Freedom of Speech and Gun Rights, the US unsurprisingly rises to the top on political freedom (keep in mind this data is 7 years old, but still a good reference point).

    http://www.freeexistence.org/freedom.shtml?Property=4&DrugRights=0&Taxes=0&Corruption=4&Speech=4&Inflation=0&LtdGovt=0&Business=4&GunRights=4&Reverse=false