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When was America most free as a nation?

When was America most free as a nation?

  • Between the end of the Revolutionary War and the start of the Civil War?

    Votes: 13 23.2%

  • Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War One?

    Votes: 3 5.4%

  • Between the end of WWI and the passage of the Civil Rights Act?

    Votes: 3 5.4%

  • Today, including the time after passage of the Civil Rights Act?

    Votes: 37 66.1%
  • Total voters
    56
TheLastIndependent said:
prior to 1490 was about as free as it got
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Yes...and no. Perhaps you should learn a bit about primitive cultures to see if they were as free as you think. I'm sure you've heard the stories about how the cultures were in Central and South America...and despite the "noble savage" line we've been fed for decades, now, I'm not so quick to think that North American natives weren't that much different from their neighbors to the south.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Yes...and no. Perhaps you should learn a bit about primitive cultures to see if they were as free as you think. I'm sure you've heard the stories about how the cultures were in Central and South America...and despite the "noble savage" line we've been fed for decades, now, I'm not so quick to think that North American natives weren't that much different from their neighbors to the south.
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You're very right. The southern nations had a very rigid system that is similar, to my understanding, to the Ancient Egyptians. Of course, many of the northern nations were much better than the southern ones as far as we know. The tribes were more of a small-scale communalism and even a confederacy up in the Northern US.
 
TheLastIndependent said:
I am not saying that we are less free than any other nation. That would be silly. I have enough world knowledge to know the world is full of plight.
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Yes...and no. There are lots of places that have it a lot better than we do.

We are also not the most free nation by individual measures
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Except for the fact that some countries have more gay rights than we do, how are we less free than other first-world nations? And while there's a lot of third-world nations where businesses are a lot freer than America, you've got to look at the other side of the coin - that freedom comes with a price, and part of that price is worker exploitation beyond anything we've seen in America since before WWII. This is not to say there are nations that are freer in many ways...but you just have to be careful to look at the big picture, because there's a heck of a lot more to freedom than most people think.

and we are certainly not the best unless you equate military spending with grandeur... But is being a house slave instead of a field slave all that grand?
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Ah. The slavery equivalent of Godwin's Rule.
 
I find it interesting how many people conflate "freest" with "best".
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Was it before the Civil War, or before WWI, or before the Civil Rights Act, or today?

And why do you think so?
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I think that really around the 50's - 60's the type of government we had started to change, and by the 80's it was full force marching towards the corporate capitalist, single party structure of modern America.

We should be most free now as the Republic was built to increase freedom over time. But we've peaked and headed downhill since fascism has taken firm root in our government.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Except for the fact that some countries have more gay rights than we do, how are we less free than other first-world nations? And while there's a lot of third-world nations where businesses are a lot freer than America, you've got to look at the other side of the coin - that freedom comes with a price, and part of that price is worker exploitation beyond anything we've seen in America since before WWII. This is not to say there are nations that are freer in many ways...but you just have to be careful to look at the big picture, because there's a heck of a lot more to freedom than most people think.
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I made mention that it was by individual measures and not by an overall view. By an overall view, there is not a totally free nation.

Germany has begun shifting to a freer market in many aspects and, as far as I know, it is going swimmingly.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Really? You mean like alleged uber-libertarian Ron Paul supports gay marriage rights and abortion rights? Oh, wait - he doesn't. And if you'll check, 80% of libertarians vote Republican.
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If he doesn't support liberty, including marriage and reproductive rights, then the allegation that he is a libertarian must be false.
 
Outside of gay marriage, I think just before 9/11 and all the terrorist paranoia that ensued following that awful day.

I was going to include illicit drug use with gay marriage - but then I remembered that most presently illegal drugs were once legal long ago in America.
 
TheLastIndependent said:
I made mention that it was by individual measures and not by an overall view. By an overall view, there is not a totally free nation.

Germany has begun shifting to a freer market in many aspects and, as far as I know, it is going swimmingly.
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There never will be, never can be a totally free nation. But it's as I've said many times, too much of anything is bad - including freedom.

I know that last phrase sounds offensive at first glance, but think about it - in the modern world, without regulation, there is no technological progress. It is regulation that allows people in a modern society to be on the same page in everything from language to driving to research to operation of an airline.

The key is maintaining the best balance between regulation and freedom - how to accept all the regulation that is crucial to modern first-world nations while maximizing the amount of personal rights and freedoms that keep us sane.
 
Dittohead not! said:
If he doesn't support liberty, including marriage and reproductive rights, then the allegation that he is a libertarian must be false.
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Supporting abortion rights is no more libertarian than supporting the right to life. It's one right vs. another. The libertarian philosophy is neutral on abortion.
 
mpg said:
Supporting abortion rights is no more libertarian than supporting the right to life. It's one right vs. another. The libertarian philosophy is neutral on abortion.
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It is not neutral on the idea of government vs the individual making such an important personal choice.
 
Goshin said:
Matter of perspective.


It would be easy for a white male to choose almost any of the options in question, IF he didn't stop and think about all those not-white-males who were quite un-free in previous eras.


If you overlook that fact, or hypothesized equal rights for all from the beginning, the 19th century looks a lot more free and unregulated than modern times.


However, the late 19th/early 20th century was also a time when there was great corruption in gov't, industrial barons ruled the economy, working conditions in factories were appalling, and you were free to starve if you couldn't find work.


So it is hard to say. Every era has its problems... in modern times we suffer from loss of privacy (NSA spying), excessive Executive power (EOs), unelected agencies regulating with the power of law (EPA, etc), infringements on many Bill of Rights items in the name of the War on Drugs/Terror/etc... but if we can address these issues we could still have a free future.
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Very good answer. My first gut reaction was the first half of the 19th century, but then I quickly thought of the injustices of slavery, the lack of women's rights, and such. Not a good time to live in if you were not a white male. If I had to pick based on the overall level of freedom, I'd have to go with modern times. That's not an endorsement of a lot of the excessive government regulation, oversight, and outright surveillance we have now. Those things are a problem and reduce our freedom, but if my choice is between today's ridiculous War on Drugs and Terror, NSA snooping, and all the other problems or going back to the time of slavery and when women had severely limited rights, I'll pick the modern world and all its short comings.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
And so must be the 80% of the libertarians who vote Republican, I guess.
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*Sigh* No, it simply means that most libertarians who vote for one of the two mainstream parties value the areas where the agree with the Republicans more than the areas where they agree with the Democrats. It doesn't mean they endorse the Republican platform in its entirety.

Now Paul is/was pro-life, but there are plenty of other pro-life libertarians. Its a minority wing of the ideology, but it does exist. On the issue of same sex marriage, Ron Paul that he personally believes marriage is between a man and a woman and opposes redefining marriage at the federal level. He believes it should be left to the states. Furthermore, he has stated he would like all levels of government to get out of the marriage defining business,


“I think the government should just be out of it. I think it should be done by the church or private contract, and we shouldn’t have this argument. Who’s married and who isn’t married. I have my standards but I shouldn’t have to impose my standards on others. Other people have their standards and they have no right to impose their marriage standards on me.”
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In Liberty Defined he wrote:
“In a free society…all voluntary and consensual agreements would be recognized. There should essentially be no limits to the voluntary definition of marriage.”

“Everyone can have his or her own definition of what marriage means, and if an agreement or contract is reached by the participants, it would qualify as a civil contract if desired…Why not tolerate everyone’s definition as long as neither side uses force to impose its views on the other? Problem solved!”
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Ahlevah said:
Now, because no slavery, no Jim Crow, women's rights, gay marriage....
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The really shocking thing about this poll is the number of people who voted for the early years of our nation. Considering that nearly an entire race of people was held in slavery and half of the ones who were not were little better than farm animals in many eyes - I guess the right wing has a very strange concept of freedom.
 
I'm going to keep a screenshot of this poll. This poll is a good indicator of just how shallow some posters view of liberty really is. Even today, many people in America still haven't managed to internalize that people other than white heterosexual males have rights too.
 
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