Maximum libertarian style freedom - no police, lax laws and no control - is obviously dangerous. This is understood, so let’s not pretend the US is a “fully free”. But the US isn’t even the “Land of the Free”.

In practice, freedom is being able to do what you want. It’s the ability to walk out your door and go places. It’s the ability to buy the house you want. You can easily imagine the Founding Fathers thinking, “Everyone should be able to live this way”, as they looked out their own windows.

So how do you enjoy your freedom if your too poor to leave your city? The roads in New York were deliberately designed so that you couldn’t. Why can so few millennials afford homes? Builders profited off building houses instead of apartments, which doesn’t scale. How can you enjoy a night with drinks, if you had to drive to get there? Well this one is just a nation-wide failure of urban planning. The point is, these questions all have explainable answers, but they don’t excuse the result.

The result is, freedom was traded for something else at every turn. Now look at Texas; in the name of big homes and trucks, you can’t go anywhere without a car. You have no freedom to walk to a restaurant 15 minutes away. Even the most walkable cities in the US, like San Francisco or Boston - are only walkable within the city themselves. Contrast this to Korea, where the entirety province of Seoul is walkable, or Indonesia, where any kid can hop on a moped and travel around.

The US is freedom on paper. They’ve remained to protect your rights to own (some) guns and yell schizo, but for the spirit of freedom - the ability to do what you want - it does not stand up as the “Land of the Free”.