Matt Taibbi wrote the other day that, growing up in the 1980s, he never appreciated the Fourth of July except as an occasion for watching fireworks, drinking beer and eating barbecue.
It was only when he relocated to the former Soviet Union that he came to appreciate American freedom.
After 70 years of Communism, Russians had no concept of the idea of live and let live. Taibbi said they were a nation of busy-bodies—always snooping into what their neighbors were doing and forcing unwanted advice on them. He went on to say—
It's true, and we don't need to be ashamed to say it, that what united us was our shared love of freedom, for people of all stripes seek the freedom to do something: shoot guns, worship Satan, make movies about rats, get gloriously fat, start a genital-piercing business, make obscene ice sculpture, whatever.
In the past Americans sometimes argued if they thought others pushed the freedom idea too far, but I don't remember the concept of freedom itself ever inspiring anxiety, until recently.
For a while now, American-born citizens have been significantly less patriotic than immigrants, and after centuries of waving the flag too much, we suddenly have people who seem afraid to do it all.
The ultimate example is probably Beto O'Rourke, who seemed so terrified someone might accuse him of enjoying the life America handed him as a cover-boy faux Kennedy, he told a crowd of immigrants: "This country was founded on white supremacy." Was he trying to get them to turn around?
Since 9/11, when political freedoms started to be whittled back, Americans started to catch the Soviet disease of being terrified of other peoples' free thoughts.
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