I know. It's a shit show in the USA for most things, and freedom,the american dream, home of the brave, most of that stuff is in the plumbing end of the toilet already.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm an outsider here having spent most of my life outside of the USA but in many ways I feel strongly american. That's what gives me a basis for comparison of things like freedom. And why I say it's pretty fucking good, at least for immigrants and people that see through their eyes.
The difference is baggage, everyone that has moved here has left most of it at home. Parents, religion, class, reputation - this and more is deleted or at least rebooted; makes for a lot of freedom of thought, feeling and opportunity.
There's tons of high minded law written down by american governments but that all gets corrupted over time like anywhere else.
Generational stray kills the basic, immigrant's freedom too, especially when the pool of noobies gets smaller. But it's a slow, analog fade out, not the hot switch activated when law meets dollar.
There's still a perceptible amount of natural, "new country" freedom remaining, mostly because this stuff sucks even more in the older countries.
You could say "American Freedom" lives outside the USA as well, people that moves to a city with a different rule set have always experienced this, imagine arriving in Rome before they fucked that place up.