>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>I consider the USA today to be the most repressive society, not
>>just abroad but also at home, based upon the rate of incarceration.
>>The USA is decidedly more repressive than North Korea in this
>>regard. Cuba is incomparably freer than the USA.
>
>I hate the US carceral state, but could you make similar statements
>about Cuba or NK in public in those countries without risk of being
>jailed? "Incomparably" freer? I'd say bourgeois democracy is a bit
>more complex & contradictory than you allow.
>
>Doug
If the most important measure of freedom is not freedom from the police state but freedom to express any old thing, true or false or simply deranged, I'd say the USA is, as of now, one of the freest nations on earth (mainly due to the absence of the well-organized mass left movement here). Given this, Americans should hold themselves politically responsible for the American Panopticon. It's their "free & democratic" choice, no? If the American Panopticon is not the will of the American democracy, then, America is not the land of the free but just the land of buy one get one free.
Yoshie