by Paul Gessing
International travel is always an eye-opening experience, so if you have the opportunity to travel I urge you to take it. It is always educational to see how the rest of the world lives their daily lives, but it is perhaps even more valuable in giving you an outsider’s perspective on your own life. I lived in Argentina in early 2001, before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and recently returned to Argentina for a short vacation only to discover that life in our Nation’s Capital is in many ways less free than life in Argentina, a nation that is still recovering from a serious economic crisis and that was controlled by a violent military dictatorship just twenty years ago.
As is normally the case when Americans travel, foreigners always know more about us than we know about them. This is not just a failure of our nation’s education system; rather it is more a function of the U.S. being the most powerful nation on earth. The first question out of nearly anyone I met on my journey, after a few minutes of small talk was invariably, “so…what do you think about President Bush?” Clearly, the grassroots political opinion in this part of the world is negative, not towards Americans, but towards Bush himself and his policies. Not only was everyone I met opposed to the war in Iraq, but they also expressed concern about the Patriot Act and the fact that the U.S. was turning away from its traditional role as a beacon of freedom.
Some of our lost freedoms are a direct result of 9/11, but other lost freedoms have been slipping away for a long time. U.S. readers might be surprised to read that at least in Argentina and Brazil, no one is forced to completely disrobe to get on a plane. Although Brazil has introduced some of the same scanning and fingerprinting for Americans as the U.S. recently did for most of the world, Argentina has none of these processes in place. It was also strange and refreshing to send my items through a metal detector and walk through security without having to sidestep throngs of well-paid Transportation Security Administration employees in Argentina. Of course, outside of airports, metal detectors are nonexistent.
Of course freedom is far more than a lack of metal detectors. On the roads in Argentina, big brother is nowhere to be found. Good luck getting a speeding ticket there, and I defy you to find red light cameras raising cash for the local government. In the city of Rosario, a city set up on a regular grid where nearly all the roads go in one direction, stop signs and stop lights are nonexistent at most intersections. Everyone just slows down at each intersection and decides who has the right of way. It sounds disorganized, but I have never seen an accident at an intersection there.
I want to clarify that Argentina is no freedom-lover’s paradise, especially if you are trying to make a living. The economy suffers from massive corruption and rampant unemployment that makes the depths of a U.S. recession look like an Argentine economic boom. This is largely due to even more rampant government regulation of the economy and a taxation regime that leads to evasion and high levels of corruption. The U.S. is still far freer economically speaking – and thus it receives far higher marks in the Heritage Foundation’s recently published Index of Economic Freedom (10th to Argentina’s 116th).
Of course, since wealth flourishes here, the government’s coffers are full and government is able to invade our day-to-day lives in a greater number of ways than most governments have the resources for. One of the best avenues to increasing our everyday freedom, in fact, might be to keep the government too poor to meddle. Unfortunately, it seems that the only way to keep government poor is to keep the citizenry poor as well.
Other freedoms that foreigners take for granted that are becoming less common in the U.S. are being able to walk into a bar without flashing identification (I am 28 years old and don’t look young for my age, yet I am stopped constantly), smoking in a bar or restaurant, and not having the national flag and military salutes thrust at you at every turn. Laws against smoking in bars and restaurants are an incredible display of governmental arrogance. Although I am not a smoker, bars and restaurants should not be forced to ban smoking by the government. Regarding patriotism and the constant presence of the American flag, I love my country and I am proud of the way our nation came together in the aftermath of 9/11, but it is refreshing to be around people that do not feel the need to make their national flag a fashion statement or engage in quasi-militaristic displays of nationalist pride at sporting events.
Less than a week after returning to Washington, I was heading into a class in the Ronald Reagan building in downtown Washington. As I passed through the metal detectors on my way to class – a uniquely American experience I believe – I was told by a security guard to take a small “no war” pin off of my jacket. I had already taken my jacket off and I had no intention of putting it back on in the building, but the guard persisted telling me that I had to take the pin off the jacket in order to enter the building because “political protest signs” were not allowed in the building. As I stood there dumbstruck – the Reagan Building is after all a federally owned building in the free speech capital of the world – the guard proceeded to threaten me, telling me that if I didn’t want to hear about the rules from him, he could get his supervisor who “wouldn’t be so nice about it.” As I walked to my class I thought “only in America.”
Paul J. Gessing is a Senior Editor of The Free Liberal. He is pursuing his MBA at University of Maryland and he lives in Alexandria, VA.