Is America more free because we can have guns?

I would say that there are a lot of countries that are more free than we are.

I think it's really important to just lay it out that this whole freedom thing that Republicans are always talking about, what they're talking about is the freedom of billionaire polluters to pollute, the freedom of billionaire banksters to rip us off, the freedom of the fossil fuel industry to poison our planet, perhaps even leading to the death of our species.

Those are the freedoms that they're talking about.

Now, if you want to talk about freedom for actual average people in the United States, you're not free if you're sick and you can't get health care or you can't afford to pay for it.

You're not free if you're working full time and you can't afford to even pay your damn rent. That's not freedom, that's a form of bondage.

You're not free if you're constantly living in fear that somebody's going to pop up and shoot you.

There are so many dimensions of America where we are not free compared with the other developed countries in the world, where they don't have gun violence problems, where everybody does have national healthcare, where everybody does have a guaranteed pension retirement program.

And I think it's really important to note that.

-Thom


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Wednesday's Daily Stack

A Conservative Take on the Election

- Bryan Pruitt, RedState

Talk Media News Segment:
- Luke Vargas

Hour Two: How American Hyper-Capitalism Breeds Alienated Mass Killers

- Economist Dr. Richard Wolff, Democracy At Work/Capitalism's Crisis Deepens Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown

this election - staying in party works

Maine votes to expand Medicaid under Obamacare

- Jonathan Schleifer, The Fairness Project