At this point, calling the United States a “free country” is profoundly idiotic. Even the most basic example of living free is “illegal” for a dozen different reasons, and would be violently crushed here in the “land of the free.” Consider this hypothetical: “Hey, I just want to buy a piece of unused land somewhere, build a house, grow some stuff, trade goods and services with my neighbors, mind my own business and raise a family!” In a “free country” (ignoring the fact that that phrase is, all by itself, an oxymoron), wouldn't that be allowed?

However, if you were to try such a thing in the U.S., you would learn a few things, such as:

1 - Even after you pay for a piece of land, you have to continue to pay off various levels of political parasites every year, for the “privilege” of hanging onto what you already bought. This is called “property taxes,” and aside from ridiculous euphemisms and statist spin, it means that you don't own anything. You merely rent it from the ruling class. And if you fail to pay that rent, they send men with guns to take it from you.

(Imagine the same thing in any other setting, like you buy a car, but the ruling class demands that you give them money every year for the “privilege” of keeping the car you already paid for. Oh… wait. They already do that, too.)

2 - You can't build anything on “your” property without buying the permission of the ruling class.

3 - Even if you buy such permission, in most places what you can build is severely restricted by all manner of codes and ordinances.

4 - If what you build doesn't qualify for an “occupancy permit,” then it is a “crime” for you to live in your own structure on your own property.

5 - In many places, the state will tell you how you’re allowed to raise your own children, requiring you to either hand them over to an institution to be indoctrinated (“educated”), or requiring you to apply for permission to “homeschool,” which in many places requires you to fill out all sorts of paperwork about curriculums, etc., where you try to convince your masters that they should let you educate your own children.

6 - As soon as you try to trade anything—goods or services—several layers of parasites will demand a cut, and will likely forcibly restrict what you're allowed to do. You will need licenses and permits, might need to collect sales taxes, pay income taxes, etc. And this is true even if you never use currency, but only barter for everything. Yes, if you and your live-and-let-live neighbors wants to trade tomatoes for chicken eggs, the federal parasites think you both have to pay them (in dollars, not tomatoes and eggs) for the privilege of doing so. If you don’t do that, then any trade is considered a “crime.”

7 - And if you want to have a means of transportation, or the means to hunt and/or protect yourself, or a source of electricity, or a source of water, or almost anything else, there are countless other laws and regulations, fees and licenses and permits, insurance requirements and inspections, which make it so you can't “legally” do anything without first buying the permission of the ruling class. The list goes on and on.

If someone did a more thorough and specific breakdown of a specific hypothetical scenario like that, showing all of the ways in which living free is “illegal” in the good old U.S.S.A., it would be really depressing, but possibly really informative for all the duped subjects who still refer to the U.S. as a “free country.” In fact, due to advances in technology, surveillance and communication, the parasite class in the U.S. controls and restricts more aspects of everyday life than even most of the famous tyrannies in history did.

And no, having a fairly comfortable cage is not the same thing as being free. If you’re content with being domesticated livestock as long as the barn is nice, and has air conditioning and a widescreen TV, that’s kind of sad, but at the very least, don’t refer to that as “freedom.” Because it’s not.

(P.S. If you respond to this article by saying, “If you don't like it, then leave!” then you're just a well-trained slave demonstrating what a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome you have.)