Lysander Spooner famously wrote in No Treason:
But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.
I think about the vaunted American devotion to liberty in a similar way: Either the American people have greatly preferred serfdom to liberty or those who truly loved liberty have been so few and so weak in their resolve that they have been powerless to obstruct the long-run march toward participatory fascism since the late nineteenth century.
In either case, it is a travesty to make a great show, as Americans habitually do, of their extraordinary love of liberty. Such avowals are at least 90% hot air, and at present it is doubtful that even one American in twenty would give up his smartphone in exchange for the opportunity to live in a genuinely free society.
