American Myth Of Freedom Research Paper

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The United States was founded on the principles of liberty and freedom. The American Myths of Freedom gives an impression that America is the land of the free, and the sweet land of liberty. The Declaration of Independence is a fundamental expression of American freedom and details the proper roles and limits of government power and the essential rights and liberties guaranteed to every American. However, liberties explicitly protected by the Constitution have been denied in practice. A vast majority of individuals have been deprived in the past and continue to be robbed from the promises of liberty and freedom today. Everyone in America needs to be free before liberty becomes reality. The ideals that were expressed in the Declaration of Independence,…show more content…
The American Myth of Freedom is relevant now because many people have no idea on how much data is collected about them from social networks and other websites. Colombo emphasizes that Lori Andrews explains “social networks and smartphones are funneling our personal information to “data aggregators,” massive companies that track every aspect of our lives online” (707). The internet works as a digital data vacuum and everything someone posts on social networks is being digest, analyzed, and monetized. Are Americans really free? It is astonishing that American’s privacy and security are being invaded and there’s nothing that can be done. There is a prevalence of limitations put upon liberty such as the patriot act. The American Civil Liberties Union states that, “Under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the U.S. government collects, on a daily basis, the phone records of millions of Americans. These records include the numbers dialed and received, the dates and times of those calls, and their duration”. The myth has a vast importance because people are unaware of nation's surveillance laws that vastly expands the government's authority to spy on its own citizens. A large number of Americans still believe that they have liberty and…show more content…
Slaves were robbed from their right to freedom. African Americans had to endure slavery and have been robbed from the pure, unconstrained liberty, the framers promised in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and continue to face this problem today. The relevance of this myth today displays the injustice of the government. Michelle Alexander argues in “The New Jim Crow” that imprisonment cuts off black men from any hope of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (738). The international Centre for Prison Studies states that “with 730 prison inmates for every 100,000 citizens, the united Stated has the highest incarceration rate in the world”. These statistics show that the mass incarceration of color people deprives them freedom. African Americans do not have the same freedom and liberty as whites. The government fails to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the Blessings of Liberty because African Americans are robed from the Bill of Rights. Michelle Alexander, associate professor in the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, acknowledges that, ”in fact, police are allowed to rely on race as a factor in selecting whom to stop and search effectively guaranteeing that those who are swept into the system are primarily black and brown” (742). Not only are they being arrested by racial biases, defendants

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