Recently, my parents were complaining about their property taxes, which, while not as high as some places, are certainly a burden. Property taxes are really a form of rent and a constant reminder that you don’t really own the house you have purchased. Fail to pay your property taxes and you’ll be quickly reminded of this fact.
The justification for property taxes is that it funds our public schools. However, consider that the average yearly private education tuition is about $5,000 a year.
Now think for a moment. The cost of the Iraq War is projected to cost a total of $6 trillion. If, instead of searching for imaginary weapons of mass destruction and destabilizing the region, we had spent that money on education, the US could have funded an entire 12-year education for 100 million students; the education of an entire generation could have been paid for. It kinda puts our national priorities into perspective, doesn’t it?
There are many nations in the industrialized world that do not have property taxes or have property taxes far lower than in the US, notably Russia, where taxes on land are less than 0.3 percent, roughly 10 times lower than in the US. Yet we are told the people barely survive under their despotic and megalomaniacal leader, Vladimir Putin.
When I reminded my parents of this fact, they replied, “But the people of Russia are not free.”
“Not free to do what exactly?” I asked.
After a brief silence they said, “Well, they are very poor.”
But financial wealth, whether measured in US dollars, Russian rubles, or land is not a measurement of freedom. Freedom is not technological gadgetry or a set of numbers on a spreadsheet. It is the unquantifiable measurement of human dignity, the unmolested sense of self worth that is largely absent in the US.
During the height of Stalin’s gulag system roughly 800 out of every 100,000 Russians were incarcerated, an amount roughly equal to the number of Americans imprisoned today. The Russian prisoners called prison zóna or the “zone.” The entire country outside of the prison was called bol’sháya zóna or the “big zone.” In short, the Russians recognized that their entire society was a type of prison, and imprisonment was merely a matter of degree.
I would go as far to say that the Russians are among the freest people in the world today, primarily for one reason: the Russians know they aren’t free, and in that knowledge they are more free than anyone else. To quote Goethe, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
It is true, democratic dissidents living in Russia cannot successfully challenge the government of Russia without facing reprisal, possibly in the form of overt killings. But can US citizens change the direction of it’s government? It is not cynicism to argue that voting changes nothing; it is reality. Emma Goldman once said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal” and this is very true.
The US enjoys mass media from a dozen different directions, including alternative media from the internet. That you can read this story is proof that dissident information is accessible in the US. However, access to information alone is not evidence of a free society, especially when that information, however damning, is not actionable.
Cold War critics used to note that in Soviet Russia, you couldn’t say anything negative about the government, but whatever was said had a huge effect. Meanwhile, in the US you can say whatever you like, but it makes no difference.
There are two ways for an illegitimate government to rule: fraud and force. Fraud is the preferred method of governance because it is cheaper, can be disseminated across the entire country with little effort, and the population offers very little resistance. It also gives the veiner of a just and peaceful society. Force is only used when fraud is no longer effective. Fraud wasn’t effective in Russia because the population was far too cynical, and so force was used, and for decades it worked well enough. However, that does not mean that the Russians are any less free than those of us living in the supposedly peaceful USA.
Mythologist and writer Dr. Martin Shaw described living in Western Civilization as “a holding pattern of tacit depression… we are trapped in a vast airport with very bad food, unmentionable music, and a queue to the restroom.”
I find the metaphor of a nation wide airport to be particularly apt, especially since 9-11 when security procedures began including nude body scans and groin searches of children and the elderly. Personal possessions can be searched or seized on a whim. There is a presumption of guilt for all would be passengers. These restrictions are unheard of outside of the United States.
Travel in a free country requires both mobility and anonymity. Mobility needs to be more than simply theoretical. Simply needing to be back at work by 9AM Monday morning or risk homelessness deprives most of us of exploring any wandering urges we may have. Any attempt to maintain anonymity is seen as evidence of a crime, if not a crime in itself. Try to buy a plane ticket with cash if you don’t believe me. You will find yourself the target of “additional screening.”
TSA is now monitoring facial “micro-expressions” by “behavior detection officers” whose job it is to detect “mal-intent.” An op-ed on CNN.com describes the program this way: “The officers typically spend less than 30 seconds scanning an average passenger for over 90 behaviors the TSA associates with stress, fear or deception. When the officers perceive clusters of such behaviors in any given individual, they refer that person for secondary inspection and questioning.”
The ACLU has noted that roughly 66 percent of Americans live within a “border zone” where border control agents regularly ignore constitutional rights, performing luggage searches without probable cause. License plate readers are at every major intersection. Facial recognition cameras are at every bank and at every public office. Most areas outside of our homes are thoroughly monitored. Internet accessible cameras inside our homes are becoming more common everyday. Meanwhile, Russia is roughly twice the size of the US but has fewer than half as many residents, making mass surveillance unworkable in most parts of the country.
Totalitarian governments are not defined by the powers they use, but rather by the powers they claim. By this logic, the United States is the most totalitarian society ever to exist. It literally claims the authority to seize, monitor, defraud, or murder anyone or anything in total secrecy and without review. Even in the Soviet Union, if a show trial actually acquitted someone of a crime, he or she was released, but not in Imperial America, where a single conviction of the throw away crime of conspiracy (and 284 acquittals) can get you a life prison sentence.
Rumors that Russia regularly passes laws persecuting sexual minorities are wildly overstated by the west. Traditionally, Russia has been far more respectful of gay and lesbian behavior even dating back to the early gulags, where homosexual behavior was common and accepted. According to a thoroughly documented white paper by Brian Heiss, today you are statistically far more likely to be the victim of an anti-LGBT hate crime in the US than in Russia. In Russia you cannot be fired from your job for being an LGBT individual, while in the US you can. The US currently has 12 states in which gay sex is a crime, compared with Russia who declared it legal in 1993. It should not be understated that the accusations against Russia became international news at a time when US/Russian relations were turning ugly and Russia was in an especially vulnerable position hosting the Sochi Olympics.
Russia is often depicted negatively in the US media, usually focusing on the former KGB agent turned President Vladimir Putin. (Interestingly, it should be noted that former President George H.W. Bush was the head of the CIA when he became Ronald Reagan’s vice presidential running mate in 1980.) Truthfully, the US doesn’t care how bad Putin is; it only demonizes him because Russia is a sovereign state capable of resisting US hegemony which is largely unopposed throughout the rest of the world.
Russia’s idea of freedom can be a bit amusing at times, particularly when one considers their driving etiquette, but the nearly anarchistic social arrangements allow citizens to get away with a fairly modest bribe to a cop, rather than face harsh penalties for relatively innocuous behavior. Not typically what we think of when we imagine freedom in practice, but true freedom can be ugly and exciting. Often, that’s what real life away from the nanny state is.
Is Russia the freest nation in the world? Probably not, but it certainly isn’t the case here in the Orwellian titled “land of the free.” Perhaps enterprising freedom lovers would be better off learning Russian.
