[rayiner]

> And it's completely unnecessary - in fact, people do very well living in freedom, as you can see in most places (by population) in the free world. No societies have been more successful, and it's not close.

You’ve got the causation backward. Freedom from social conformity is a luxury wealthy societies can afford. Western countries, including America, became rich at a time when they were still quite rigidly conformist. And some of the most conformist, such as Puritan New England were the most prosperous.

It’s also worth observing that those same societies are now literally dying out. Post-Christian Europe literally has to import people from societies with rigid social norms—among others, strong social pressures to start families and raise children—to take care of their elderly.

[wolverine876]

In fact, the US was founded on religious and other freedoms. It wasn't perfect, of course, but the US has widely been more free from conformity than others, wrote it into its foundation, and has prided itself on it. You couldn't pick an example more contrary to the argument. Immigrants for generations have traveled to the US to escape the conformity forced on them in other socities (including the Puritans!), and to live how they choose. Americans have dreamed of and achieved freedom - look at the women's rights movement, which revolutionized the freedom of women.

(I have plenty of criticism of racism and other discrimination in the US. It certainly isn't ok and I am going to help fix those problems.)

> Post-Christian Europe literally has to import people from societies with rigid social norms—among others, strong social pressures to start families and raise children—to take care of their elderly.

They need immigration in that respect (and so does the US) simply because of birth rates.

Immigrants have come from those societies to the US (and certainly parts of Europe) for generations. Some are too old to give up their old ways, understandably, but their children embrace freedom and those are the people of the US today.

And again, do you cede to me the power to make you conform to what I want? Why should anyone cede it to you?

[rayiner]

> In fact, the US was founded on religious and other freedoms… You couldn't pick an example more contrary to the argument. Immigrants for generations have traveled to the US to escape the conformity forced on them in other socities (including the Puritans!)

You’re erroneously conflating collective freedom and individual freedom. The US was founded on religious pluralism, which meant different religious groups coming here to be free from persecution back home, usually due to politics. For example, the Puritans left because they believed England was insufficiently committed to the Protestant Reformation. But that didn’t have anything to do with individual freedom within those groups. Many of the groups that came to America, like the Puritans, were regarded as extreme and fundamentalist back home: https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2017/01/17/an-examination-o... (“In 1637, the general court of Massachusetts passed an order forbidding anyone from settling within the colony without first having his orthodoxy approved by the magistrates.”).

> They need immigration in that respect (and so does the US) simply because of birth rates.

What causes the low birth rates in those places and the higher birth rates in the places immigrants are coming from?

> Some are too old to give up their old ways, understandably, but their children embrace freedom and those are the people of the US today.

Sure, the kids become socialized into the culture of individualism—that just means that the society is unsustainable without continuing to import people from those societies with more traditional and conformist culture. Put differently, post-Christian Europe is sustainable only through population arbitrage.

[wolverine876]

I'm a bit late in responding ... No matter what you try to throw out there, I don't think you will convince anyone that the US isn't a culture of individual liberty, and that it's been very successful in every way - freedom, prosperity, security, culture, etc. It turns out that people deciding for themselves, instead of others telling them what to do, results in great decisions.

All those people are coming to the US, not vice versa!

[dctoedt]

> It turns out that people deciding for themselves, instead of others telling them what to do, results in great decisions.

Sometimes. But we've also found it necessary to have laws governing road traffic, and pollution, and noise abatement, and fraud, and robbery. That's because humans often focus narrowly on their own desires when making decisions unless they're compelled, under pain of fine or imprisonment (which aren't always effective), to take others' interests into account as well.