America is the country people love to hate. Whether it's America's
next-door neighbors (the Canadians, who would spell that word "neighbours"),
or distant countries on the opposite side of the globe, the United States may
well be the world's most hated nation. Even Americans love to criticize it;
The United States' own citizens seem to constantly complain about how bad the
country's government is.
  What makes this kind of anti-American sentiment? There are several causes.
A common one seems to be simple jealousy. Countries are jealous that America
is the most powerful nation in the world (in terms of economy and military).
Patriotic people, angry that their beloved country is not the most powerful,
loudly voice their criticisms of the American fascism. Part of the problem
with anti-American criticisms is that a lot of them are unfounded, nothing
more than ill-disguised excuses to hate a country simply because it's bigger
and stronger than your country.
  People with "real" reasons to hate the American way of running things seem
to mainly fall into two basic groups: The Communists, and the anarchists.
This may be over-simplifying things a bit, but it seems that most of the
people who hate the U.S. follow one of these basic lines of thought.
  First, the Communists. These are people who hate capitalism, believing that
it creates a money-hungry populace and separation between social classes.
This is actually true: A necessity created by capitalism is that there will
be different classes of people. Some will have a lot of money, some will have
very little. Capitalism leads to the creation of "have"s and "have-not"s.
This is undeniably true.
  Anarchists, on the other hand, are opposed to a centralized form of
government or law enforcement, believing that people should exist without
laws and simply live their own lives, independant of a governing system.
  Although these two camps are united in their anti-American sentiment, what
is remarkable is that they are almost complete opposites. One side, the
Communists, believe that the government should have complete control over
people and their resources, distributing everything equally so that everybody
has approximately the same amount of money and nobody is really rich or poor.
The other side takes the opposite stance: That the government should have
less control over people's lives; Or rather, that there should be no
government at all.
  Which system is better? Ultimately, there is no right answer, since both
systems fall prey to the single fundamental problem of politics: People ruin
social structures, the social structures don't ruin themselves. Communism
might actually be a workable system, were it not for a simple, undeniable
facet of human personality: Greed. Give a government that much power over a
people, and rather than benevolently regulating them in a fair way, the
government will become power-hungry and start oppressing those people. This
is why Communism has failed in every country that tried it, and why it will
continue to fail. Yet if a Communist government were run by majority-minded
people who actually had the best interests of the populace at heart,
Communism could be the utopia that its propagators believe it to be.
  Anarchy, meanwhile, would be a perfectly workable system, except for the
obvious problem of (once again) greed. A lawless society could, in theory, be
filled with people happily going about their daily lives, helping each other
and existing without the regulations and oppressions of a central government.
Yet, in practice, anarchy can never work that way, because humans are too
greedy and violent an animal to live peacefully without laws. The human
desires for power and wealth will destroy such a society. Yet, again, if it
were populated by people who lived by the Golden Rule, anarchy could (and
would) be the utopia that its propagators believe it to be.
  And so there are compromises. The American government is exactly such an
attempt at compromise. In a basic sense, the United States may well be the
most free country in the world, giving its citizens the power to go where
they wish and do more with their personal resources than most countries do.
Yet America is not a perfectly free country; Any country that has any laws is
not absolutely free. Any country that has a government, a group of people who
are given collective authority over the populace, is not free, but has the
potential to allow that populace to be abused or exploited by that
government. Yes, America is freer than, say, Norway or China, but it is not a
"free" country. The final conclusion is simple: Humans are flawed beings. As
long as humans continue to be imperfect, their own weaknesses will continue
to lead to imperfect political systems. Since humanity will never be perfect,
there is no perfect political system. As noted, Communism and anarchy, which
are exact opposites of each other, could each be a perfect system with the
right people; But as humanity stands, there is no "right" answer. There is no
"right" system of government.
  An interesting note about the freedom of nations is that people in
non-Western countries do not seem to think about freedom much. America was
built on a foundation of freedom. More than any other principle, freedom is
what America has been built on, and to this day, Americans value and cherish
their "freedom". On the other hand, people in Eastern countries are made
proud of their country through sentiment. Great parades are held in honor of
their great country, national anthems are taught to small children from a
very young age, and overwhelmingly, a person in such a country grows up being
fiercely proud of their country and its government, without thinking or
caring that they are not "free". They do not constantly talk about freedom,
as Americans do. They are proud of their country, simply because that country
MADE them proud of it through brainwashing. Freedom is not valued in such a
country, and yet, people do not seem to care. They love their country even as
that country oppresses them.
  Americans love their country too, but complain that they are not free
enough. They believe that a country built on freedom should be more free. And
so, even though those Americans have more personal freedoms than anybody else
in the world, they still want more.
  Which system is better? Again, there is no "right" answer. You can either
tell a people that they are free and have a fundamental right to freedom (and
thus have them want still more freedom), or you can regulate them to the
point where they do not care about freedom since they have none.