"Jonathan" wrote in message
...
Gary Drescher wrote:

So you, too, believe the US was a free country until 1864, but not after?

Define "free country" and what makes a country "free" or not.

It's obviously an overall judgment that weighs many different factors. The
point is that in Matt's surreal opinion, having a legally imposed
institution of slavery is not a significant enough violation of inalienable
rights to disqualify a country from being free. Moreover, the nation's
freedom, in Matt's opinion, decreased precipitously at around the time of
the Civil War--to the point that, on the whole, he judges the US to have
been a free country before then, but not after. Such are Matt's values.

--Gary