It strikes me that two things were fundamental to the founding ideals of America. First was the idea that freedom was not to be applied for -- not to the apparatchiks running the place your were leaving from -- and certainly not to the apparatchiks fucking up the relatively freer place you were going to. The second, hand-in-hand, was that to the extent law existed, its sole purpose was to protect freedom, above all else, i.e., the freedom of individuals to self-determination. Law, for any other purpose, was to be righteously condemned, ignored, and disobeyed: with prejudice. Citizens and Subjects were what left other places. Individuals were what arrived on the shores of America. Yet we live in a land, today, that's anathema to those founding ideals. It is so perverted, in fact, that the latter ideal, espoused above, has been turned on its head as justification for trampling the former. As regards America and its European ancestry, I can only say: I guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree, after all. Well, this is what my mind was on after reading this, along with the posts and comments referenced therein.