Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Paul Schwennesen
“Some ninety years ago, Rose Wilder Lane penned ‘Give Me Liberty,’ extolling the remarkable freedoms Americans had, especially in contrast to their European counterparts. Written in the 1930s, Lane’s piece is both a stirring defense of American freedoms and a damning portrait of European societies still writhing under the weight of bureaucratic statism. Written just as the state interventions of Roosevelt’s New Deal began to bite, her notes stand as a useful portal into a different era — challenging and checking our current assumptions about the trajectory of transatlantic liberty. In a nutshell, Europe has leapt forward since Lane’s day, while America has wallowed, indeed probably regressed, on the frontiers of individual liberty. Revisited today, Lane’s observations prompt an uncomfortable question: what if the roles have reversed?” (10/27/25)
https://fee.org/articles/the-state-of-liberty-in-america-vs-europe/