Can you buy non-pastorised cheese in the USA? What about imported Salame from Italy? Can you kiss a girl of your age if you are 16? Can you drink at 20?
No, No, No, No. If your measure of "freedom" is being able to buy assault rifles, your measure of individual liberty is very biased (and silly).
There are plenty of weird laws in the US, mainly at state level, but overall the US is free and democratic in ways most other countries (with any real central government) are not. Most of your examples (cheese, kissing girls) are bogus. The ban on cured Italian meats is typical non-tariff agricultural trade BS and Europe is more guilty of that than the US (Australia and New Zealand can point fingers though, and also have liberal drug policies, etc.)
But the US wins big on freedom of speech. Almost no other country protects free speech as well as the US does (flawed as it is) and that's not a stupid measure.
His examples are not bogus. These are real restrictions that limit "freedoms". What about the absurd drinking age? I can count tens if not hundreds of laws that show you how "un-free" people are. What's worse is that adults have actually spent time making them "illegal". It's funny, you think your free but you're always free within the limits. In the US, you are always free to choose between X and Y. Never Z!
I don't necessarily agree with you that an American more freedom of speech than say, a British person. But assuming it is, well, US: 1 (freedom of speech), Europe: 10 (for all the other nonsense illegalities in the US).
P.S: It is quite ironic you are saying the US wins big on freedom of speech in a thread on this article. Not saying that a European state wouldn't do the same to a whistleblower (many wouldn't though; especially Scandinavian countries), but even if they would, the governments didn't put themselves in that situation in the first place.
