By Doug Casey
July 4, 2025
International Man: As the US approaches its 250th anniversary, how would you compare the personal and economic freedoms Americans have today with those envisioned by the Founding Fathers in 1776?
Doug Casey: The US has had a good, long run as a beacon of freedom for the entire world, but nothing lasts forever. Things started changing radically with the War Between the States, and the ascendancy of progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Then came FDR with his New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. And it's accelerated downhill from there.
The trend in the US is critically important. However, Western civilization is in decline throughout the world. And it's more than just a civilizational issue. There's a rot in ethics, philosophy, and even the makeup of the population. People of European descent are declining all over the world, especially in Europe itself, where the native population is dropping rapidly. Even in the United States, figures show that the white population dropped by 250,000 in the last year, while the populations of all other ethnic groups rose substantially.
So, to answer the question: Apart from the huge and obvious changes in technology, I think the US founders would find the country culturally unrecognizable. This trend is underscored by the presumptive election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York. He's young, affable, charismatic. His appeal is understandable relative to the corrupt and constipated alternatives. But he's also a Muslim communist who openly wants to overthrow what's left of American traditions in the largest and most important city in the country.
I discussed this at some length in a conversation with Matt Smith on our podcast .
International Man: What do you see as the most dangerous erosions of civil liberties in the US today-and how did we get here?
Doug Casey: All things become corrupt and wind down over time. The Second Law of Thermodynamics affects political systems just as it does the physical world. Everything degrades and dissolves. Unfortunately, that includes the US Constitution. It's been interpreted, amended, and disregarded into a dead letter.
That's particularly true of the Bill of Rights, which is the most important part of the Constitution. And the most important part of the Bill of Rights is freedom of speech. All the other freedoms rest upon it. Because if you have a thought and you can't express it, you're as good as a slave. You can work and pay taxes, but if you say the wrong thing, you'll be punished. Best to restrict what you think and say to the weather, sports, and the condition of the roads. And be careful what you say about the weather...
For what it's worth, the situation is much worse in the UK, Germany, and Canada, among others. Simply making members of protected groups uncomfortable is cause for prosecution and jailing. Hundreds of people have been fined and/or jailed in those countries just for saying-or being perceived to have said-something considered politically incorrect by the powers that be.
International Man: Many Americans still believe they live in the 'land of the free.'
In your view, is this a myth? What freedoms do they think they have that, in reality, they no longer do?
Doug Casey: Myth rules people's beliefs and actions vastly more than does reality itself. For instance, soldiers are taught to think and say that they're fighting for freedom. That's accepted as a tautology. But in fact, US soldiers rarely fight for freedom. They fight for the government, which has sent them to some shithole, where they don't speak the language or understand the culture. And where, typically, most of the locals view them as invaders.
People believe they have freedoms. But those freedoms mainly exist as holograms. They're insubstantial phantoms. Our vaunted freedoms are so eroded they exist mostly as myth-but, as I said earlier, myth is much more powerful than reality. I outlined the 12 characteristics of Western Civilization here.
Americans think they have free thought, but that's been overruled by political correctness and thought crimes. Free speech has been overruled by cancel culture. Free markets have been pretty much regulated out of existence. We think we have limited government, but the State is absolutely everywhere and in everything.
Individualism is deemed antisocial and is overruled by identity politics. Rationality, logic, and science are deemed "white" or impositions of "the patriarchy." Liberty is seen as a danger that needs to be excluded from safe spaces. The very concept of progress may lead to inequality, which makes progress a dangerous thing.
The list can go on, but freedoms that were self-evident facts 250 years ago have been completely watered down. A year ago, I discussed the 20 points Michael Moore put forward, which he said proved the average American is basically socialist and left-leaning. We analyzed them and found that he was absolutely right. He didn't fabricate anything. Sad to say, "the land of the free" is a myth.
International Man: How is the US education system failing to instill the principles of liberty and critical thinking that underpinned the American Revolution?
Doug Casey: Not only is it failing to instill these things, but it's doing exactly the opposite. It's indoctrinating students with socialist principles. That's no surprise. It's to be expected because the public school system is run by government employees who naturally think like bureaucrats. They're all members of teachers' unions, which are among the most left-wing of labor organizations.
It's a far cry from the one-room schoolhouse of the past, where kids-rather than being imprisoned and listening to mostly irrelevant lectures from a bureaucrat-were, in effect, taught by a mentor. The older kids would help the younger kids, breeding responsibility. Schools today exist, at great expense, for two reasons: 1) to indoctrinate the kids, 2) to keep them off the street while their parents are at work.
The school system in the US is dysfunctional and should be replaced with something else. Matt Smith and I are now completing a book that will explain exactly what that would be. It's pointless to complain unless you can offer a positive solution.
International Man: What roles do central banking, taxation, and economic regulation play in the decline of freedom and liberty in the US?
Doug Casey: The three things you mentioned make economic prosperity much harder to achieve. Central banking causes inflation, which, along with taxation, makes it very hard for the average guy to build capital. It's extremely hard for someone who produces more than he consumes to save the difference, because those savings are being inflated out of existence. Worse, he can only save what's left after lots of direct and indirect taxation. If you do manage to put together some savings, economic regulation makes building a business extremely expensive and risky.
The net result of government is that the average guy is impoverished and in debt. It's hard to experience freedom when you're actually an indentured servant. And yet people think the State is their friend, and they can vote their way to liberty and prosperity.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.