Nothing like a little dose of Brownson on a Thursday morning.  I maintain, and have always maintained, that America, despite her flaws, is the freest nation on earth.  I used to ask my philosophy students when the subject arose, "You name me one place in the world where I am as free to express, and maintain my freedoms, as here in good Ol' Kentucky?"  One student answered me Germany.  I asked him when he last researched the firearm laws in Germany.  Dead silence! 

There is no guaranty that America will not succuмb to the forces of communism, but we can, as Catholics, freely practice our religion, own our firearms, express our political opinions, etc.  Here is what Brownson said many years ago:

  "No Protestant country on earth guaranties or ever has guarantied religious liberty. England does not do it, never has done it.  Holland does not do it, never has done it. Prussia and the Protestant German States, though at times tolerant, do not do it, never have done it.  Denmark tolerates no religion but that of the state, and prohibits by law a Protestant from renouncing his Protestant faith. The same may be said of Sweden.  Protestant Switzerland has never done it, does not do it now...In this country we are told there is an exception.  But is it so? Episcopalianism established itself in Virginia, and maintained itself there till the time of the American Revolution, with its usual intolerant spirit.  In Maryland it overthrew religious liberty, and made the Protestant religion the religion of the land. In Massachusetts, Puritanism was the religion of the state, bored the ears and tongues of dissenters, imprisoned, branded, exiled, hung men and women for their religious belief. In the very city in which we write, the public authorities whipped and hung the Quakers, men and women.  At the breaking out of the American Revolution, there was not one of the American Colonies that fully and unequivocally guarantied religious liberty, the full liberty of conscience, unless we must except Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.  The oldest State Constitution in the Union that guaranties freedom of conscience is the Constitution of Vermont, framed by men who were not remarkable for their attachment to any form of religion.  And even now there are quite a number of States which give a constitutional preference to the Protestant faith over the Catholic.  We may be mistaken, but we have a very strong impression that there was not in 1775 a single Colony that gave full liberty of professing and practicing their religion to Roman Catholics, or that gave Catholics and Protestants equal political rights and privileges. Up to 1776, Protestantism in this country, then, had not established religious liberty."

    ("Protestant Love of Liberty," July 1845, Brownson's Quarterly Review