This mortifies europeans of every generation. In Scandinavia you can leave your pram unsupervised outside a café so your child can sleep well in the cool fresh air while you get a coffee and talk to the other parents doing the same. European schoolchildren walk or bike to school from first grade onwards and they can take public transportation all on their own. Our playgrounds would be deemed suicidal by modern american parents and they would freak out knowing children learn to whittle with sharp knives in a waldkindergarten.

I really don't know how americans can still believe to be the freest nation when the only freedom index they are not completely outclassed by european nations is the economic freedom index.

To quote the greatest poet of our time:

The finger to the land of the chains What? The "land of the free"? Whoever told you that is your enemy.