I Criticize America Because I Chose It
What living abroad taught me about freedom, citizenship, and dissent
I did not really want to write this post, but I am going to write it anyway.
After one of my last pieces, someone emailed me and told me I sounded angry.
Well, yes.
I do not know if you noticed the title, The Angry Democrat. That is not an accident.
Before going any further, I want to be clear about something. This post was inspired by that email, but not in a negative way. I do not know whether it was sent as criticism, concern, or an attempt to find hope, and I am not assigning intent to it. I appreciated that someone took the time to reach out, and nothing they said offended me or made me angry. I did not take it personally and I hope they don’t feel personally attacked by this reply.
What it did do was make me think more carefully about how I explain my criticism of this country and why I choose to stay engaged rather than disengaged.
They also suggested that instead of writing about what I think is broken in America, I should write a post about why I like America. As if criticism requires a loyalty oath. As if you need to wrap every argument in a flag just to be taken seriously.
I have never agreed with that framing. I do not think people need to pledge allegiance, perform patriotism, or preface every critique with “I love America, but…” just to earn the right to speak. In fact, that impulse feels deeply un-American.
That said, I am writing this anyway. Not because I owe anyone anything, but because I choose to live here, and that choice matters.
I am not someone who believes that where you are born is where you must live and die. I lived abroad for roughly fifteen years. I lived in China. I lived in Taiwan. I lived in Hong Kong briefly. I lived in Hawaii for many years, worked there, and went to university at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. I have traveled to forty, maybe fifty countries. I have more friends scattered around the world than I do in Northeast Ohio, where I am from.
So when I say I choose to live in the United States, I mean that literally. It is a comparison informed by experience.
Let me be very clear about something that often gets lost. America is not the best at everything. Not even close.
I have lived in China. You cannot compare American infrastructure to what China is building right now. Power grids, high-speed rail, airports, digital payment systems, communications infrastructure, social media integration. In many ways, America looks old and underbuilt by comparison.
Go to Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai. Compare their subway systems to New York’s, or the lack of public transit in just about every other city, and ask yourself what the hell happened here.
When I was a student in Taiwan, their universal healthcare system covered us. Students!
For a minimal fee, we received high-quality care. I personally had double inguinal hernia surgery there. Friends of mine went through the hospital system for everything from scooter accidents to routine care. The experience was efficient, affordable, and excellent. Comparing that system to ours is not even a fair fight.
So no, I am not here to argue that America has the best infrastructure, healthcare, or public systems. In many areas, we do not. Nor do we have the best in many other systems or infrastructure, which I cover in other posts.
The reason I choose to live in the United States is something deeper.
People love to say America is a “melting pot,” but that is just the surface. That is the tip of the iceberg. The real substance is underneath.
In the United States, everyone here is American.
That sounds simple, but it is rare.
China is not an immigrant country. You cannot become Chinese. Period. Try being a foreigner there. Try speaking the language with an accent. Try not looking Chinese and claiming to be Chinese. If you want to talk about discrimination, start there.
And this is not just China. Try speaking French with the wrong pronunciation in France and see how forgiving their culture is.
In the United States, people speak English with accents from every corner of the world. And for the most part, we try. We listen. We adjust. We accept.
Under the law, being American means something. It means equal rights to own property, to buy land, to start a business, to enter contracts. The First Amendment applies equally to a Chinese American, an African American, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and everyone else.
That is not true in most of the world.
Go look at what it means to immigrate elsewhere. Can you buy property on your own? Can you own land? Can you open a business without a local partner? Are you classified as a “foreign-owned business” forever? Do officials refuse to speak to you and demand your spouse instead? These are not edge cases. These are norms.
Americans take for granted how deeply these rights are embedded. We assume they exist everywhere. They do not. And if some of these rights do exist, the complete combination we have in our constitution does not.
Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The right to bear arms. Protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. The presumption of innocence. The requirement for warrants. The ability to criticize the government openly, loudly, and repeatedly.
Are these rights being eroded? Yes. Absolutely. But they still exist within a legal framework here in a way they simply do not in many other countries.
And even more important: if you believe these rights are being violated, you are allowed to say so. Publicly. Without disappearing.
That alone is extraordinary.
That is why I choose to live here.
And because I choose to live here, I choose to fight for it. To criticize it. To point out where other countries are doing things better and ask why we refuse to learn. To push back against bad policy, bad leadership, and bad incentives.
I am not going to say the Pledge of Allegiance before every critique. I am not going to perform patriotism to prove I belong. I do not need to preface opposition to foreign wars with declarations of love for the troops.
I do not accept purity tests.
The United States is an experiment. Participation is a choice. I choose to participate. And part of that participation is insisting that we can do better, informed by what I have seen elsewhere and what I know is possible.
The thing that makes America great is not that it is perfect. It is that I am allowed, by right, to say it is not.
That is why I live here.
And that is why I keep writing.
That is why I stay angry.
Well said. Truism learned in school—As Americans we get the “government we deserve.” That’s a good thing—-we have the pieces to create and maintain a Republic (with a capital R) by Founders. It’s up to us to continue routine maintenance and improvements.
Bravo!