Americans believe strongly in free will, free choice, freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and of liberty; of which, these are the very attributes that a government of, by, and for the people, should be aiders and abettors to. That said, the very nature of government lends itself to corrupting influences of all sorts, so that, the words of our Constitution, and of our Declaration of Independence, as great and as wise as they are, can rather readily be and have been circumvented in a manner in which the people, are to a very great extent, not free, and not at liberty, but are ultimately subservient to that government which is supposed to represent and to serve them wisely.
The fact of matter is that most people's lives consist of a lot of effort and work, to maintain or to achieve one's own freedom, so that what they have worked so hard to achieve becomes their own; yet, even those that have achieved exactly that, are never totally at ease, nor are they ever totally satisfied with what they have, but are forever at least somewhat dissatisfied or discomforted, for there is always one more thing, or one more achievement, or one more activity, that they need to gain, which never seems to end, in which, they still feel the need to secure such in order to maintain their own happiness and comfort. So that, while apparently free, they are still enthralled to the lures and enticements of what this world has to offer them, as well as respectful of the danger that their government could take such from them.
On the other hand, those that properly see what the world provides to them, as nothing more than the temporary use of material things for the betterment of one's own and others; and, in addition know that all that one has or has created, of a material aspect, will never leave this material plane with them, recognize that the only type of gift that thereby still keeps on giving, is one's good advice, one's good mentorship, one's good example, and one's good deeds. This individual has thus successfully freed themselves from the delusion and the illusion that this world is the be-all and end-all of one's existence. Instead, they correctly recognize that the only freedom that will ever last could only come from the very hand, of He who created it all to begin with.
The point of our existence in this physical form, is to, to the extent so possible, to see that we are enablers of making this world a place of fairness, justice, and of equality; in which we intuitively recognize the equal validity of each and every member of the human race, in addition to our innate responsibility of being a good steward and developer of the resources that this world so provides for us. The race is not now, nor has it ever been to the swift or to the clever; but is always and always will be to those that correctly comprehend the meaning of life, which necessitates the acknowledgment that mankind's purpose in life, is fundamentally to know the truth of who and what mankind is and represents, of which through that truth, mankind will thereby set itself free from the self-imposed shackles that have precluded mankind from knowing of its true essence, and thereby once so known, experiencing the liberating freedom that this truth so represents.