This puts into words really well what's been stewing in my brain the past few years. Having spent the last few years traveling the world and seeing the many di

This puts into words really well what's been stewing in my brain the past few years. Having spent the last few years traveling the world and seeing the many different ways people live, it's sometimes a bit of a shock to come back to the States and having to check if there's a nearby police officer before jaywalking across an empty street or enjoying a beer outside in the sun. The more I leave and come back, the more it seems to me that, as this article states, we punish, ticket, fine, and incarcerate for the slightest of "offenses", things that in other places would be chalked up to "live and let live," or at worst, a verbal warning. There's the commonly cited statistic that we have more citizens in prison than China does. A country needs laws, but there's certainly a difference between laws that keep peace and laws that are petty and domineering. All of it (among other factors, not least of which are health care and wild militarism) adds up to an environment that I'm increasingly less inclined to return to. For a country that prides itself on its freedoms, I'm constantly surprised at how successful here people are at imposing their desired behavior on others.