No, we never have, for we have failed to define relativity of freedom that can successfully encircle the world.
Indeed, the U.S. (and the rest of the world) has never had a free-market system by any meaningful definition of freedom such a market-system must be subjugated to.
How we interpret freedom requires redefinition, from its current illusion of absolutism to a relativity theory of freedom, to each his own. The absolutism suggested and generally insinuated by the term freedom of today is an oxymoron of oligarchic proportion, and incompatible with the evolution of humanity.
“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.” — Thomas Jefferson
The only freedom capable of successfully encircling the world and embracing the innate diversity of humanity is a relativity theory of freedom, to each his own, paired with unique and sovereign paradoxical rules to balance the pursuit of individual freedom with the trust embodied to protect collective freedom.
One ought not to preach the benefits of free-market systems without deploying the proper definition and principles of freedom those market-systems must then be subjugated to. Our market-systems systematically fail (not if, but when) because we lie about what freedom means, and we fail to deploy pre-emptive compliance to rudimentary principles of freedom to spawn renewability that would otherwise support sustainability.
Yes, the U.S. Constitution (a fantastic achievement of its time) mentions freedom as an inspirational goal but falls miserably short on defining the principles of how to define, achieve, or implement such an objective. Hence, we fall miserably short in describing the pertinent rules-of-the-road of our systems of success, in perpetuating renewable evolutionary prowess over the meaningless rat-race for wealth — the latter which does nothing to strengthen the evolution of humanity, instead quite the opposite.
Some 239 years in, and we are all still enslaved. Less by our foolish racial divide than by our man-made enslavement to money. Money from which a lack of evolutionary merit (from ill-defined freedom) has sucked out our collective trust.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free” — Goethe
Hence, it is time we redefine what freedom means, and begin to deploy systems with more innate trust than the vile-maxim of the pillage-and-plunder of the Wild West that made us the erect hominid (save for a few) with the biggest money-stick of the modern age, with systems that mimic the world and its inhabitants for what it is. With a complexity steeped in relativity, not with the stifling illusion of absolutism by which we currently misjudge our planet.
My upcoming book will explain how, in detail, the summary concepts of which appear on my blog.
