I think in the US you have more freedom if you take it. It's easier to start a business, it's easier to live an unconventional lifestyle (in Germany it seems difficult to just build a house in the middle of nowhere whereas in the US you can), you can live without health insurance, you can build a house the way you like it, you shop on Sundays or use your lawn mower. In Germany a lot of things are more regulated but within these boundaries you have more freedom in my view. Companies in the US often behave like absolutist kings who own their employees. You have no rights but you can leave anytime if you don't like it. You have drug tests and background checks.

So in short I think you can have more freedom in the US if you take it but the regular citizen with a typical employee lifestyle is less free.

Saying it's easier to do something is not the same as Freedom. Freedom is a question of what you can do, not the ease with which you can do something.

The US has really more freedom. For example, you can call your kid whatever you want. In Germany you have some bureaucrat going through a list of allowable names. There is a lot of stuff like that.

But the average US citizen doesn't exercise most of these freedoms but actually lives a more restricted life than the average German citizen in my view.

> you can call your kid whatever you want

"several states limit the number of characters that can be used due to the limitations of the software used for official record keeping." and "The Office of Vital Records in California requires that names contain only the 26 alphabetical characters of the English language. Some states (for example, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, North Carolina, Oregon) allow accents and some (not always all) non-English letters in birth certificates and other documents." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_in_the_United_States

So, it's a long way from total freedom, but I get your point. However, you can call your kid whatever you want, the limit is simply around what you can do with official paperwork.

There is no fixed list - AFAIK you need to prove that it's a first name in use somewhere in the world, with a few exceptions. "Jesus" is one I know about, it's a valid first name in Spain but not in Germany.

That's the "reflexive" part: Americans often think of "freedom" in either an extremely simplistic way ("I can do whatever I want, whenever I want! Up yours, government! Instant gratification all the way! Free speech means I can say whatever asinine thing I want, anywhere and anytime, without giving a crap about others!") or a nationalist / jingoist way ("we have freedom and they don't! USA! USA!").

(Of course, not everyone conceptualizes "freedom" this way in the US, but it's a depressingly common approach - especially where any sort of political discourse is concerned.)

The reflexive part is that any time our personal space (emotional, mental, or physical) is threatened, it is a reflex to retaliate with "you are violating my freedom" style response.

To ideas that threaten: "You can't make me think that way, I am free to think as I want"

To feelings of discomfort: "It's a free country, I shouldn't have to feel this way"

To physical space: "this is me or my property, I can do what I want with it"

Obviously, when taken in extremes this results in polarization, mischaracterization, and ignorance. Taken responsibly, it is also not appreciably different from any place with a bill of rights. To americans, I would level the criticism that we use it as a crutch and an excuse, more than an ethos, as evidenced that most appeals to freedom are also appeals to the value of self interest.

I'd argue that the term itself is left intentionally poorly-defined.

That's a large part of Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony: A special type of agreement, in which the person who's agreeing doesn't necessarily understand what it is with which they're agreeing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8E6C3ZnJ0

The notion of "rugged individualism" you'll often hear touted ... is in fact a political slogan produced by Herbert Hoover in 1928. This is highly evident from its Ngram trace:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rugged+individ...

If you look at the early discussion of the term, you'll find much of it is critical. H.L. Mencken speaks of the "curious conception of rugged individualism. It would be much more appropriate to speak about our rugged collectivism."

And yes, it's also true that "American Individualism" predates the term, though the latter is by far the more prevalent today, and both can be traced to what is essentially corporate propraganda.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=American+indiv...

Emma Rothschild (yes, one of the Rothschilds) makes the explicit point that Adam Smith's "liberal philosophy" was one of material liberty, that is, of an abundance of material wealth at the individual level, which allows for a freedom of actions without catastrophic consequence. Several recent modern commentators have noted that the chief characteristic of poverty is a lack of choice: if there's only one way to do things right, without consequence, you have no freedom.

Which may not be much by way of an answer, though it is an endorsement of the question.