There’s a certain irony in completing the financial surveillance procedures the government requires Airbnb to impose on its hosts. Right along with snapping and submitting a selfie for automatic verification against the required government-issued identification, Airbnb occasionally asks for a guest’s country of citizenship, too.

It is literally the United States, but is it really the United States? In so many ways, we have become a banal pseudo-security state that betrays our founding ideals.

Sure, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” has always been self-flattering and aspirational. The line was lent to our national anthem from Francis Scott Key’s poem, "Defence of Fort M'Henry," recalling the War of 1812.

That war involved actual death, destruction and threats to the territorial integrity of the United States. The English captured Washington and burned the Capitol before American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh set the British back. Andrew Jackson led American forces in repelling a British attack on New Orleans.

If you could transport the minds and collective spirit of those Americans to this day, would they have........

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