>America may well be one of the least free developed countries in the sense that I am alluding to in those last 2 paragraphs, and therein lies the problem.<

That is where, IMHO, you are wrong, and where Art and Amos are right that you have been misled by the media and mutltiple hearsay. I think your few childhood years in Buffalo were insufficient. I have spent my life about equally divided between the two countries. The great cacophony of noise that is American democracy looks bizarre, overly excited and even ignorant when viewed from a distance and through American magazines or television. Immersed in it, you see something quite beautiful instead.