How do you define a free country and how much government involvement is in a free country?

Less government means more freedom.

In my view, a free country is defined as a country that is free of any oppressor. When the American colonies became independent from Britain, they were collectively a free country, for a split second. Then they had each other to fight, resulting in the Civil War.

In that sense, the concept of a free country is an ideal which is not achievable and not pragmatic. This is because of the nature of human beings. They can be aggressive, unreasonable, selfish, lazy, irresponsible, and so on. So a free country can be absolute mayhem.

On the other hand, when the government becomes too big or too impractical, we will also have mayhem. In his book, The Death of Common Sense, Philip Howard shows how, by leaving common sense out of law, law can be suffocating and a big waste of human resources. When the government gets too big for its own good, unnecessary paperwork takes up half the productivity of organization, workers, and businesses.

Government, then, is a necessary evil for a country where more freedom can be enjoyed by the most people. In my view, instead of asking how much government involvement is in a free country, why not ask, 'What are the attributes of a great government." This is better in the sense that instead of chasing a non useful concept, we should try to achieve both freedom and orderliness by knowing and attaining wise governance.

Wise or great governance that can yield the most freedom has the following attributes:

1. The most competent, loyal, non-partisan, and incorruptible citizens should be elected to office.

2. There should be win/win/win cooperation between business, government, and workers.

3. More money should be put to education then to the military.

4. The gap between the rich and poor must be narrowed by providing affordable public housing.

5. There must be strict adherence to the rule of law, meritocracy, justice, equality, and accessibility to medical and other services.

6. The government should incorporate rather than exclude common sense and self-regulation from its rule books and paperwork.

Every country's system of government, church, school, & culture are designed to violate our human potential. This is so because the elite that run them are only interested in holding on to power and their own point of view. The masses usually get the short end of the stick. The status quo therefore always put the masses at a disadvantage.

Finally, instead of waiting for more freedom in your country, master the art of making deals and money so that you can effective buy more freedom for yourself, your family and your friends. Volunteering, civil society, free legal counsel and religious harmony must be made the norm of the community.

America as it was defined by our Constitution promotes just that. It was the greatest plan every put forth.

We are a republic! Not socialist, not a democracy.

That means, we are a goup of people who are willing to work together to help each other, but likewise recognize that each state has it's own needs.

Somehow we have lost the rights of the states to take care of themselves. The federal government now taxes each state, and redistributes the money to the states as it see fit. For example if your highway speed is not X then you don't get funds. The same funds your state paid to the feds.

Don't see that in the Constitution at all. But if we get back to the basics we will be a free country.

Less government involvement-whatever do you mean? You mean the freedom to drive without insurance,seat belts and child restraints-the ability to shoot door to door salesman, religious peddlers, pets that pee and poop in your yard with the owners if they don't clean it up and just people we deem not our type when any of them step 1/8th an inch on our property-how about the law allow us to let our toddlers buy cigarettes, alcohol,lotto and lottery tickets,drive and porn-Why can't my kids get 18hour jobs the day after they are born.

We owe this countries current success to lack of respect for the law and each other come on why do we need an ozone,clean water and air- we need to make the bread while we can to keep that 10% wealth in the lifestyle of crushing us even more so lucrative.