According to the Cato institute Hong Kong has a higher index of economic freedom than the US.
If the freedoms that are culturally suppressed are those that in this country allow an image of the Virgin to be covered with feces or those that allow feminists and multiculturalists to go on a rampage then I think that maybe our society may not be superior to those East Asian societies. If what those countries suppress are those forces that attempt to destroy the society from within (read feminism, Marxism, Trotskyism, multiculturalism, etc.) then I say more power to them.
I recall a John Stossel piece a few years back comparing the ease of doing business in Hong Kong compared to India. Very simple in HK - but it's a very small community compared to the US! And of course, we have all of those regulations to contend with, that I doubt they do.
If the freedoms that are culturally suppressed are those that in this country allow an image of the Virgin to be covered with feces or those that allow feminists and multiculturalists to go on a rampage then I think that maybe our society may not be superior to those East Asian societies. If what those countries suppress are those forces that attempt to destroy the society from within (read feminism, Marxism, Trotskyism, multiculturalism, etc.) then I say more power to them.
I'm not suggesting any society is superior to another. What makes ours a great country is that we are afforded the opportunity to discern for ourselves what is repulsive, whether it is "art", speech, film, etc. We can choose not to support the United Way because it funds abortions through Planned Parenthood. We can look at pornography or we can choose not to.
As much as self-righteous activists have worked unceasingly to twist and turn our Constitution to their liking (right of privacy equals abortion, freedom of speech includes flagburning, freedom of religion equates freedom from religion), they haven't broken it. Indeed, it's the very document that protects their opportunity to attack it.