American freedom

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[People emigrated to America] largely to get away—that most simple of motives. To get away. Away from what? In the long run, away from themselves. Away from everything. That's why most people have come to America, and still do come. To get away from everything they are and have been.

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Which is all very well, but it isn't freedom. Rather the reverse. A hopeless sort of constraint. It is never freedom till you find something you really positively want to be. And people in America have always been shouting about the things they are not. […]

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when     they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they      are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled,  perhaps unrealised purpose. Not when they are escaping      to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout      of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious      of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always      was.

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like.      The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing      you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing      what the deepest self likes.

— D. H. Lawrence, “The Spirit of Place”, 1924.