Americans have always treated freedom as oxygen: something you will bleed, starve, or freeze to death to keep breathing. From the frontier homesteaders who chose blizzards over taxes to the truckers who parked Ottawa solid rather than scan a QR code, the pattern repeats: when the state tightens the collar, Americans chew through the leash even if it means sleeping in the snow. Comfort is negotiable; control is not. The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting; it’s a national suicide pact against servitude. The moment a rule feels like a cage, a critical mass of Americans would rather burn the house down than hand over the keys. That instinct is why blackouts, inflation, and empty shelves spark fury instead of compliance here, while the same conditions elsewhere produce shrugs and longer lines.

Europeans, by contrast, have spent centuries perfecting the art of trading liberty for warmth. They accepted feudal lords who guaranteed bread and protection; they accepted welfare states that guaranteed healthcare and six-week vacations; they now accept digital IDs and carbon budgets that guarantee the planet won’t overheat. The continental bargain is simple: hand over the sharp edges of life—guns, risky speech, unapproved thoughts—and the authorities will keep the trains on time, the heat on, and the streets safe. When the state says “papers, please,” most Europeans reach for their wallet, not their rifle. The domesticated animal does not bare its teeth at the farmer who brings the feed; it wags its tail.

That is why the same policy that triggers a convoy of 18-wheelers in Alberta or a January 6th in Washington produces, at most, a candlelight vigil in Paris followed by a government concession and better cheese subsidies. Americans are the last large population on earth still closer to the wolf than the golden retriever: unpredictable, jealous of territory, and perfectly willing to go hungry if the alternative is a leash. Europeans long ago chose the leash, the bowl, and the warm kennel. The Atlantic is not just an ocean; it is the widest moat ever built between two species of human who share a civilization but no longer share an instinct. We are not the same.