here’s a certain irony in completing the financial surveillance procedures the government requires Airbnb to impose on its hosts. Right along with snapping and submitting a selfie for automatic verification against the required government-issued identification, Airbnb occasionally asks for a guest’s country of citizenship, too.

It is literally the United States, but is it really the United States? In so many ways, we have become a banal pseudo-security state that betrays our founding ideals.

Sure, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” has always been self-flattering and aspirational. The line was lent to our national anthem from Francis Scott Key’s poem, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” recalling the War of 1812. 

Read the full Op-Ed here.