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> Now I get that this is hard to see in the middle of the US, but 7.1 billion people don't have freedom of speech (roughly) and 300 million do. The thing is, th
by Thiez 9y ago
> Now I get that this is hard to see in the middle of the US, but 7.1 billion people don't have freedom of speech (roughly) and 300 million do. The thing is, those 7.1 billion mostly don't want it.
Yes, as one of those poor 7.1 billion, I can barely contain my envy. Now let's have a look at the ranking of the US in, say, the World Press Freedom Index of 2017 (https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking). Could you please explain why the US, being (supposedly) the only country in the world that has freedom of speech, hasn't even made it in the top 40 of that ranking?
I don't see this obsession with America-style "freedom of speech". Sure, you can't go out in the streets and yell that you think that '<minority> are subhuman scum that deserve to be rounded up and transported to extermination camps' in most places (although I imagine that won't make you very popular in the US either, even if would technically be legal), but if you live in the nicer parts of, say, Europe, you won't go bankrupt when you need a hospital, you won't be living in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, you don't have a two-party system, your vote isn't worth more or less depending on where you live, etc. Also what's this "free speech zone" thing?
Freedom of speech isn't black and white, there are many shades of gray. If everybody feels they can speak their mind except for some people advocating genocide... well suffice to say I won't be joining Evelyn Hall in her fight to the death.