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It's obviously statistical malpractice to draw conclusions from one or two datapoints. But anyway: the UK and France have arguably more restrictive free speech

It's obviously statistical malpractice to draw conclusions from one or two datapoints. But anyway: the UK and France have arguably more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, yet they have far longer democratic histories than the US. It's also somewhat misleading to present the US as some sort of haven of free speech. Just look at the widespread "de-platforming" of anyone even remotely left-wing during the "red scare"/McCarty era. Or the FBI and other agencies' efforts to undermine both the Civil Rights movement as well as anti-war effort in the 1970s.

alephnerd 7y ago
Your statement that the UK and France had a longer democratic history is patently false. France was an absolute monarchy until the French Revolution in 1789 (which was a major splitting point between the Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton factions of the early United States), and the UK had a very limited form of franchise compared to the US until the Reform Act was passed in 1832, and even then it was still lacking due to the undue power of unelected, monarchy chosen House of Lords (though the US Senate as well didn’t have elections, but Senators were directly chosen by democratically elected governors)
repolfx 7y ago
The UK has not had more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, what are you thinking of exactly? Certainly for most of the 20th century the UK was a bastion of free speech compared to Germany during WW1, then pre-war Germany in which political censorship was rife, then Germany during WW2 in which it was total, and then post-WW2 in which half of Germany was still controlled by a socialist dictatorship and had very little freedom of speech and the other half did still have restrictions on speech related to Nazi-ism. What has the UK got compared to that? Yeah, in recent years it's gone down the same road as most of Europe with vaguely defined "hate speech" laws. But there's little or no political censorship in the UK, even bias at the BBC attracts a lot of attention and that's not exactly censorship.

alephnerd 7y ago

Your statement that the UK and France had a longer democratic history is patently false. France was an absolute monarchy until the French Revolution in 1789 (which was a major splitting point between the Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton factions of the early United States), and the UK had a very limited form of franchise compared to the US until the Reform Act was passed in 1832, and even then it was still lacking due to the undue power of unelected, monarchy chosen House of Lords (though the US Senate as well didn’t have elections, but Senators were directly chosen by democratically elected governors)

repolfx 7y ago

The UK has not had more restrictive free speech laws than Germany, what are you thinking of exactly? Certainly for most of the 20th century the UK was a bastion of free speech compared to Germany during WW1, then pre-war Germany in which political censorship was rife, then Germany during WW2 in which it was total, and then post-WW2 in which half of Germany was still controlled by a socialist dictatorship and had very little freedom of speech and the other half did still have restrictions on speech related to Nazi-ism. What has the UK got compared to that? Yeah, in recent years it's gone down the same road as most of Europe with vaguely defined "hate speech" laws. But there's little or no political censorship in the UK, even bias at the BBC attracts a lot of attention and that's not exactly censorship.