> BUT the idea of free speech is heavily ingrained in American culture. School children complain about free speech when their teacher asks them to be nice - it’

> BUT the idea of free speech is heavily ingrained in American culture. School children complain about free speech when their teacher asks them to be nice - it’s a freedom learned from a very young age. I mean, that actually does potentially apply there, assuming it's a public school. In practice, speech there does tend to be limited anyway, but there have absolutely been first amendment court cases about what schools are and aren't allowed to restrict. > it’s a commonly held belief in America that everyone’s speech is free and should be free, which is applied even on places like fb or Twitter. The idea (even if not the practice) that speech is protected and neutral in all forums of society is VERY American. Not really, though. Everyone gets that even if you send in a letter to the editor, that doesn't make them obligated to reprint it. Almost every other kind of company, people already accept that they aren't obligated to work with you or allow you to publish what you want. Everyone's seen those signs about, "we reserve the right to refuse service blah blah blah" hanging around all kinds of retail stores. In fact, the people complaining the loudest here -- conservatives -- are usually the people saying, "government should stay out of business, let businesses do whatever they want". It's only now that this principle works against them that they're finding that suddenly they don't agree anymore, and they would rather the government micromanage business policies to their political advantage. It's naked partisanship.