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> Nobody claimed democracies will pass laws you have to like, it turns out bigotry is wildly unpopular and hard to defend, so without a First Amendment, free sp
by cryptonector 5y ago
> Nobody claimed democracies will pass laws you have to like, it turns out bigotry is wildly unpopular and hard to defend, so without a First Amendment, free speech tends to become circumscribed. Democracies can pass awful laws, yes. But what is the breathless author presenting as an alternative?
You said it in the first sentence quoted: a First Amendment.
In this case, of course, a Fourth Amendment and a Fifth Amendment also help a great deal.
- jquery 5y agoThis may be pedantic, but the author did not present the First Amendment as an alternative, and in fact excoriated America as an authoritarian state no better than China.
- cryptonector 5y agoAre we reading the same comment?
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoChina has a first amendment very similar to America’s. However, they don’t have rule of law or an independent judiciary so its constitution is less meaningful than the USA’s.