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It's not clear, at least to me, what's your actual point. You try to argue that other countries besides the US also support free speech; and your argument is th
by LudwigNagasena 4y ago
It's not clear, at least to me, what's your actual point. You try to argue that other countries besides the US also support free speech; and your argument is that... it's actually good that they don't support free speech. I am a bit confused.
- kmeisthax 4y agoMy main argument is that America is not exceptionally free, at least among western powers. Since one of the things you specifically pointed out was an anti-fascism law, I have to at least get over that rhetorical hurdle. On paper, a law saying you can't be a particular political ideology sounds like you just tore the beating heart straight out of free speech's chest. When you realize, "oh wait it's just the Nazis", it's less bad, and in practice speech is still mostly free in countries with these laws. And on paper America has the strongest free speech protections in the world. In practice, we've had government censorship regimes for centuries. And our legal system is entirely blind to private censorship enabled by monopolies.
- LudwigNagasena 4y agoWell, it wasn't me who pointed that out, but I agree with that. Whether it is bad, less bad or good is quite irrelevant to whether it is true. America had government censorship regimes for centuries, I fully agree with that. It has an awful government plagued by similar kinds of bureaucratic diseases that we can notice elsewhere. What is more, it is a quite atrocious government with regards to human rights of its non-citizens and sometimes even with regards to its own citizens. That said, it still provides far more speech protections than any other country in the world.