People in Europe are also human beings and so they also have a natural right to free speech. They just happen to live in oppressive governments willing to use violence against them for expressing their natural right to speak their opinion.

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throw101010 a day ago | parent | next [-]

People in Europe live in actual democracies (for the majority). The laws restricting speech were born through democratic processes.

Who do you think you are to pretend to know better than these citizens? You seem to want to impose some unbridled "free" speech that seem to have pretty disastrous effects in the only country where it supposedly exists... is this your idea if "freedom"?

We have tested the limits of tolerence at the cost of literal tens of millions of deaths during the last World War in Europe, I don't think we need any lesson on how we should run our societies regarding free speech because we have done a lot of painful learning.

Looking at the direction/unstability of the American system currently it's not impossible that its people will do the same kind of learning soon unfortunately, might be better to focus on this rather that trying export ideas that we democratically rejected, with purpose.

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SilverElfin 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You seem to be admitting that Europe fell victim to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

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bofadeez a day ago | parent | prev [-]

People in USA live in a constitutional republic based on self-evident natural rights given by god. We just have (somewhat) democratically elected representatives.

In an "actual democracy" with no constitutional rights, the majority can (legally) genocide the minority - and that's happened more than a few times in "actual democracies" in Europe in the very recent past.

You should probably think deeper about what you're advocating for.

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estimator7292 a day ago | parent | next [-]

We genocided the native Americans. Our president wants to genocide brown people. The government is almost wholly owned by wealthy individuals and corporations. A majority of our government is actively working against the good of humanity, much less the interests of the nation.

America now has a literal secret police abducting real people on the actual streets in broad daylight.

Upon losing the previous election our president staged a coup and faced no consequences and won a reelection.

We are no longer a great, free nation, and you really need to understand that fact. America has been lagging behind the rest of the free world for half a century or more. Pretty much everyone has it better than we do.

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bofadeez 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> We genocided the native Americans

That's also bad. But two wrongs don't make a right. Natives should have been afforded citizenship and constitutional rights also. The solution isn't to undo progress and take rights away from people again. I thought you were progressive?

> Our president wants to genocide brown people.

This discredits you quite a lot, since I've never heard even the most left-wing public figures insinuate such a wild unsubstantiated thing. If true, that would be deplorable also.

Whether what you're saying is true or false has no bearing on the truth value of what I said. You're just making unrelated angry hyperbolic claims that lack any nuance at all.

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jalapenos 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who's the "we" here? You and your posse genocided native Americans? How are you not behind bars?

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anonymouskimmer 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Whenever someone uses "we" to refer to a body politic, and doesn't otherwise specify, it's meant to refer to the collective polity throughout its history.

So, the democratic-republican "we". As compared to the royal "we".

As to why no one was behind bars? Because "we" also made those bars.

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jalapenos 20 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	anonymouskimmer 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Their polities weren't then part of the US polity, so they'd have a separate we. Now they are part of the US polity, so they could include themselves in that we. But to honestly answer your sarcastic question: There were a bunch of them, and they typically didn't include their fellow natives in their collective understanding of "we" until later years. At the time, and even prior to colonization, various tribes did indeed commit, or participate in, genocide on other tribes. Just like the pseudo-collective "Europeans" did among their tribes. Some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_Wars#Indigen...

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bdangubic a day ago | parent | prev [-]

funniest thing I’ve read in a long time - cudos mate, well done

	▲	9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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SilverElfin a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly. It’s interesting that despite many countries sharing classic liberal political attitudes don’t have constitutional protections for free speech that go as far as the US. In my view free speech is the most fundamental requirement for any free society and democracy can’t work without it. But as we see with the UK right now and others, speech is impeded frequently.

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Kim_Bruning 21 hours ago | parent [-]

On paper, free speech in the US appears sacrosanct. But in practice, top gear once did this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcJ-0bAHB4

Maybe played up slightly for TV? But the impression is given that -in practice- they could not exercise their free speech in person in the US, but were fine broadcasting it in the UK.

	▲	bofadeez 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah reality TV is not a good source, but it's embarrassing that guests in America even felt slightly uncomfortable expressing their opinions. They're human beings who have the right to peacefully express any opinion they want.
	▲	20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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computerthings 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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