Deriding laws that criminalize speech is always the correct thing to do. The United States is better than any other country on the planet on this issue. Our legal system is superior to one that jails people for being mean or for reporting on current events. The UK, Canada, et al. should continue to be ridiculed as long as they continue t…
Deriding laws that criminalize speech is always the correct thing to do. The United States is better than any other country on the planet on this issue. Our legal system is superior to one that jails people for being mean or for reporting on current events. The UK, Canada, et al. should continue to be ridiculed as long as they continue to enforce these indefensible authoritarian policies.
(To forestall any whataboutism: Go ahead and bash any US policy or action that violates people’s freedoms. God knows they exist. But the above is no less true.)
No country in the world, America included, has fully free speech, as that would allow threats and intimidation, etc. There is always a balance to be had. What annoys me are pompous Americans showing up to a different country, not understanding the history, cultural context, etc. and making sweeping pronouncements that they have the balance right and that if only you poor, ignorant fools would be more like us, how much better off you would be!
JD Vance can keep his asinine opinions to himself when speaking to world leaders, particularly when his motive for doing so is to intimidate other countries into changing their regulations to suit the business interests of Silicon Valley oligarchs like Zuck and Musk.
America has the fewest exceptions, which is why it’s the best country on this issue.
As for “not understanding the history,” perhaps it’s worth mentioning that the idea of free speech as we understand it was created by English and Scottish people, who I imagine would be horrified by the illiberal clowns trampling all over everything they believed in.
No “cultural context” justifies imposing a Stasi-esque regime of speech laws. This isn’t about Americans paternalistically telling others what’s good for them, it’s a simple matter of right and wrong. Freedom is right. Repression is wrong.
When you defend the unjust laws that make you less free than your American counterparts, you sound like an Afghan girl talking about how actually it’s a good thing that she’s not allowed to go to school. (You need to understand the cultural context!) It’s bizarre. If you want to hit back at chauvinistic Americans, “actually I like my lack of freedom” is a really weird way of doing it.
I'm not here to defend every instance of infringement on free speech mentioned on this show - in fact many of them are beyond the pale for my preferences. However, I can see perfectly legitimate reasons why Germany would outlaw Nazi imagery, and perfectly legitimate reasons why courts may suppress the publication of details of current trials (e.g. name of the assailant if that reveals the name of the victim, especially if the victim is a minor), etc. All of these are restrictions on free speech that I'm personally fine with. But I'm not arrogant enough to think that my personal approach is the objectively correct one.
By and large I prefer the Australian system to the American one for many reasons - but a proper constitutional protection of free speech is one thing I think we need desperately. Unfortunately there’s no appetite for it because there haven’t been any outrageous cases to provoke it, and most Australians assume we have more robust protections than we do (because there is a reasonably strong norm of free speech).
Deriding laws that criminalize speech is always the correct thing to do. The United States is better than any other country on the planet on this issue. Our legal system is superior to one that jails people for being mean or for reporting on current events. The UK, Canada, et al. should continue to be ridiculed as long as they continue to enforce these indefensible authoritarian policies.
(To forestall any whataboutism: Go ahead and bash any US policy or action that violates people’s freedoms. God knows they exist. But the above is no less true.)
No country in the world, America included, has fully free speech, as that would allow threats and intimidation, etc. There is always a balance to be had. What annoys me are pompous Americans showing up to a different country, not understanding the history, cultural context, etc. and making sweeping pronouncements that they have the balance right and that if only you poor, ignorant fools would be more like us, how much better off you would be!
JD Vance can keep his asinine opinions to himself when speaking to world leaders, particularly when his motive for doing so is to intimidate other countries into changing their regulations to suit the business interests of Silicon Valley oligarchs like Zuck and Musk.
America has the fewest exceptions, which is why it’s the best country on this issue.
As for “not understanding the history,” perhaps it’s worth mentioning that the idea of free speech as we understand it was created by English and Scottish people, who I imagine would be horrified by the illiberal clowns trampling all over everything they believed in.
No “cultural context” justifies imposing a Stasi-esque regime of speech laws. This isn’t about Americans paternalistically telling others what’s good for them, it’s a simple matter of right and wrong. Freedom is right. Repression is wrong.
When you defend the unjust laws that make you less free than your American counterparts, you sound like an Afghan girl talking about how actually it’s a good thing that she’s not allowed to go to school. (You need to understand the cultural context!) It’s bizarre. If you want to hit back at chauvinistic Americans, “actually I like my lack of freedom” is a really weird way of doing it.
I'm not here to defend every instance of infringement on free speech mentioned on this show - in fact many of them are beyond the pale for my preferences. However, I can see perfectly legitimate reasons why Germany would outlaw Nazi imagery, and perfectly legitimate reasons why courts may suppress the publication of details of current trials (e.g. name of the assailant if that reveals the name of the victim, especially if the victim is a minor), etc. All of these are restrictions on free speech that I'm personally fine with. But I'm not arrogant enough to think that my personal approach is the objectively correct one.
By and large I prefer the Australian system to the American one for many reasons - but a proper constitutional protection of free speech is one thing I think we need desperately. Unfortunately there’s no appetite for it because there haven’t been any outrageous cases to provoke it, and most Australians assume we have more robust protections than we do (because there is a reasonably strong norm of free speech).