Free Speech is Extremely Important
You know Americans have became too lazy and comfortable with their freedoms, so if their freedoms are diminishing, they don't even realize it. Meanwhile in Europe, there isn't even free speech, but we want it very badly. An interesting shift of society.
There are only 2 kinds of people who don't want free speech:
- A fascist
- A communist
A fascist doesn't want free speech because that would expose his ideology as a rabid, violent, barbaric, terror-inducing ideology that is based on societal violence. (You know the Nazis, WW2 Italy and WW2 Japan for the most part)
A communist doesn't want free speech, because speech in communism is democratic. So if 51% of the commune decides that Joe is too outspoken, he will get shut down, in best case scenario, in worst case he will be sent to a Gulag for torture.
So these are the 2 extreme sides of the spectrum, although they don't differ that much, since they are both collectivist ideas.
Now I am an individualist, and I hope most people that read this don't give into the false religion of collectivism that has enslaved humanity for so long.
Europe
In europe you don't have free speech, at all. Basically most Constitutions acknowledge free speech, but they quickly come with restrictions such as hate speech, which is too broadly defined. You basically can't criticize public officials, can't criticize police, nobody.
Europe is totally enslaved. There is practically no free speech in Europe. So when angry Germans or Frenchmen criticize the crimes committed by immigrants on Facebook, and just midly criticizing it, they get fined or thrown in prison.
It's because they grew up in western culture, watching all those Hollywood movies, and entangled in American culture and thinking that just because in the USA you have free speech, they automatically projected that to Europe as well.
Of course they failed to check the laws, where they will easily realize that, nope, they don't have free speech, they are slaves.
For example in Spain you get fined heavily for criticizing the ruling class:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-13/1984-comes-europe-end-freedom-speech-spainIn Denmark you get fined for mildly criticizing criminal elements of the immigrants:
https://www.infowars.com/danish-man-convicted-fined-for-facebook-post-comparing-islam-with-nazism/In Germany you can go to jail if you criticize public officials.
And many similar things in other countries as well. And I am not talking about calling for violence, which is obviously illegal. But just criticizing somebody, by pointing out why is he wrong, or what he did wrong. You can't even do that. By default.
So for example in Germany if you would have called out Karl Carstens, who was the President of Germany between 1 July 1979 – 30 June 1984 for being an actual Brownshirt Nazi between 1934-1945, then you would be the one who would get punished.
So I guess having a Brownshirt Nazi President is no big deal in Germany, not even after the Holocaust and the horrors of WW2 has happened.
However if you would have criticized him, then you would have been the one who would be punished. That is your freedom.
Irony
So it's very ironic that Americans still have free speech, but they take it for granted, and are losing it slowly due to leftist pressure. Meanwhile Europeans don't have it, and are just now beginning to wake up to the fact.
Europe had a long history of monarchy and centralized power, of course the entire legal system was set up in a way to protect it. The entire legal tradition, from the Napoleonic Code, the Germanic law, basically the Civil Law System, is basically a form of left-over tyranny from the dark ages.
It's not that the Common Law is perfect, but it has much more freedoms in it, and much less restrictions, than the European counterpart.
Especially now that we are under the paws of the EU, which is basically a bureaucratic dictatorship, which no regards to human liberty. The Europeans are quickly realizing now just how enslaved they really are.
Can free speech be saved, considering that even the largest news outlets and social media have teamed up for the censorship?
Sources:
- https://pixabay.com
- Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14469 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons
- http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/anti-trump-protesters-anarchists-attack-trump-rally-burn-american-flags-free-speech-signs
I don't know what European countries that you are talking about. But here in Scandinavia we certainly have free speech. What European country prosecutes people for criticism of officials or the police? I guess you can find examples in eastern Europe, like Serbia. But overall your claims are extremely exaggerated. Because of this I didn't bother to read the whole article
I think you are underestimating tyranny. You have examples in Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, you name it.
Some of them are hate speech related, which are very broadly defined, and usually hate speech was defined as somebody who called for active violence against a group, but nowadays it's defined as somebody who sends out a mean tweet on Twitter.
Then I have also read stories where people were prosecuted for filming cops in central europe.
I won't even go into eastern europe, things are very messy there.
So basically we have tyranny across the board. Not much difference.
I'm not denying that states are oppressive. That's obvious. However you make sweeping generalisations, and create false dichotomies, for instance between collectivism and individualism. Your posts are an example of extreme confirmation bias, and little nuance.
He forgot the netherlands
Extreme conformation bias what is that, it may be conformation bias. But that it's extreme is an opinion.