The US doesn't have the most freedom. There's precisely zero evidence that people in the US are the most free, except for the fact that its government tells them they are. But North Korea tells its people that even harder.
The US doesn't have the most freedom. There's precisely zero evidence that people in the US are the most free, except for the fact that its government tells them they are. But North Korea tells its people that even harder.
They don’t know that they’re not free. The good thing about a real dictatorship is that you know exactly what the rules are.
You don’t know what the rules are in a dictatorship either. Laws and regulations exist but they get selectively enforced based on a lot of factors. Take repressions in the early Soviet Union. There’s just a bureaucratic top down edict that this many “enemies of the people” must be found, so they are found.
Make a joke about immigrants on twitter in the UK and you get arrested. Meanwhile there are more heat deaths in Europe than gun deaths in America. Most of Europe can't be called a free country anymore.
> Meanwhile there are more heat deaths in Europe than gun deaths in America.
You suggesting that in the name of freedom - everyone must have air conditioning and cool their homes to 60F?
>Meanwhile there are more heat deaths in Europe than gun deaths in America.
This is a weird metric of freedom. It seems more like a reflexive, zeitgeist based response than any actual freedom metric.
In my experience the country with the most freedom is Canada. I have never seen anything like it. It's just so easy to do business there. Even if it wasn't that the laws enable it (they do) but even the way people operate. Being able to have a discussion with a customer without 12 rounds of a solicitor trying to insert dumb loopholes into a contract, costing the potential customer more in billable hours to their solicitor than the cost of the contract.
The USA is just junk. States that want to be Feds, Feds that want to be States, and when you cut through all the red tape you still have to deal with Litigious, ignorant Americans. Oh and if you want to import or export something just forget it.
"Oh but we have guns" is basically the exception that proves the rule, in a country where people get detained for such crimes as "Being beloved childrens author Mem Fox" or "Said naughty things on reddit" or "Working while waiting for Immigration to sort their status out".
But guns right. Guns. Woohoo freedom yeehaw guns.
What did they tweet, exactly?
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1iim9je/list...
I’m on my phone, so it’s a little bit difficult for me to find clear examples, but I think this post talks about some of those freedom of speech violations.
I might be completely wrong, but it seems like news articles are not repeating the messages that caused the arrest. They just seem to be reporting that the arrest happened and high-level description of the content.
Are there theoretical tweets for which you believe arrests are warranted?
Yes.
Inciting violence
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Wow, checkmate.
It's mostly corporations that are the most free to do as they please here.
The evidence is our humor. We can make fun of our leaders without being thrown into prison or worse unlike say China or North Korea. Try posting a Winnie the Pooh meme in China and see how fast it gets censored.
well i am chinese, we do cannot post Winnie the Pooh meme(with ugly xi image), the origin carton figure is fine.(we also have a show about it in shanghai disney i think)
what troubles me is why 'humor' is the most important thing? shouldn't be the action/output of the gov? i mean, you vote someone, he promise something, he cannot do it, he breaks the law, then nothing happens, you make fun of him. then after 4 yeras, you select another person. and go on. Biden didn't get punised for what he has not achieved. So will Trump.
how does that improve your life? how can people live like this? how is that 'democray'? its very hard for our people to understand.
our neighbor counties like Mongoel and Philippines, they have a system like USA, and the popeople can make fun of their leaders all the time, i can see that from reddit. but they basiclly live in a shit hole, with a small populartion and vast resources, and they are poor than average chinese. i never understand the deulusion of them.
Suppression of humour is a canary in the coal mine. If you can’t make fun of the politicians, it implies multiple things:
1. There’s no freedom of speech;
2. Which implies there’s no freedom of thought;
3. There’s no separation of powers. Meaning, there’s really no “politicians”, just the ruling “nomenklatura”;
Which is fine-ish as long as the nomenklatura is benign and competent enough. It becomes problematic when (not if) the nomenklatura stops being competent. This can happen naturally because people age, still cling to power, and/or they care about their children, so they try to push them into plush nomenklatura jobs regardless of how dense their offspring might be. This is btw happening in China right now as far as I know.
When that happens, because of 1. and 2., as well as the “repression muscle” that the government has, change becomes near impossible, as you have no leverage for change outside the nomenklatura, but the nomenklatura resists it because it’s suicidal for them. Then you start stagnating and/or getting pulled into pointless wars that the nomenklatura starts to “rally the flag”.
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I disagree. The US has the 1st and 2nd amendments, which gives us protection from tyranny in the government, and which lets us criticize the government without repercussion. No other country grants its citizens those rights, and you can see the effects of that worldwide, where despite it all, we still have our free speech!
How does the 2nd amendment protect you? Are you allowed automatic weapons, grenades? You're not even allowed swords. And if you call for violence, which is what the 2nd amendment might enable, you won't find protection via the 1st amendment.
See citizens and ICE.
Where did you get your info from? Sword ownership is legal everywhere as far as I know and you can own automatic weapons and even grenades.
Stop making stuff up.
Many jurisdictions have laws against carrying blades longer than X (it varies) and any reasonable definition of a sword would fall under that category.
In the US at least automatic weapons are nominally legal at the federal level after hefty tax stamps and background checks but states / local jurisdictions can and do regulate more / outright ban them.
That's just moving the goalposts. Nothing in there says it's illegal to own any of those things. You just might not be able to carry a sword (there are carve outs for reenactments in most places btw) and you might have to move or pay more for automatic weapons.
They're still not illegal, as OP said.
The 2nd amendment was designed to protect the 1st amendment. As for how, it was supposed to give citizens teeth against their government if it ever turned tyrannical one day. Armed citizens were one of the factors that made the American Revolution successful, which probably why so many Americans hold onto the idea.
Whatever one may think of gun control, it's clear the 2nd Amendment is on a much poorer footing.
In a number of states, you need to take a safety course before you're allowed to purchase a gun.
Compare that with the 1st amendment. If they passed laws saying "You can say whatever you want in public, but only after you've taken this course that informs you on what is acceptable and unacceptable to say in public", would you say there is free speech?
Or "You are free to practice any religion, but only after you've taken a course that ..."?
United States v. Cruikshank, 1875
> The First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting Congress from abridging the right to assemble and petition, was not intended to limit the action of the State governments in respect to their own citizens, but to operate upon the National Government alone.
Before the 14th Amendment, your hypothetical was quite possible at a state level.
"A well regulated Militia"
The colonies were expected to defend themselves. In reality that meant every man possessed and drilled with arms whether the were part of a formal militia or not. If there was an attack people would be "called up" to the militia. There is no requirement of belonging to a formal militia in the 2nd amendment. While times have changed, it was expectated that you were proficient with arms in the case that a formal militia was required to be formed.
It's almost like you can easily kill a vast number of people with guns but not words. Curious...
There are plenty of good reasons to ban guns altogether.
But let's not say the 1st and 2nd amendments in the same breath. One is real, and the other is much less so.
That is a wonderfully naive understanding of the world.
You should ask Alex Pretti how he was able to criticize to criticize the government without repercussion.
IMO This is an even more naive (and dare I say intentionally malicious) bad-faith misinterpretation of the facts.
His death had nothing to do with the Constitution, it was because of a trigger-happy, confused cop who had his back to the guy, then noticed a gun next to him (that another officer previously put there). The US government had no part in that situation at all.
I think that's exactly the point. The constitution didn't prevent his death.
What are cops if they're not the government? Are they private corporations?
I don't understand the issue since no law can physically prevent people from breaking it.
Of course cops are the government, but they're also humans that make mistakes and commit crimes themselves. But this isn't actually related to some greater constitutional crisis or anything, unless you have some evidence that suggests they were instructed to act the way they did... but I've never seen anyone come forward with that yet.
The original argument was that the constitution protects you from government tyranny.
You have government officials tyranizing the population and now the argument is "of course it can't prevent that".
What good is it then?
The US government is responsible for the training of its agents. It is culpable as well.
That's kind of the point.
The constitution is just some rules people wrote up generations ago. It's not a magic spell that has power by itself, it is only effective as a social contract as long as power structures agree to follow it.
If armed government enforcers break it with impunity, what good is it?
If you can't exercise your rights without being murdered by a state sanctioned thug, then it's not really a right. Also, has he been indicted yet? charged?
You can't possibly be this naive.
Can you name a single western democracy where the citizens are prohibited from criticizing their government?
France just banned protesting
France just banned rioting
Didn't the USA also? I seen to remember that in Florida they passed a law that says you can run over protestors with your car.
It’s more akin to “stand your ground” laws (whether you’re for or against them). In situations where you reasonably fear for your life, like surrounded by an angry mob of people in the street busting up your car.
It’s not a blank check to run over people holding signs you don’t like as you drive home from work.
No they didn't.
> Under French law and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), authorities may prohibit particular demonstrations when serious public-order risks make restrictions necessary and proportionate. They cannot impose an indiscriminate prohibition on peaceful assemblies simply because previous demonstrations have descended into violence.
You just described the mechanism by which they did. Sure, they didn't make it illegal nationwide permanently, because what serious country would do that and hope to maintain control? The real threat is in the vague exceptions for specific cases, which they have now used.
>The US has the 1st and 2nd amendments, which gives us protection from tyranny in the government
Lmao. Jim Tyranny has had what? 3 cracks at him? Hardly protection.
So free in Europe you guys don't even have a legitimate tech industry. Anyone who wants to build comes to the US.
Ignoring your weird correlation between freedom and tech. Not gonna google European tech before you comment?
freedom is when tech industry, I guess. I didn't know that until bus. I looked up freedom in the dictionary and it said tech industry.
So, free if you're a VC?
Funny how China leads in most tech areas now.
Turns out letting monopoly capital control your government policy leads to short term gains at the expense of long term viability. Maybe the VCs can make some money off government surveillance and defense contracts before being completely eclipsed?
https://www.aspi.org.au/news/aspis-critical-technology-track...
That’s supposed to be worse than the government controlling everything like in China?