Way to go, Canada!

[uwe]

There is a schism where the US Constitution places Freedom of Speech (pretty much above all else in your First Amendment) and where most European democracies see it. Article 1 of the German Constitution reads:

"(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.

(2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world."

Only Article 2 states:

"1) Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law.

(2) Every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity. Freedom of the person shall be inviolable. These rights may be interfered with only pursuant to a law."

You get the gist, there is much more of a "yes, but ..." element to Freedom of Speech. The German Constitution is shaped by historic experience: How the Nazis lied and defamed the Weimar Republic to get elected - and once in power dismantled democracy.

There are pros and cons to the respective emphases of both philosophies.

The older I get, the more my tolerance for hate speech, inventing things just for the heck of it or denying scientific progress shrinks. Social media amplifies these things beyond what we have experienced before in our history and algorithms lead people down rabbit holes where they no longer take part in a discourse. By now, I would likely favor algorithms being outlawed completely or at least programmed in a way that they do not filter out opposing views. I guess you can say that I'm no fan of freedom of ignorance.

[Darrol]

Personally, I'm happy to see DOGE trimming down the bloated bureaucracy.

There is no doubt a lot of bloat in government but DOGE is taking a sledgehammer to walls and asking afterwards if they were in fact load-bearing.

Multiple times now DOGE has gone in and fired someone crucial without realizing it leaving them scrambling to try to rehire them. They're basically using an AI to go through and flag things they don't like which has lead to situations like the removal of Jackie Robinson's military records and the Enola Gay from government websites. Musk himself is going into departments he has clear conflicts of interest with and screwing with them like going into the FAA, canceling a contract that they made with Verizon in 2023, and replacing it with a contract with his own company.

There is a way to audit departments and companies for excess. DOGE is not doing that.

Then there are the people he hired to work for DOGE. A guy who has been given direct access to sensitive personal information of Americans was literally fired from a previous job for leaking company information. These people are not vetted. They do not have security clearance. This is a clusterf***.

[patman]

Successful change happens in small carefully controlled increments over time. Evolution rather than revolution.
My opinion...yours may vary. I'm uncomfortable with the chainsaw approach.

[gearHed289]

...fear of having a knock on their door for expressing views contrary to what their establishment prefers.

Elon's buddy Donald is taking the USA in that exact direction. It's already happening to college students.

[4stringer77]

Other than Germany, I would have said the UK pertaining to european countries that are most hostile toward free speech. Just recently some folks over there got arrested for complaining online about their kid's primary school.
  I don't know exactly how the administration is trying to suppress the rights of college kids. The party previously in power would not have lost so much in the last election if the country was satisfied with the way things were going. The pendulum swings and so it goes.

[4stringer77]

Elon's buddy Donald is taking the USA in that exact direction. It's already happening to college students.

I can agree with what Ron Paul is saying here.
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/free-speech-is-worth-fighting-for/

[uwe]

Successful change happens in small carefully controlled increments over time. Evolution rather than revolution.
My opinion...yours may vary. I'm uncomfortable with the chainsaw approach.

Amen. Progress is a snail, but a determined one. And for the life of me I can't think of a notable civilization that was built on chainsaws.

[Alanko]

Other than Germany, I would have said the UK pertaining to european countries that are most hostile toward free speech.

...according to Breitbart and Fox News.

I'm ceaselessly amazed at how confidently Americans can make such poorly researched, unnuanced statements. Aren't you lot knocking back folk at airports for saying mean things about your new King for Life in text messages? Much freedom. At least the folk in North Korea probably understand that they are living in a totalitarian hellscape.

[Darrol]

I don't know exactly how the administration is trying to suppress the rights of college kids. The party previously in power would not have lost so much in the last election if the country was satisfied with the way things were going. The pendulum swings and so it goes.

Look up the case of Rumeysa Ozturk who is a Turkish national legally here on a visa studying at Tufts university. Masked individuals ambushed her and took her away in an unmarked vehicle. Her crime: she co-wrote an op-ed criticizing her school's response to what was happening in Palestine which many view as a genocide. She was exerting her freedom of speech as a person legally here in the US and they kidnapped her. They also sent her to Louisiana against court orders.

Freedom of speech only matters to the right when it's on their side. Muskrat bought Twitter and said his goal was to restore the freedom of speech to the platform and yet that notion doesn't apply if you say something he doesn't like. Trump would constantly make threats and call for violence but his cult loses their head if anyone on the other side does anything marginally close to what he does.

Do not think that the election was a landslide and Democrats lost a huge footing because people were unhappy. Less than half of Americans voted for this and the difference in a red win versus a blue win is about 200k total votes across 3 swing states.

Oh, and if you care so much about wasted spending from a bloated government, how do you feel about the 20+ million that's already been spent on golf trips since January 20th?

[4stringer77]

Darrol, see post 50. I don't have 100% faith in any elected official. I'm hoping we don't get wrapped up in further military escalations but that looks like it will be a challenge. Don't get too worked up guys. I'd hope everyone here can manage to resist the urge to key a tesla or something like that.

[Darrol]

My apologies; I've been a bit on edge about a lot of this stuff for a while now though I will never reach a level of keying a tesla or anything like that.

As for further military escalations, I don't have high hopes. Trump ran on not getting involved in any more and yet he's threatening military use to take over Greenland, make Canada the 51st state, and also take over the Panama Canal.

[4stringer77]

Don't forget Iran and China. It all gets a bit overwhelming after a while. All the more reason to dig in to some tunes, play some bass and try to get into a different frame of mind.

[Dave W]

I would comment here but Darrol has expressed my views very well.

[patman]

The current state of affairs sort of reminds me of Nero and the decline of Ancient Rome.

[uwe]

It's all a bit much and dystopian right now. And I miss the adults in the room.

But what baffles me the most is the amount of ignorance in the electorate (and I don't mean just the US, it's a symptom of very many Western societies), too many people have a next to nothing grasp of how good administration, domestic economies and worldwide trade work. Snake oil salesmen reign.

I don't know why comprehension of more complex issues has gone out of style, it used to be what set the Western World apart from its competitors. We live in world with an abundance of availabilities of gathering information, facts and knowledge - yet people seem to make little use of them.

Historically, whenever progress, science, education, research and development have been held in low regard, that has not been a good sign and an indication of rulerships trying to keep the public dumb and themselves in power.