Comment by Barrin92
9 years ago
>Let's see some citations. Who are these beacons of civil rights? China? India? Colonel England?
The United Kingdom and France for starters, two countries that were relatively egalitarian while the US was still busy enslaving its African-American population. Of course while free speech was already a thing in the United States.
Free speech were very popular ideas in France/England/USA in that time period. [1,2] France even had free speech protections before the USA did. [2] The USA's notion of free speech was directly influenced by/spawned from Europian ideals and legislation. [3,4] It is ignorant of history to suggest otherwise.
While they may not have made it into law has solidly as in the USA, free speech ideals were very present and popular ideal in France/England at those time periods.
Europe's "hate speech" laws and censorship of speech/press are from more recent times.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Freedom_of_sp...
[3]: http://constitution.laws.com/declaration-of-the-rights-of-ma...
> Articles 10 and 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) were written to address the prohibitive nature of the government in preventing the freedom of speech, religion, and the press.
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege