Comment by latexr
1 day ago
As a EU citizen, it pisses me off that the US is (with others outside the EU) trying this hard to lobby to undermine our democracy and freedom of speech.
https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1162053712243153...
And I’d still take this clusterfuck over the alternative current state of the US. At least this situation we can (and have been) striking down, despite all the naysayers on HN. Here’s to hoping we’re able to do so again!
We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems (which are often the fault of the EU and our socialist, collectivist tendencies)
more like, Europeans have a habit of making "Orange Man Bad" criticisms to deflect from criticism of the EU. But yeah you're on the right lines.
> We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems
Speak for yourself. I don’t even think Trump is to blame for all the US’s problems (he’s a symptom of a much larger system), let alone the EU’s.
I also mentioned others outside the EU and US, as does the link I posted.
Furthermore, I don’t think I personally know anyone from the EU who blames “all our many problems” on the US.
> We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems
Might be a different social circle, but I have not met a single European in my entire life of living in Europe who would blame Donald Trump or the US in general for the problems that we are currently facing. It doesn't take a genius to summarize that trans-continental geopolitics is much more complex than that
> socialist, collectivist tendencies
Lots of places are socialist or collectivist and have a different set of problems, so the argument that EU problems can be solely attributed to that don't make sense.
I'm also not sure "collectivist" is the correct label. We can't describe Japan (and the PRC, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, a couple other SEasian nations) and the EU as both collectivist, considering Japan is the far more extreme version of it (I would say, only Japan is collectivist, not the EU). One or the other needs a different word.
Freedom of speech is not a European value.
Based on what?
https://rsf.org/en/index
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...
I would be more worried about police and wannabe police shooting people on the streets, detaining citizens without due process, sending billions to war in Iran while regular people are struggling with day-to-day life. Your universities and primary schools are restricted what they can teach or say either by government or religious movements.
Sure, the chat control is a serious privacy issue but acting like US is some sort of bastion of free speech is not based on anything real. And yes, while hate speech is not allowed in europe like in the US, we at least understand that freedom comes with responsibility.
I was reading an essay by Kant called “what is Enlightenment?” It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws.
He bases it on the idea that we should not be subject to be “lifelong tuteledge.” At some point we must speak up and contribute.
We can be wrong. Very wrong. We can advise our rulers to do terrible things. The Holocaust hadn’t happened yet, but the Wars of Relgion had - he knew how bad people could be.
Europe doesn’t seem to reject lifelong tuteledge any more. There want opinion and thought to be guided and formed by an elite class, not a noisy crowd of peers.
This is new. It was foreign to Kant, foreign to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, etc.
It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this. And it does seem they are poking at speech specifically.
Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.” Not medical malpractice legislation - just a very specific type of medical malpractice that has a very specific political constituency.
Meanwhile people who are subject to quacky things like past life regression or Freudian analysis are left with the normal malpractice system.
Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.
Maybe I’m connecting dots where there are none, but there seems to be a big international shift away from free speech, with Europe taking the lead.
In America this manifests itself as “it would be nice if we could restrict speech like normal countries do, but we have to worry about the Republicans, so let’s not do that - yet.”
But it’s pretty clear free speech is going the way of right to bear arms and trial by jury.
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