General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A war is raging against free speech [View all]laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)that it's a country of extremes. Everything leads to slippery slope arguments. Here in Canada we have hate speech laws. So long as it's rarely used, I'm okay with it for the greater good. Us Canadians have an understanding about our responsibilities to our fellow citizens and it works just fine in our culture. No one is being arrested for dissing Stephen Harper (lolz half of parliament would be in jail). We still consider ourselves a free country - same as the UK and Germany. BTW I will never agree with blashphemy laws. Laws should never be based on religion.
In an individualistic society such as the US, any kind of hate speech law may not work. In the US it's everybody for themselves and this is where any laws restricting speech will eventually be used by the wrong people, especially because a lot of checks and balances within the government are no longer working. I used to get pissed when people here trashed Canada for these laws, but now I see the US is just a completely different set of values and is hyper-individualistic, which I think leads to group think (ironically) that any kind of law that might be for the greater good is somehow an infringement on freedom. Most of the rest of the world just doesn't see it that way and it's difficult to have these conversations because of American exceptionalism that is taught in schools. I wish we could have a good discussion about these kind of laws (which, probably, wouldn't work in the US even IF they ever got passed) without knee-jerk hyper-nationalistic reactions. But I do agree that a law like this, in the current American political climate would likely be a disaster.