[serf]

>What has the US gained over these countries from that free speech, exactly?

I think it's non-trivial to try to quantify the effects of free speech.

Freeform opinions off the top of my head:

the definitions of 'hate speech' are too fluid, allowing argument opposition to massage the definition until your protest against them is considered to be hateful -- which then allows legal options to silence the opinion.

The United States has been the culture leader of the Western world for some time, and the position seems to be ever-increasing. The United States is , and has been, the largest media producer ever . This allows the United States to own the most effective propaganda engine the world has ever seen.

New branches of media genre and topic since the 1900s are almost entirely US-centric (Pop art, Beatniks, Flower power, hip-hop and rap culture, jazz, blues, etc) -- many of them included topics like public dissent and negative opinion of government that would've been entirely illegal in the majority of the rest of the world. They are all now ubiquitous throughout the world, spreading US-centric culture to all reaches.

I think that freedom of speech helped to facilitate the role the United States now holds within 'Western Civilization', related to the above mentioned points.

In my opinion, in our world, owning the world's biggest propaganda engine seems to be the most dominating weapon yet.

Some questions :

If forming a government, and the results of certain variables are unclear, why not try to wholeheartedly clone the most successful example? The United States is that example, at the moment.

At what point is a parity reached between damages of false-imprisonment, and actual damage accrued from the results of hate speech?

What are the damages of hate speech? Can you realistically consider damages from a violent individual to have been caused by hate speech -- or is that a good scapegoat for a mentally disturbed individual to kill people with?

Why do we attack social problems with less communication, and enforced communication, rather than with care for the ill individuals who display behavior outside the social healthy norm? Will macro actions help problems that stem from individual issues?

And most importantly : Who gets to define our speech? Who holds the keys to the kingdom? Who deserves that trust?

[peteretep]

That's a lot of points, so I'm going to simply hone in on one point which I feel is sort of indicative here:

> If forming a government, and the results of certain variables are unclear, why not try to wholeheartedly clone the most successful example?

I genuinely, honestly believe that of the countries I've highlighted, the people in the US get the rawest deal. It ranks lowest in life expectancy, locks up three times as many people as the next highest on that list, people get the least paid time off, obesity is by far the worst, people still go medically bankrupt(!!!), people are killed by law enforcement at three times the rate of the next highest (Canada), inequality (via Gini coefficient), homicide rate is 4x the nearest neighbor (UK). In short, I think it's hard to build an argument off "copy what the United States did because they're the best".

[claudiawerner]

>What are the damages of hate speech? Can you realistically consider damages from a violent individual to have been caused by hate speech -- or is that a good scapegoat for a mentally disturbed individual to kill people with?

Not only the actions of the individual (we must remember concepts such as stochastic terrorism) due to hearing hate speech, but also the harm of the speech itself. There's substantial work done on this concept, i.e. that speech itself at least has the potential to be actually harmful, and that there is no meaningful rigorous distinction between "speech" and "action" - metaphysical or otherwise. In this way, regulating speech should be just like we regulate any other kind of action. As Brison has said:

"although this relational account helps to explain why the right to speak and to receive others’ speech is important, it does not yield a defense of the view that speech is special, requiring greater justification for its regulation than is needed for the regulation of other conduct."

This[0] is a great paper to read for the argument. There are also more 'traditional arguments arguing that Mill's ideal (and the principle that free speech is based on) has become obsolete in the face of the ever-shortening distance between speech and action (which was observed during the rise of the Nazi Party), along with the function of mass media which dulls critical thinking[1].

[0] SJ Brison, "Speech, Harm, and the Mind-Body Problem in First Amendment Jurisprudence" (1998) http://susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindb...

[1] "Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc." (Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance" (1965))

[brigandish]

Thanks for those links. Much as I disagree if your summary is correct, I'll definitely give them read, they look interesting.