[Barrin92]

this is probably a good point to quote the article

"The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country."

Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries.

To have a rational discussion about this when it comes to countries that don't happen to be the US, like in this case, it would probably be good to not act as if these laws were somehow conjured up out of nothing. The United Kingdom, probably having a claim to be one of the world's longest lasting liberal democracies, has laws concerning speech that in many cases go well beyond laws on continental Europe, so any discussion about speech in the Western (and even specifically Anglo) tradition probably should be had on that ground, rather than just vague pointing about slippery slopes.

[ergot_vacation]

It's almost as if America was a radical attempt at a new kind of government, where its founders tried to avoid many of the pitfalls they had observed in Europe. The "United Kingdom" ("England" when we broke up with it) had (and still has) a method of governance that was flawed. That's why we didn't copy it. Any country that still has an intact monarchy, however ornamental, has no business lecturing others on the ideal forms of government.

[perl4ever]

>Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries

It's common sense that without a history in the West of regulating free speech, there wouldn't have been a first amendment in the US. You don't have to know what the regulations were.

So you are not just generalizing Americans as ignorant of history, but also as unable to use basic logic.

[Barrin92]

It's common sense that many American institutions are a reactions to old European institutions, and you don't need to know that history if you don't care, but if you want to have a discussion about speech in Canada (which is still part of the Commonwealth and the topic of this thread), you better have an actual idea of the way those countries function rather than applying your standards to them.

If you want to claim you have an idea whether the American reaction and discarding of old norms was actually a good idea nor not, you need to have an actual understanding about what the ideas you were discarding were actually for. Otherwise you're actually ignorant, and arrogant and that is a bad long term combination.

[IgorPartola]

That is the most American response I could have read. It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.”

[perl4ever]

>It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.”

Not at all.

I claimed any person with common sense can assume that the US "founding fathers" were reacting to something.

And I didn't claim that Americans are or aren't devoid of common sense. You can read it either way.

[Causality1]

Yes, and the UK arrested a man for teaching a dog the Nazi salute. A dog. In fact they arrest over 2400 people a year for saying mean things on the internet. I find that deeply chilling.