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It's Norway, not the UK (which doesn't even have a formal constitution), with the 2nd oldest active constitution. [1] And they also have ingrained and well supported freedom of speech dating back to 1814. In fact many regular parts of Norwegian discourse would never be allowed in the US, and would be framed as some sort of ultra radical far whatever blah blah end of the world type stuff. For instance Hjernevask [2] was an extremely popular series aired on the primary state owned broadcasting channel. It was a documentary that was highly critical of gender studies and a variety of other topics related to identity politics. The title translates to "brainwashing." And in 2011, after the documentary aired, Norway did choose to cease funding Nordic Gender Institute, leading to its closure - though they stated that the documentary was not directly why. Yet, lo and behold, Norway remains one the single most egalitarian and gender equal societies in the world. Open dialogue is not a threat to anything except bad ideas and bad actors. And it's critical to help ensure everybody has a voice in society, even if what's coming out of their mouth is not what you might want to hear. That said I do agree with you the the US constitution could use some updates, but that would be largely to further these aims. So, for instance, I think proportional representation (as Norway swapped to in 1919) is just objectively better than this district based first past the post nonsense. But the reason for that change is again precisely to make sure everybody has some representation. For instance, rolling with the Norway theme, here is a list of their political parties currently with representation in Parliament. [3] You've got your religious types, your socialists, your right wing populists, an agrarian party, liberal conservatives, and more. In the US we get to choose between pack of idiots #1, pack of idiots #2, and throwing away your vote. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Norway [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_N... |
I put it to you that the different voting system of PR for the Storting is far more important in ensuring that outcome rather than speech.
As do a few other things; the state broadcaster rather than a set of increasingly weird private clickbait conspiracy broadcasters as in the US; the monarchy; and having Vikrund Quisling taken out and shot.