“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.
😑 I'm going to have to disconnect from the news more often moving forward
most of europe explicitly does not have free speech, because it's commonly understood that harmful speech exists. i don't know what he's trying to convey with that idea but he comes across as misinformed, and not a little bit controlling ("should")
American here! Its because this is all rhetoric for the idiots that follow him. He doesn't care if Europeans see him as an idiot, he cares that the idiots here see him as big brained. And the rubes eat up anything that has "free speech" in it because they generally interpret that as "its OK to be racist and misogynistic, its my right because freedoms!"
Not sure how Euros haven't figured out that the main thing America inherited from Britain is our ability to not give a fuck what Continental Europeans think about us. Not sure why Euros keep thinking they can shame or guilt Brits and Americans into doing what they want.
The important thing is, that in Europe free speech is normally defined as the freedom to say everything as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. This is also with a lot of different forms of freedom. Your freedom ends where the freedom of others begin.
Americans always freak out when they hear Canada has hate speech laws and claim they're anti free speech.
Most of us don't ever need to worry about hate speech laws, because most of us aren't going around calling for violence and open bigotry against entire ethnic groups.
Not accepting hate speech, in particularly inciting violence is not contradictory to free speech in my opinion.
We should not follow the US idea, that speech is only free, if any vile poison can be spread. In the context of Musk that is also ironic, as he is using his powers to censor people.