Actually I’m more amused by Americans claiming American Football is the most manly sport ever… when it’s played with 20 pounds of body armour, padding up to here and tank helmets. Meanwhile rugby players wrap duct tape around their heads so they don’t get their ears ripped out in a scrum.
And don’t get me started on Australian rules footie, 'cause these cats are just mental.
This is still getting away from my earlier point that you’re no freer to speak your mind in the US than you are anywhere else in the Western world, because the consequences of voicing the wrong opinion are still pretty dire - ie, you will still be “punished”, just not necessarily by the government.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be consequences for spouting outrageously dangerous nonsense (like inciting people to hurt members of a minority group), I’m just saying you can’t argue you’re free to say you hate Martians in the US because you won’t go to jail for it, even though you will be shunned by everyone.
You may hate Martians with every fibre of your being, but you’d best keep your views to yourself unless you want to end up fired and/or ridiculed by everyone as a byword for “racist dickhead”. Either way the Martian-hater is censored; they are not free to air their honest beliefs because they will be punished for doing so.
…yeah, what you are saying is the kind of propaganda that is annoying. We get it. “Freedom, rah rah rah!” Was that the intent of your post? To give an example of the propaganda we are talking about?
References to the intent of the founding fathers regarding copyright law is one of my pet peeves.
And the History Channel. It has some distasteful stuff on there: but the worst from memory was this “documentary” called Shootout! At the height of TWAT this programme cheered on the war and dehumanized the Iraqi’s.
I don’t disagree that the mob mentality has a silencing effect all its own, but the freedom from government intervention is in and of itself worthwhile. There’s a pretty big difference between ridicule/shame and prison/execution.
Many modern countries have freedom of speech, and the US has one of the more stringent versions of it (compared to Germany, the UK, Israel, South Korea, etc.) That’s all I’m saying. It’s one of the few ways in which the USA is freer, even by just a little, than her contemporaries. And given the pace at which American freedoms are disappearing, I’d rather hold on to this one a little longer…
The point of this thread was to identify false patriotic beliefs about the United States.
The point of the Freedom of Speech offshoot discussion was to suggest that this may be one of the few ways in which the US is actually more free than some other countries – meaning maybe there’s a little (tiny) bit to the freedom, rah, rah thing. But this in no way discounts the many other ways in which we are less free. To be explicit, I think many of our social policies are backward and anti-populist and undemocratic.
I did not think it would cause such an uproar. I guess the discussion is now trying to sort out whether that freedom is substantial enough to merit it as an actual benefit, rather than just more propaganda. I am not the final authority on this, I’m just arguing my side.
Not sure if this was directed at me? I couldn’t care less about the Founding Fathers, myself, and would like to see them expelled from government discussion alongside Jesusism.
As I used to tell my American students, I’ve stayed in British hotels where the plumbing is older than your country. And then the time I was turned down for a job with the Winterthur Museum in Delaware because they just weren’t sure if I could safely handle 18th century artifacts – after a stint at the British Museum and several recommendations from my colleagues in the medieval galleries there (I suppose I could have said, ‘I’ve broken stuff older than your country!’)
Contribution: flying back into Dulles a couple years after 11 September, waiting in the entry queue with the other US-passport holders, and having to listen to some TSA stooge as he walked up and down past us, bellowing about how, 'You’re Muricans! You live in the greatest country on earth! Let’s see some smiles, fellow ‘Mericans! USA is the best country ever! Count your blessings!’ and other cringe-worthy, jingoistic crap.
More recently – the security theatre employed for domestic flights in the US winds me up way more than it ought. Way OTT compared to security checkpoints to fly internationally. The real fun was at Chicago Midway airport when I was asked for my driving licence so I could get through security – these days, I have only a UK/EU licence, and matey wouldn’t allow it, saying that he’d never seen such a thing before and surely it must be some sort of fake thing. I only got through because I’ve never bothered to remove my now-expired American driver’s license from my wallet, and he accepted that instead.
It will be a happy day when I get my British passport/citizenship – USA one for traveling back to the States, but the UK one everywhere else. I hate traveling abroad with the US one, as you get to experience the asinine payback for all the shite we put internationals through when they fly into American airports (Thanks, UKBA at Eurostar Paris for detaining me from the rest of my British student group on our recent field trip because no way could I be their tutor, and for telling me that my passport looked ‘dodgy,’ my spousal visa clearly fake, and that I couldn’t possibly be a UK resident as I didn’t pronounce the name of my village to suit you. Arsebadger!)
Had the NBA been organized more like European football leagues, Donald Sterling would have been free to continue on as the owner of his individual club. Any public blowback would have been his and his alone to bear. But U.S. sports leagues are, effectively if not technically, partnerships and he has 29 others to whom to answer. Their freedom of association is pretty important in this country’s pantheon of values, too.
Dithering over the issue of how free speech really is if there are cultural consequences seems not to be particularly useful to me. Still, this has been a really great thread. I like hearing the non-domestic viewpoints expressed and think a lot of people in the U.S. could stand to be exposed to a lot more of them for some new perspective.
And, you know, good point about the uselessness of the free speech thing. I’ll bow out of that now. Martini Enfield, sorry for going off on a tangent on that.
That’s quite alright. Happens to the best of us. 
As an American who’s been gone for 11 years, the deification of the military is the most annoying bit of propaganda. It’s really strange and distasteful and hard for me to explain.
That and the gunnuttery.