FYI, India has a written constitution which talks of freedom of speech.
http://www.constitution.org/cons/india/const.html
I came across this link which provides links to constitutions. That’s a long list of countries with some documentation or other. I don’t have the time to access the links though.
Here’s New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act (1990). Was there any media coverage of this? It looks like some of the unwritten but assumed rights have been enumerated.
Moving this to Great Debates.
…
thud
climbs back into his chair from the floor
What? Have you finally gone and lost your last marble?
Liberals aren’t allowed in the media? You can’t believe that can you? Liberals owned the media and still do for the most part. AM radio is conservative but what is preventing liberals from buying a station? Nothing.
I live in Georgia and don’t remember Chambliss calling Cleland a coward. So I’m calling you a liar. Chambliss never would have been elected had he done that. What he did do is say that he had different opinions on many things than Cleland, some of which were defense related. Is that not a legitimate issue ina campaign? What are campaigns supposed to be about then? Is no one allowed to disagree with Cleland because of his amputee status? Are the Republicans even allowed to field a candidate? If they do field a candidate aren’t they in effect saying that they could do a better job? Isn’t that questioning the opposition’s (in this case a triple amputee’s) patriotism? Well, we can’t have that!
Chambliss did have an ad where he showed a picture of his opponent and then talked about the challenges we face and showed a picture of Saddam Hussein, I think it was. At no point did he infer that Cleland was a) unpatriotic b) cowardly c) Pro-Saddam. He said that given the terrorism we face we need a strong homeland security dept. instead of one dominated by labor unions. It’s a legimate point. Agree or disagree but he didn’t call Cleland any of the things you said.
It’s become an urban legend that the Republicans accused Cleland of “not being patriotic”. It’s gibberish.
It’s like time travelling back into 1991…
Ah, I get it now.
This is just another boneheaded “Americans are stupid, ignorant assholes (or arseholes, depending), and they have absolutely no idea of what’s going on outside their borders” thread, right?
Czarcasm screwed up, because he should have sent this to the Pit. Since he didn’t, I’ll excercise some decorum.
[ul][li] MelCthefirst is an ignorant moron.[/li]
[li] I have no idea why anyone outside of the the continental U.S. would care about the rhetoric tossed around in a Presidential election year.[/li]
[li] For the eleventy-thousandth time, we aren’t talking about you, we aren’t worrying about you, and there is absolutely no implied criticism of your country, whichever one it is. The Canadians figured this out a long time ago. Why can’t you?[/li]
[li] In keeping with my last point, most Americans spend about 99.99% of their time not giving much of a crap about what goes on in New Zealand.[/ul][/li]
Honestly, Mel, what in hell is your problem? You seem to have a real hard-on for the US, and I just can’t figure out why. You’re obviously happy where you are, and we seem to be happy where we are. I don’t see any need for the vitriol.
“…how come every time I want to talk about my bill of rights, Mickey Mouse appears!!!” (sketch from NZ comedy show, either McPhail and Gadsby, or Issues, funniest sketch ever!)
…yeah, there was a lot of debate about it at the time. But the Bill of Rights Act is only fourteen years old, it doesn’t hold the same emotional weight that the American constitution holds. Most New Zealanders hold the Treaty of Waitangi as our founding document…
http://www.govt.nz/en/aboutnz/?id=a32f7d70e71e9632aad1016cb343f900
…but we do not view it as our constitution…
Cite?
This comes from both sides, not just the right, and the extremes of both sides want to eliminate the opposition.
Wow. Chill out. The thing you quoted from **Mel’s ** post was not written to disparage American citizenry. I haven’t seen a single post of his in this thread with that mindset. Your knee is jerking from having encountered one too many anti-American knee-jerkers 
Maybe that’s because of the dearth of hot issues in your country, apart from “What’s your favorite marsupial?”
I wasn’t aware that Ann Coulter was a leftist.
:dubious:
kennybath, do yourself a favor and read the excellent book, On Bended Knee: the Press and the Reagan Presidency, by Mark Hertsgaard.
exgineer
[Moderator Hat ON]
Since this thread is NOT in the Pit, exgineer, I expect you to obey the rules here. Don’t call posters “moron[s]”.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
It would be interesting to know what your definition of a moderate is.
You know, I never did see any of those on a menu anywhere. I heard that they were on the menu in the Capitol and a couple of posters said that they saw them on restaurant menus in the South (which is where I live). But I didn’t see them listed a single time.
I’ll tell you what I have seen a lot of – American tourists in Paris.
At last! Someone who phrased it honestly enough that I can agree! There are Americans who think that. They are largely under educated and religiously and politically conservative. Sometimes they organize and try to change some of those fundamental rights without actually realizing that they are tampering with the very freedoms that they claim set us apart. They are the reason that so many of us continually have to make a point of our our freedoms.
To any of you Aussies: Are religious fundamentalists trying to intrude on basic freedoms there?
Wow, hit a nerve there.
Exgineer, the OP did have a very interesting question.
People over here certainly get the impression that “freedom of speech” and “patriotism” are terms that are thrown around a lot by US politicians and commentators from all sides of the spectrum. In non-US countries that does seems strange.
By reading some of the earlier posts (thanks ftg), I feel more knowledgeable and I suspect the OP does too.
Not that spring to mind, but someone else may be able to come up with one.
Another reason why Free Speech is such a big point in the U.S. is that, having embodied the concept in Law, we have found our fellow citizens attacking that freedom (both in the narrow sesnse of violating the Constitutional guarantee and in the broader sense of simply silencing other people) throughout our history. The Constitution had been in effect for only nine years when the first Sedition Act was passed. (It only outlawed “libel” against the governemnt, but changed the rules to place the burden of proof on the defendant–guilty intil proven otherwise.) In 1918, we tried it again with another (even more noxious) Sedition Act. From the period of WWI onward, and accelerating after WWII, there have been numerous attempts by the government to silence people who were considered hostile (usually, but not exclusively, because of “communist” expressions). In the broader sense, the campaign to censor or eliminate books from libraries and schools has been a favorite pastime of the more radical elements of both the Right and the Left. The American Library Association has dedicated a week in September, each year, to publicizing these actions and from their lists and others, John Ockerbloom of U. Penn has compiled a brief listing of the major Banned Books online.
Given our ostensible explicit dedication to freedom of expression, contrasted with the actions in which our citizens seem to routinelly engage, Free Speech is a big deal in the U.S.
I suspect that the “patriotism” issue has similar roots. The nation was founded in rebellion and many of the inhabitants at that time actually opposed separating from Britain. Charges of “rebel” and “Tory” (backed up by tarring, vandalism, and murder by groups on both sides) made the issue of who was patriotic a volatile one. There have been several discussion of secession during our history, with the 1861 - 1865 (- 1877?) event dominating our history. President Wilson (largely responsible for the Sedition Act of 1918) also made a public issue of “loyalty,” explicitly condemning immigrants who did not “Americanize” fast enough to suit him or people who championed alternative economic theories. The association of “wrong thought” and “un-American” was firmly rooted in that period (actually leading to the creation of a standing committee in the House of Representatives to investigate “Un-American Activities” in 1937 and not belatedly dismissed until 1975).
Exgineer - not sure what your issue is? I am genuinely interested in this topic, thank goodness noone else thought the same as you about my OP.
Calling me an ignorant moron is over the top. For all you know, I am American!
I was not talking exclusively about Freedom of Speech and being unpatriotic being part of the election rhetoric.
Ofcourse people outside of the US are interested in US presidential elections, the US is seldom out of world news and we don’t live in a vacuum. Much of our film viewing and TV programming is from the US. The US ecomony effects our own etc.
Why would I think you are talking about NZ or criticising NZ and I’m patently aware that you are not worrying about NZ, let alone thinking about NZ. I don’t get you.
Litost - I’m a girl, ever heard of the spice girls? Well, I was MelC waaay before Sporty Spice.
Jackmannii - We have no marsupials in NZ so that would be a hot issue in Australia perhaps?
MelCtheFirst, I suspect that it happens largely because many Americans have a very firm grasp on what they think their rights are. That is because many Americans (and I speak as an American) are stupid.
Americans do not, of course, have a monopoly on stupidity. Stupidity is everywhere. Nevertheless, many of us seem to believe that “freedom of speech” is a law somewhere written on the ass of the baby Jesus. It is further believed that this law proves that nobody, not God Himself, can shut you up, and anybody advocating otherwise is a Commie Mutant Traitor.
Our guarantee of free speech doesn’t work that way; as already noted, it’s a prohibition on the government. Private citizens can still tell a person to shut his cake-hole—at the risk of the offended person shouting “freedom of speech, freedom of speech! I can say what I want!” until he foams at the mouth and falls over backward.
I don’t know the citizens of any other country well enough to suggest a parallel behavior abroad. Something tells me that America isn’t unique in having stupid people who spout inexactitudes in loud voices.
Your explanation sounds a bit too sophisticated for the context within which “This is America, a free country” is often used. Perhaps, your reasoning applies to the conduct of the press/media, which acutely aware of the history of free speech tries to continuously highlight this issue. I really wish the media in more countries would follow the US lead and be more active in debating free speech issues. But, from my experience (and what I find a tad bit annoying), is the cliched use of this statement in even unrelated and trivial instances. (think: argument over dinner table where someone asks the other to shut up). I opened a mild pit thread about the implication that this statement implies a sense of exclusivity/superiority, atleast with some US citizenry. Most Dopers said they didn’t think that personally.
Do you believe that some Americans genuinely believe that it is a hellhole out there and that they are blessed with free speech? If so, wouldn’t that account for its overuse, a sense of exaggerated national pride?