>Canada criminalizes hate speech, Germany bans Holocaust denial, and the United States permits both — yet no one seriously believes that America is a free society while the other two have somehow collapsed into illiberalism.
Freedom isn't a boolean true/false. In my view America is more free than those countries when it comes to speech due to our more liberal definition of what constitutes free speech. I don't think that banning those forms of speech will trigger a collapse into illiberalism, but I would see banning that speech as an erosion of our rights.
>Canada criminalizes hate speech, Germany bans Holocaust denial, and the United States permits both — yet no one seriously believes that America is a free society while the other two have somehow collapsed into illiberalism.
Freedom isn't a boolean true/false. In my view America is more free than those countries when it comes to speech due to our more liberal definition of what constitutes free speech. I don't think that banning those forms of speech will trigger a collapse into illiberalism, but I would see banning that speech as an erosion of our rights.