> BULL and SHIT. In Australia, there is no routine pixellation of middle fingers, likewise pixellating the mouth of someone swearing.
We don't ban whole works. Australia does.
> Hell, even movie ratings are a form of censorship,
Nonsense. Self-imposed rating systems are in no way comparable to governmental censorship.
> Some US states prevent atheists from holding political office
Wrong. Those laws may be on the books, but they could never be enforced, due to the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution.
> Your wikipedia link has little that Australia has banned in the past couple of decades
It's the principle of the thing.
> Idealism is nice... until it's tested, then pragmatism needs to have a voice.
Wrong. Utterly wrong. If you abandon your principles the moment they're tested, they were never your fucking principles at all.
> But the pragmatism of legislating against holocaust denial or sporting the swastika is basically the same as anti-defamation legislation: it's saying 'don't diminish this'.
By making it seem that it can't fight deniers on an equal footing, that it needs laws to bolster its argument.
> those laws are very specific in terms of what they ban
So? That doesn't make it better.
> US free speech also does nothing to solve any of the real problems modern America has with anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim racism.
We don't ban face veils. Talk to me about racism when you've stopped banning veils.
> They're there to stem violent nationalism, the European forms of which don't exist in the US.
We had the KKK, which was just as violent and just as nationalistic as European forms of it. We were able to destroy it (twice!) without resorting to the destruction of fundamental freedoms.
We don't ban whole works. Australia does.
> Hell, even movie ratings are a form of censorship,
Nonsense. Self-imposed rating systems are in no way comparable to governmental censorship.
> Some US states prevent atheists from holding political office
Wrong. Those laws may be on the books, but they could never be enforced, due to the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution.
> Your wikipedia link has little that Australia has banned in the past couple of decades
It's the principle of the thing.
> Idealism is nice... until it's tested, then pragmatism needs to have a voice.
Wrong. Utterly wrong. If you abandon your principles the moment they're tested, they were never your fucking principles at all.
> But the pragmatism of legislating against holocaust denial or sporting the swastika is basically the same as anti-defamation legislation: it's saying 'don't diminish this'.
By making it seem that it can't fight deniers on an equal footing, that it needs laws to bolster its argument.
> those laws are very specific in terms of what they ban
So? That doesn't make it better.
> US free speech also does nothing to solve any of the real problems modern America has with anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim racism.
We don't ban face veils. Talk to me about racism when you've stopped banning veils.
> They're there to stem violent nationalism, the European forms of which don't exist in the US.
We had the KKK, which was just as violent and just as nationalistic as European forms of it. We were able to destroy it (twice!) without resorting to the destruction of fundamental freedoms.