derleth

> the law does not specifically mention Islam and it does not prohibit, as you have misrepresented, "dressing up as a Muslim"

Ah, but it bans something that it just so happens only Muslims would wear. Suspicious, no?

> Also accusations of Big Brother coming from Americans at this point is rather hilarious.

Irrelevant. If you think the NSA is alone, you're delusional.

None of this is relevant. You can't argue the actual points, so you descend to irrelevancies.

> 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.

I note you didn't respond to the fact it's illegal to dress as a Muslim in some places in Europe but it's legal everywhere in the USA.

Robust free speech protections, ability to rough it in a country that's still in the first world, and the ability to enter industries that don't exist to the same extent elsewhere.

We're also much less racist than Europe, for example: We haven't banned wearing traditional Muslim garb, for example, and we don't have the hatred of the Roma which is endemic to the European continent.

Right, because a whole country is TexaFlorida and all the inhabitants are Duck Dynasty Honey Boo Boo.

The categorical imperative is strictly weaker: It's possible to use the veil of ignorance to argue against positions nobody is insisting must be made universal.

For example, "In this house, you always clean up": The categorical imperative only works to argue against this if you try to find a way to apply it to every household; the veil of ignorance works simply by forcing the members of the household to be ignorant about who 'you' refers to.