The Liberal obsession with Nazis. It's not good for you.

What the **** is wrong with you people. The US is becoming a feudal state and you are arguing about what words to use to describe people. Don't use words that hurt, give your fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt and reserve you hatred for the plutocrats who have already bought the government, lock stock and barrel. That means they have bought me and you. And they are delighted when we argue about small **** that doesn't matter.

I personally am uncomfortable around histrionic gay men. However, it on wishes to stand shoulder to shoulder with me to fight the Koch brothers and their ilk, I will feel uncomfortable and welcome him as a brother. And I will never endorse legislation or behavior which tries to be hurtful to him because he is a histrionic gay man. Me being uncomfortable is my problem, not his. Feelings don;t count for ****; actions are alll that count. Grow up.

A feudal state?

Talk about histrionics.

I will admit to being carried away a bit. Strictly, we are a plutocracy or oligarchy. A little research should show you that the desires of the mass population are not correlated at all with legislation, however the desires of the super wealthy are almost always carried out.

If the phrase that I am uncomfortable around histrionic gays is offensive to you, I apologize. However, the point remains. You are still my brother. I don't have to be comfrotable to see to it that you are treated fairly.

When he hears the word "liberal", Max pulls his revolver.

It takes a big crystal ball to predict that "Nazis will not prevail". They can very well prevail. There's no magic sun cream protecting America from nazism... And the more complacent and care-free you guys get, the greater the risk.

Many European countries ban hate speech, and yet they enjoy a freer public discourse than the US. Much of what gets published or aired in France would be unacceptable in the US. Eg Charlie Hebdo type of publications abound in France, but where is satire in the US? It's limited to a few comedic shows...

Are you kidding? France is awful when it comes to free speech. And they pay for it.

For all of our problems, the US has done a much better job than France at accepting different viewpoints and integrating different cultures. The ethnic violence in France, the segregation, the alienation of entire communities is far worse than anything we have in the US.

One of the advantages of the US is that even in this era of Trump, we can work with our minority communities because to a much greater extent than France, we have incorporated them into our own culture. The big problem that France has with homegrown terrorists is almost insignificant in the US because the US offers some measure of support and protection to communities of ethnic and religious minorities.

I often use France as a prime example of a country that stifles cultural differences and limits expression.

There is no way in Hell I would bring my multicultural family to live in France.

You are also full of crap here, I would match US satire against France in either quality or quantity. The Free Speech in the US is a great thing for comedy.

We in the US have Bill Maher, SNL, South Park, Samanta B, Dave Chappelle, The Onion, John Stewart, The Wayans, Louis CK, The Axis of Evil Comedy guys... the list of great satire in the US goes on and on. Charlie Hebdo is all anyone hears about that comes from France.

I don't know how often you have observed this when you were in France.

You find those cultural differences in many other European countries (like here in Germany, but at least, in France the minority languages Basque, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, Franc-Comtois, Franco-Provençal, Norman, Picard, Occitan and others are recognised as such (and used as well).

France is awful when it comes to free speech? That's news to me. Maybe you could provide some evidence?

We have home-grown terrorists and so do you. Remember Oklahoma? Boston? But at least we can laugh about it. You can't. Try and crack a joke about 9/11 next time you speak on TV... Hell, try and crack any joke about terrorism in the US.

I didn't reply to the "awful free speech" argument because ... well
«Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, même religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l’ordre public établi par la loi» et «La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’homme; tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l’abus de cette liberté dans les cas déterminés par la loi»
was already written in 1789.

In Europe (I mean EUROPE), the freedom of speech is guaranteed via the European Convention on Human Rights.

There are dozens of magazines and TV shows specialized in political satire in France. Your ignorance of them is neither here nor there.

A random example:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x529gxg

Max is just regurgiting some anglosaxon cliché...

You guys teach me something almost everyday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen (wiki)

Thanks, I agree. As much as I don't agree with hateful bigoted speech, I agree with their right to say it.

I am not so sure some of today's conservatives and increasingly some liberals would have gotten along with the free thinking people who inspired, wrote and put into laws freedom equality back into those days.

First of all, there is no comparison to the homegrown terror attacks that France is facing, to the US. We have maybe 7 homegrown terror attacks in the past 2 decades. You have nearly that many in a year.

Second of all, do you really not know about the ethnic tension in your own country? You have large numbers of ethnic minorities who have been living in France for generation but are still not accepted. This is far worse than what we have in the US.

In France the government can clamp down on any idea or opinion based only on popular passion. In recent years you banned religious head dresses, and clamped down on "positive presentation of drugs". This is ridiculous.

You are also full of crap about jokes, a quick google shows several 9/11 jokes on American TV. Here is one from Family Guy. There is another funny one from Louis CK about masturbating while the buildings were falling.

When it comes to Freedom of Speech, France is a backwards country.

Walter, let's talk about the facts. How do you feel about France when it

- Bans religious head coverings.
- Fails to incorporate ethnic communities into society.
- Makes expression of unpopular opinion, even when it comes to issues like drug use, illegal.

Do you really agree with these things? You can talk about some "declaration" all you want. What matters is how minority opinions and minority ethnic groups are actually treated. In France, the record is not very good.

Well, I have been to the USA a couple of times, to France some times.

I think that no-one has the right to give orders what to wear when. (I'm glad, we don't have school uniforms here.) I accept that in many countries such is regulated by laws.

I have been numerous times in Normandy (both), since 1970. I did notice that they don't incorporate (mainly in urban parts) the French from other French regions, not to speak about the English).
I remember vividly a situation on a bus in Strasbourg a couple of years ago, when an older lady refused to speak anything else but Alsatian with the driver.

I've been to all pueblos (all of those, you can enter plus two more on invitation) in New Mexico, and spoke with many Americans there. Quite interesting opinions can be heard ...

Coming back to the thread's topic (and your side-step about free speech): in Germany, we can't legally in public be a Nazi - free speech is censored in this context.

According to German law, what is censored (assuming it's public) is
- calls for violence or despotic measures against a group identified by race, nationality, ethnicity or religion
- calls for violence or despotic measures against an individual because he belongs to such a group
- attacks on a group's or a person's dignity through racial / ethnic / religious slurs or insults
- approving, denying or trivializing one of the Nazi's crimes against humanity, esp. the Holocaust
- glorifying or justifying Nazi violence or Nazi despotism in a way that disturbs the public peace and offends the dignity of the victims.


Although even the USA doesn't have a 100% free speech, we have lot less. And I do appreciate that.

- There is no ban on religious head covering in France. You've been sold horseshit.
- We don't have "black only" or "hispanic only" neighborhoods in France, unlike in the US. Centuries after they came to the US, how come blacks are still at the bottom of the social lader there, and routinely murdered by cops?
- Expression of whatever opinion is protected by law and the constitution, including on drugs. The only exception is about racism and hate speech.

You really don't know very much about the plight of ethnic minorities in your own country, Olivier... or you choose to ignore it.

In France, there are large slums, racially segregated with poor conditions, high poverty and crime. The French government's answer to this inequality was to cover it up. They made it illegal for any agency to measure the impact of policy on racial groups.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-the-french-talk-about-race

https://news.vice.com/article/in-photos-paris-police-evacuate-the-citys-largest-slum

This is the France that White French people don't want to talk about. This is where you put the ethnic minorities that you don't want to include in general French society.

You might wish to read those article, Max... The secon one speaks of "a shantytown — which is located near Porte de Clignancourt, in the north of the French capital — housed nearly 300 Roma and Romanian nationals".

For those who would think that a shantytown of 300 people doesn't mean much, there's another one in Calais with a couple thousand people. :-)

I lived in "HLM" (low cost housing projects) when a kid, and come back to them regularly. There's still a lot of regular, non-imigrant folks, "caucasian" folks as you's call them, living there... They are not ghettos in the racial sense of the word. They are poor neighborhood and they deserve better attention, but there're not racially segregated.

We have the first two restrictions as well. We also don't have Hitler and the Nazis in our past.

When do you think Germany will be permitted to remove the Nazi hair shirt it has worn since the end of the war?

A similar phenomenon in the US is slavery.

If you follow our lead you will be arguing about Nazis for another hundred years or more.