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Re:Intel CEO leaves American Manufacturing Council by humanrebar on Tuesday August 15, 2017 @09:30AM (#15017991)
The confusion here is basically my point. I'll simplify. Scalia, a very conservative Supreme Court Justice, said burning the American flag is a right. And he made a right wing case for that. And it's not controversial on the right. In contrast, speech restrictions are popular on both the left and right in Europe. It's more about whose you like better.

In the healthcare debate, the American right argued that the national government didn't (and shouldn't) have the power to take certain steps. The European right mostly argues from practical or identity-based reasons. So healthcare controversies involve levels of funding, pay for workers, coverage for refugees, and things like that.

Re:Intel CEO leaves American Manufacturing Council by pavlov on Tuesday August 15, 2017 @11:02AM (#15018838)
To me, these are both examples of what I earlier called "tweaks" rather than fundamental differences.

So Scalia agreed that you're allowed to burn a flag in America. That's great -- but how did this ever even become a Supreme Court case? If you burn a flag in Sweden or France, nobody would think to sue you. The fact that this freedom had to be weighed at the highest possible level shows that Americans have serious blind points around their perception of freedom. Similarly, European countries have individual historical taboos on speech, such as the ban on Nazi symbols in Germany.

In the US healthcare debate, the right's constitutional argument seems to revolve around Obamacare's individual mandate -- but that's just is a clumsy artifact of how the system was overlaid on existing pseudo-private healthcare systems. With a properly designed tax-funded public healthcare system, the problem would go away.