This oft repeated refrain r.e. more restrictive speech laws is something that I don't really understand. You can look at Europe or Canada and see that they are no dystopias, compared to the United States. There are ways they are better and ways they are worse, but there is no consensus that either is a significantly worse place to live than the USA.
Odd that you'd make this point on a comment about France. Perhaps read up on Macron some time.
> Limiting speech like that sounds dystopian
Europe, with its vastly different past, has a very different view on free speech compared to the US. We don't allow unlimited free speech, but we don't view that as censorship. Nazi symbols are banned in Germany. Hate speech is condemned through most of Europe (one of our far-right politicians in France has been condemned, and I think rightly so, for dismissing Holocaust as a 'detail of history').
You see that as a dystopia. I see that as a better political and social environment.
Speak for yourself. I certainly think blasphemy laws are certainly way past their due date, and more extreme restrictions (e.g. like in Germany, but notably not everywhere in Europe) definitely at least borderline on the dystopian side.
And as to what an average citizen might think: perhaps an average Chinese considers their “free speech” laws, or their closest equivalent, quite reasonable after having been taught so all their life. Europe could certainly do with freer speech.
Funny thing is, for all your hate speech laws, far right parties don't seem to be much frustrated by them, and are quite successful at competing for votes lately. All they have to do is wink and nudge without spelling things out bluntly - everybody still knows what they mean and what they stand for.
The question then is...should YOU be the one to decide what is "better"? Who should be given that kind of power?
In an ideal world, a benevolent philosopher king would have that power. In the real world, maybe it's best no one has it.
Maybe it's better to cast the ring into the fire.
Besides which, choosing no legislation is a choice in itself. Having no law on speech isn't a middle-ground, it's an extreme. It's an understandable extreme, and though I disagree with it in limited fashion I don't think it's an unreasonable case to make. But it is nevertheless not the balanced middle-ground choice you're presenting it as.
Conservatives are more on the side of limited government power. Progressives think the government should do more. And on and on it goes...