at least in those countries you don't have to resign for what you do in your bedroom, consensually, behind closed doors...
> The only data protection the EU has is because fussy Eurocrats are annoyed that the US (and not them) get to syphon all of European’s data.
[Citation needed]
this comes up every single time, but it's false nonetheless.
The term "eurocrats" in Europe is used in a negative way only by people who don't understand how EU works, usually from far right.
Nowadays the term Eurocrat has come to encompass staff from all EU Institutions and not only staff from the European Commission.
Although the term Eurocrat might convey negative connotations for some, specialists of European Union and its institutions Didier Georgagakakis and Jay Rowell use the concept of Eurocracy as a way to describe and analyse EU actors and professionals interactions [1]
No, you go to jail instead for offending someone. But you still have a job to pay off your court debts with (the US, thankfully, doesn’t have looser pays courts).
As to the rest of your comment, I love it. Any criticism of the EU or Brussels is far right extremism and must be ignored. Its working out great for Trudeau smearing protestors and ignoring them.
It's pretty hard to believe it.
Can you point me to some example ?
Is it what happened to you?
Are you sure it was just an offense?
In which country did it happen?
> Any criticism of the EU or Brussels is far right extremism and must be ignored
I was addressing the wording.
Far right movements in Europe use the same slogans, they are pretty easy to spot, because they are the same in any European language.
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia_del_fascismo
Austria apologia of national socialism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbotsgesetz_1947
Germany’s the same
Finland two years for tweeting a picture of the bible:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60111140
Baltics passed similar laws for communist symbols (so no Che shirts in Vilnus!)
These are all laws against offending someone’s sensibilities. And I could go on, I haven’t even mentioned the UK!
Now, apologia of fascists and commies is unwise. But in the US it is constitutionally protected.
That's a bit of a oversimplification. What she was prosecuted (not convicted) on was definitely not a just a simple picture of the bible. Besides, that's only one of the charges. Other charges come from the times she implied homosexuality to be a genetic degeneration and later on called homosexuality a disorder.
Also, two years of jail is the maximum for that type of crime. IF she is found guilty, she will almost definitely get some relatively small fine.
It's understandable the christian folks want to paint this whole case as just "two years for tweeting a picture of a bible". But it's much more nuanced than that. Additionally the trial is still ongoing and it's very much unclear what the outcome will be. And this case is still handled in district court, I highly doubt it stays on that level. There's a lot of analysis and comments of the trials in the newspapers, but they are all in Finnish. I found this one in English that explains the case a bit better than "two years for tweeting a picture of the bible". https://yle.fi/news/3-12284380
Or maybe you did -- do you, at long last, have some sense of decency left?
Which of the 27(8) countries did you live in, as they are rather different?
And my problem isn't with Europeans, that is Englishmen, Ukrainians, Russians, or normal people in the EU. My problem is with Europes’ (note the plural, this isn't merely about the EU) institutions, the way they think, the mentality of what a person can do.
At no point in the past two years was I prohibited under the yoke of arrest of going outside. My kids never stopped going to school except for the first two months. My kids don’t have to do security theater or wear masks. No law can, or does, limit my speech. If I had the misfortune of living in a bad neighborhood the law protects my right to defend myself against an intruder.
On the whole, pick any EU country and they all failed on those accounts. Maybe Czechia or Hungary are cool on some of the above.
> I speak three European languages at native level
Way not to answer the question.
Also, BTW, you're probably wrong: Very high proficiency, maybe, but almost nobody speaks more than one language (or at the most, two) at a native level. But, sorry, I digress... To get back to the point:
Way not to answer the question.
Anyway, I didn't answer the question because what’s the point? I wouldn't live in Germany, or in Latvia, or in Spain, or in Greece for the reasons stated: restrictions on speech, blasphemy laws, anti-apologia of tyranny laws (commie or facist), laws effectively criminalizing self-defence. I also enjoy the self reliance of Americans; yes its exaggerated, but its more than Europeans anyway.
Ive flirted with Switzerland, but that’s not the EU per my original comment (I wouldn't live in CH either. Love ’em though)
Czechia and Hungary sliding sliding into authoritarianism? Please. That just not serious.
The person who just moved to a new place is very unlikely to speak ill of their new hosts or join an activist group to fight against what is a local issue. It's generally a bad idea to poop where you eat but it's unthinkable when you consider yourself still a guest in that country. The whole thing takes generations usually.
I lived in four different countries across three continents seven different times by age 15. Throughout, middle class. Leaving Europe for Canada as a teen was extremely difficult. I still love Europe the place and Europe the people.
Finally, I moved to the US from Canada - hardly polar opposites - and was reared on a diet of anti-Americanism that took ten years to shed.
I didn't dream of coming to the US, the best grad program that I got accepted to was in the US. I didn’t want to stay, I got married. I came to love the US kicking and screaming.
This is a long term international effort where irrelevant Western countries in the peripheries (that’s the EU) have nibbled away at encryption protections to make it easier for the US to do the same. It’s part of a two decades long effort by Western elites to correct their mistakes from the nineties - namely loosening the noose on information and privacy.
Australia, France, UK all have draconian laws that would cause outrage (or are outright unconstitutional) in the US. The only data protection the EU has is because fussy Eurocrats are annoyed that the US (and not them) get to syphon all of European’s data.
The US is really flawed, but I wouldn't move back to the EU for double my family’s income.