So you are saying that the exceptions to free speech that you agree with are fine, but that the exceptions other people/cultures have chosen and that you disagree with are a 'slippery slope'.

This standard of yours completely eliminates the ability to critically comment on the actions of "other cultures".

Not at all.

You can comment all you want about it, but it doesn't compel them to change how they are at all.

Then why call it out as if it were a negative? Nothing anybody says on Hacker News is going to change EU law.

Because you're exhibiting cultural imperialism.

Imperialism implies some sort of actual meddling. However, as previously established, nothing said on HN is going to change the EU. Without the possibility of any sort of meddling or interference, then there can be no Imperialism.

Interestingly though, your comment is a nice example of being irrationally fearful of free political speech.

What does that even mean?

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth here. First it's okay to comment on other culture's behaviors and now it's "cultural imperialism".

How about everyone is okay to comment on whatever they wish without the meta value judgements? I think that system works pretty well.

There is a tendency for some US commentators to totally ignore the European attitude around freedom of speech and to talk about the slippery slope to totalitarian states.

Sometimes those people will mix up "first ammendment" rights with what a website owner is allowed to do; or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.

We often hear these people when there's coverage of twitter trolls going to court. They'll say that it's ridiculous to prosecute people for being mean on twitter. This is intensely frustrating because -and this should be fucking obvious- no-one is arrested for being a bit mean on social media. People are arrested for making credible repeated threats of violence. But that happens in the US.

>or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.

Arrested and convicted of a crime are two different things. Do you have any evidence of that happening? I know of a Virginia teenager who was arrested last year because he wouldn't take off an NRA shirt, but first, he wasn't arrested for the shirt, he was arrested for obstruction, and second, charges were dropped.

As for European attitudes toward free speech, I don't say they're wrong for Europeans, I just think some of them are daft, like locking people up for racist remarks or offensive speech. That just turns harmless idiots into martyrs.

Do you have any examples of people "locked up for racist remarks" or "offensive speech"?

Here's a couple from 2012:

http://deadspin.com/5896709/racist-tweets-about-fabrice-muam...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/21/man-racial...

Here's 11 people who got locked up last year:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330809/Lee-Rigby-de... (daily fail, but their info appears sound)

And that was just on the first page of google. Note that in all of these cases, the comments were just ugly and racist, but not threatening.

An Englishman did three months for an offensive drunken tweet after a match, brilliant.

It's OK to comment on other cultures' behaviors, and that includes commentary on your behavior being expressive of cultural norms.

You say that as if it's hypocritical, but this seems like an almost axiomatic statement to me. It is perfectly reasonable to have opinions about exceptions to free speech which are safe and unsafe, and to advocate why to those with different opinions. Just like the USA's interpretation of "free speech" isn't sacred for the rest of the world (and might actually be wrong!), a European nation's interpretation of safe and unsafe free speech is not absolute and might be wrong.

Portions of the U.S. used to have a strong cultural affinity for human slavery, yet many within that same U.S. argued that slavery was wrong from day 1 of the current republic. Europe used to have a cultural affinity for anti-Semitism (and it hasn't completely gone away). If you believe in any sort of objective truth whatsoever, then it's possible for a 'cultural value' to still be wrong.

Shouting fire in a theater isn't an extreme case if you think about it. When was the last time you heard of a stampede in a crowded theater when someone shouted fire and there was none? I've never heard of it. Who would take off running? Would you take off running because someone else is? Honestly. The case this phrase originated from is overpraised.

The case the phrase is from was about placing limitations on blatantly political speech. It was a truly reprehensible decision.

"A unanimous Supreme Court, in a famous opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concluded that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

From it's very inception, that phrase has been used to justify the restriction of political speech. Nothing has changed since 1917, people still use it to argue against political speech to this day.

I did not know this. Thanks for sharing.

Don't be so literal-minded. If you have been following the news you might have noticed some deliberate Ebola hoaxes in the last week, where a man on an aeroplane and another on a bus shouted out they had Ebola and threatened to deliberately infect other passengers and the bus driver, respectively. The fact that nobody was actually hurt in these two incidents doesn't alter the deontological basis for a rule against such behavior.

Is 'shouting fire in a crowded theater' supposed to be figurative now? It used to be offered as the archetypical example.

>The fact that nobody was actually hurt in these two incidents doesn't alter the deontological basis for a rule against such behavior.

Then what possibly could? Hegel's ghost?

Reasoning by analogy is the norm in the American common-law system. If you were to maliciously cause some sort of dangerous stampede at, say, a sporting event, you would not be able to get off the hook by arguing that you were not in a theater. Once more, I urge people to consider the difference between civil and common law systems. A lot of people seem to assume the standards of one apply to the other.

Then what possibly could? Hegel's ghost?

The improbability of anyone being hurt. If you stand in the middle of a public park and yell 'the sky is falling!!' nobody will take you very seriously, but even if they did and decided that it was necessary to run indoors the probability of a stampede occurring is vanishingly low. But maliciously causing panic in an enclosed space significantly elevates the risk of injury to others, because the more panicked people are, the more irrationally and dangerously they may act, a phenomenon for which we have abundant evidence.

Shouting in a crowded theater is not an analogy, it's a benchmark. This seems obvious to me - if it is an analogy, then what does the theater represent?

What it says is that some line has to be set, and this concrete situation described is something that obviously should fall on the other side of the line. (Therefore, people should be imprisoned for speaking out against the war Q.E.D.)

Basically, one can imagine, one would not want someone to invoke panic into others frivolously when it has potential to cause physical harm.

Another example would be shouting "She's got a gun, arhhhh!" in a crowded plazza while setting off some firecrackers.

The firecrackers aren't speech.

What if instead you have an accomplice who's really good at beatboxing?

One could argue that "art isn't speech" as well. It's expression none the less.

Or yelling "I have Ebola" on an airplane.

Is it even illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater?

This isn't 1900. There are accessible, well-lit exit routes in every theater I've been in. Not to mention fire suppression systems, alarms, and the fact that you'd most likely see a fire before it was time to panic.

Perhaps this does not happen much in the US. However, there are "discotheque" fires [1] which harm numerous people throughout the world. Typically overcrowded with locked exit doors. It's a sad thing, but it happens.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nightclub_fires

No. It was an example of speech that could have terrible consequences, just like anti-war speech.

edit: You're overestimating the wisdom of crowds and the care of theater owners. Spraying mace in a crowded club led to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_E2_nightclub_stampede

Fear that the Who would start playing early caused https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster

We should probably add 'doing a sound check' to 'shouting fire in a crowded theater.'

> How long before this moves into "right to not be offended trumps free speech" territory?

This is already the case in Europe.