Thread closed?

Good, that means I've won.

There is only one thing I'd like to add:

There's a reason there's a rule in the military for it's people not to discuss: "Religion, Sex, and Politics".

It never really ends well in large groups. Smaller groups are fine.. larger groups are typically not so much.

It's like Men in Black .. "A person is smart.. people are panicky".

You won? You saw a discussion as a game where someone wins or loses? Telling.

Too bad, there was a lot of good stuff in there. I love how these on-the-side discussions on ITT sometimes teach me a lot about topics I usually don't think about at all (like this one, and the mechanics of voting in the Council thread)...

Yeah. And you lost. Better luck next time.

Yeah, too bad.
The "freedom of speech" nowadays is something like: "everybody should be allowed to say ONLY what I like to hear".

You play a game nobody plays, and now you declared yourself referee in this fata morgana of yours. Are you sure you're not hallucinating?

Nyer nyer nyer.

Isn't that how the European Commission re-defined free speech last week?

Anyway, I like the old saying, wrongly attributed to Sartre: "Free speech is not here for the stuff I agree with, but for the things I utterly despise." (It doesn't go like this, but I like my paraphrasing better)

Well, I grew up in Romania and for the last 10 years I lived in USA. Here is something that I still don't understand, and doesn't matter what explanation you Americans come up with, I still don't get it:
why the black people can say the word "negro" anytime, but for everybody else is taboo? Doesn't things like this actually keep the racism in place? "We are from the black race, we can say "negro", you are from the white race, you can't say the "n" word"....
How stupid.
The kids are raised to be afraid to see what "freedom of speech" really means, for Americans, real freedom of speech can't exist because freedom of speech here is considered offensive.