Once again I was thinking about the incredible wisdom of the American Founding Fathers, especially regarding the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. This is of course vital for the freedom of the individual, it is also vital for the thriving of the nation, but what I see now is that it also makes America the only place in the world where ideas are permitted to engage in open and free combat. These are ideas that do not exist solely in America. On the contrary they arise and exist almost everywhere. However, most countries either do not have properly guaranteed freedom of speech which is truly enforced or they are naturally incapable of supporting true freedom of speech by being too small, too poor or too threatened to provide reasonable anonymity and freedom from familiarity, both of which do exist in the United States.
This ‘active’ part of democracy, as opposed to the ‘passive’ parts, is less protected in other democratic nations. It may surprise some who think of Western Europe, for example, as a bastion of human rights. While Europe is indeed an orderly, well-governed, liberal and peaceful zone, one thing that is less extant there is the actual practice of free expression of ideas that do not sit well with the governing elites. One can see this in the suppression of the Yellow Jackets in France. In Scandinavia as well, non-sanctioned ideas are disapproved of and even suppressed by law.