“Let’s see, baseball, rode a bike - that could be me, except for the part where I go out and do something incredibly stupid. All those things - Boy Scout, outdoorsman, right? You know who that is? A lot of people. Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, was all those things. Dennis Rader, remember him? He’s the beat, bind, torture and kill guy. He liked to hunt. He was a family man. Everybody liked him. His mother liked him. All that stuff. Dennis Rader and Alex – I’m sorry, but I can’t just pretend because you’re dead, you’re like the superior person.”
Not American but I’ll throw my hat in.
Look at what constantly fantasizing about “freedom of speech” have brought in America. All sorts of hateful speech that ultimately led to the nullification of the idea of freeze peach itself, starting with examples like ICE and the attempts to take down comedians like Jimmy Kimmel… Exactly what dictatorships do.
The 1st amendment experiment has failed. It died miserably.
Now I’m not saying it’s time to accept unchecked government censorship, but maybe that next time after you resist and defeat it (if that ever happens, Belarus has been under Lukashenko’s grip for over 30 years, right, and that’s just one dictatorial country), don’t worship freedom of speech to the point where you are too crippled from taking actions against scum who will take it away from you as soon as conveniently possible.
It’s under clear attack, but is not yet nullified. I already touched on this but the examples you cite are exactly where it’s doing what it is mean to; the clear illegality of these things is something people can recognize, and courts still have power. As an American, I’ll say that this is the only civic principle with any sort of universal recognition that matters, and it is the biggest thing holding the country back from collapse. What else do we have? Surely not a sense that human beings should be treated with care and respect. If freedom of speech ceases to exist, so does the United States; we must never let it go.