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Is Europe "freer" that America or just as "free"?

Is the EU a freer, more open society in terms of rights and policies?


  • Total voters
    54
Overall I think Europe is more free on social issues like drinking age, drug use, age of consent, gay rights etc... although, like Lila said, it does depend on the country.

We do have the same basic freedoms of speech, of the press, religion and assembly. Although, again, depending on the country, there can be some restrictions, especially on the speech issue.

Labor laws are more restrictive and tend to protect the employee over the employer.

As for gun laws, yeah, other than in Switzerland and Finland, there's not much freedom to own weapons over here.

Honestly, when it comes to how "free" one is, there's good and bad on both sides of the Atlantic. There are many things I would love to import from one side to the other to create the perfect free society.
 
Europe has more diversity than the US as far as freedom goes, so the question isn't really applicable. Some European nations have more freedom, some have less.
 
The United States is a massively sexually repressed nation. It's illegal in almost all of the country for two consenting adults to have sex and exchange money for it. If you're consenting homosexual adults, you're not allowed to marry in most of the country. Many states have unreasonably high age of consent laws. In most of Australia and many European nations it's 16. In the United States we have some states that make consent the ridiculously high age of 17 or even 18. Some states (for example, Nebraska) pass laws forbidding a stripper from touching any of her patrons. I had to get a job across the border in Iowa to continue to please my customers the way I'm capable of. What man wants a lap dance where she's not allowed to sit on his lap? There are some countries that are less sexually free than we are (Iran for example), but most countries in Europe are much, much freer than we are in this regard.

In the US you can't even legally have a drink until you're 21. The drinking age used to be left up to each state to decide until the Big Brother Federal Government lead by Ronald Religion blackmailed all states into increasing it to 21 by threatening to withhold Federal highway funds.

Our other government (or perhaps more accurately our real government), the corporations, are much too powerful in the United States. The banks can irresponsibly waste depositor money on risky investments and then get bailed out by taxpayers. Then they have the gall to use some of that money to pay million dollar bonuses to the fat cats who caused the problem.

It's not just the government that can restrict your freedoms. Corporations can too. You can work for a corporation that forces you to sign under the guise of a non-disclosure agreement and agreement that infringes on your free speech rights, one that applies even after you no longer work for them. Then you have to stomach and keep your mouth shut about any and all immoral behavior that the crooks running the place do. So much for the First Amendment.
 
While the right to bear arms is a big and important one to me, let's not lose sight of the fact that it is just one aspect of freedom among many that are equally important.

Freedom of speech, press, association, assembly, religion and religious expression, political dissent, etc.
The right to be free from unreasonable and arbitrary searches and seizures... I personally think we've given too much ground on that issue in the USA over the past couple of decades.
Private property, private enterprise, self-determination, upward economic mobility regardless of "class".
Justice, fair trials, reasonable laws...

Big topic.
 
The United States is a massively sexually repressed nation. It's illegal in almost all of the country for two consenting adults to have sex and exchange money for it. If you're consenting homosexual adults, you're not allowed to marry in most of the country. Many states have unreasonably high age of consent laws.
So maybe you'd like 10 year olds to have sex?

In most of Australia and many European nations it's 16. In the United States we have some states that make consent the ridiculously high age of 17 or even 18. Some states (for example, Nebraska) pass laws forbidding a stripper from touching any of her patrons. I had to get a job across the border in Iowa to continue to please my customers the way I'm capable of. What man wants a lap dance where she's not allowed to sit on his lap? There are some countries that are less sexually free than we are (Iran for example), but most countries in Europe are much, much freer than we are in this regard.
So lewd behavior control makes us an oppressed nation?


In the US you can't even legally have a drink until you're 21. The drinking age used to be left up to each state to decide until the Big Brother Federal Government lead by Ronald Religion blackmailed all states into increasing it to 21 by threatening to withhold Federal highway funds.
So society shouldn't bestow certain privileges based on maturity and responsibility? Should we put 5 year olds in the military?

Our other government (or perhaps more accurately our real government), the corporations, are much too powerful in the United States. The banks can irresponsibly waste depositor money on risky investments and then get bailed out by taxpayers. Then they have the gall to use some of that money to pay million dollar bonuses to the fat cats who caused the problem.
And the government has done a better job with your money?

It's not just the government that can restrict your freedoms. Corporations can too. You can work for a corporation that forces you to sign under the guise of a non-disclosure agreement and agreement that infringes on your free speech rights, one that applies even after you no longer work for them. Then you have to stomach and keep your mouth shut about any and all immoral behavior that the crooks running the place do. So much for the First Amendment.
It's called voluntary cooperation.
 
So maybe you'd like 10 year olds to have sex?
Um some of them already are having sex and no no one mentioned 10yr olds and just because its the law doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.
So lewd behavior control makes us an oppressed nation?
Lewd behavior? How is there anything lewd about paying for sex. It happens and it should be legal to do so. Also I don't think too many Americans' are moral people. If you did have morals shouldn't one of those morals be to live and let live?

So society shouldn't bestow certain privileges based on maturity and responsibility? Should we put 5 year olds in the military?
I think you just don't get it, like most conservatives. It's not about age that makes you mature and responsible its about upbringing.
[quote
And the government has done a better job with your money?[/quote]No the government does a bad job with everyone's money.

It's called voluntary cooperation.
That's a good euphemism.
 
American, is erecting a straw man the only thing you know how to do?

So maybe you'd like 10 year olds to have sex?

Straw man. I talked about freedom of sex between consenting adults. I said nothing about 10 year-olds.

So lewd behavior control makes us an oppressed nation?

Sex between consenting adults goes on in privacy. What's lewd to you is a turn-on to someone else and is none of your business. Restricting consensual sex between adults is indeed oppression. Right-wing fascists talk about freedom, but they don't practice it. As long as some kinds of sex between consenting adults is illegal, we are a sexually oppressed nation.

So society shouldn't bestow certain privileges based on maturity and responsibility? Should we put 5 year olds in the military?

Straw man again. I didn't say anything about putting 5 year-olds in the military. I was talking about giving 18, 19, and 20 year-olds the right to drink, a freedom they have in Europe. The poll was about whether Europeans are more free than Americans. In this case they are.

And the government has done a better job with your money?

Another straw man. My point wasn't about the government. It was about the immoral abuses of banks that have robbed every one of us. The perps ought to have been thrown in jail. Instead, they collected million dollar bonuses at taxpayer expense.

It's called voluntary cooperation.

Non-disclosure agreements are not supposed to cover up illegal behavior. That's the way the law is supposed to work, but such agreements end up covering that up anyway because the person who signed rarely has the resources to fight the huge and oppressive corporations.

Stop erecting straw men. I see your erection of them almost every time I write something.
 
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Being that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, I don't see how on balance we could argue we are more free than much of Europe. We simply put greater emphasis on certain civil liberties than to do / and they on others than we do.

Individual freedom is a very complicated subject. In some ways, you have more individual freedom in China than you do here. For example, you can walk into a store in China, buy a beer, and sit out front and drink it. That would get you arrested for public intoxication here. On the other hand, you can hold church services in your home without risk of it being bulldozed here for being a church that is not registered with the government.

The United States by and large has more economic freedom than Europe. Europe in many ways has more personal freedom than the United States. Moreover, European governments tend to be far more afraid of their citizenry than the U.S. government is. For example, protests in France can pretty much shut the government down.

On balance, I think negative rights are more strongly protected in the United States while positive rights are stronger in Europe.
 
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Re: Is Europe "freer" than America, or just as "free"?

This is an interesting point. I know, through complete factual evidence, that America is one of the largest, most diverse, modern and strong economies on the planet that has ever been, and one of the freest and open societies in our history. The opposition by many EU supporters seems to be the argument that Europe, or at least the EU, could actually be the largest and most diverse economy in the world, with a better economic model, should the EU become a republic or a federal state structure in the future. They also claim EU politics is better, that there market economy is better and more stable, and regardless of how false or true these statements are, can they use the argument that the EU is a "freer", better place to live?

If you look at the freedom indexes, all of them show that Europe and the USA are very comparable. Some EU countries even perform better, especially in the press freedom I think.
 
Freedom and liberty are two different things.
 
The U.S. should learn from germany and make certain parts of the interstate only have an advisory speed limit. Getting pulled over in wyoming on I-80 or on I-25 in northern colo pisses me off to no end.
 
Any place that has bans books, ideas and forms of free speech is not free. Regardless of what they have to say, the foundation of "freedom" is being allowed to express your ideas.
 
Any place where the right to bear arms is so egregiously and consistently violated cannot be called "free", not by any stretch of the imagination.

I understand Americans have a special relationship with their fire arms. That's a matter for them. I don't think many people in the EU see owning a gun as having anything to do with fundamental freedom. Guns for hunting and guns for sport seem innocuous enough to me provided they are properly stored and used. Hand guns and assault weapons are pretty much illegal in most EU states and I find that a comfort. I think that if you had a referendum on the subject, which is unlikely as no one seems to be remotely interested in the topic, you'd find that most Europeans would vote against the right to carry hand guns and assault weapons.

This is no reflection whatsoever on what Americans choose to do, that's their business, but it's an area of quite clear cultural distinction between over here and over there.
 
Europe has more diversity than the US as far as freedom goes, so the question isn't really applicable. Some European nations have more freedom, some have less.

Sorry if this is just slightly off-topic, but are there noticeable differences between states in the US? Over here we have an impression of California being Personal Freedom Central and places like Texas as being a bit like Iran but with hats and bibles rather than turbans and Qu'rans. (I'm joking BTW)

But is there a big difference from state to state?
 
I understand Americans have a special relationship with their fire arms. That's a matter for them. I don't think many people in the EU see owning a gun as having anything to do with fundamental freedom. Guns for hunting and guns for sport seem innocuous enough to me provided they are properly stored and used. Hand guns and assault weapons are pretty much illegal in most EU states and I find that a comfort. I think that if you had a referendum on the subject, which is unlikely as no one seems to be remotely interested in the topic, you'd find that most Europeans would vote against the right to carry hand guns and assault weapons.

This is no reflection whatsoever on what Americans choose to do, that's their business, but it's an area of quite clear cultural distinction between over here and over there.

Most people in America either think that the American idea of rights is the same as the Salvadorian idea of rights or the Bangladeshi idea of rights or they think that the rights we have do not apply to people in other countries. Because you know, all men being endowed with inalienable rights originally only meant, landowning, white men. But don't ever point out those facts to people who want us to live by the ideas of men who had very little interest in actual equality. The fact is that this country(America) has historically committed and endured more injustice, slavery and crimes against humanity as any other. But as long as we have the right to bear arms I guess we're all free. Somehow. I personally see the very real threat to free speech in Europe as a more serious offence than not being able to own guns. Do you?
 
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Really? Doesn't EU have a 48 hours max week? Limiting the maximum working week to 48 hours

Doesn't France Have the 35 hours per week?
35-hour workweek - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Most countries in Europe do have a limit on how many hours you are allowed to work, normally around 37.5-40. It's only UK where employees can choose to work as many hours as they want. Who are to decide how many hours I want to work? Not only is it a huge breach into our liberties, but it is completly economically unsound.

No. These laws are put in place to protect the employee. They mean that the employer can not force a person to work for more than X hours a week. If the person wants to work more, that is up to them. Big ass difference. I have worked far more than the 37 hours a week that Danish law has on the books, but that was MY choice, not that of my employer.

50-75% is given to the government. For instance France I would say is the most taxed country in EU.

LOL no it aint. Far far from it.

They have a payrol tax of 45%. They have a income tax from 0-48%. They also have GST of 19%. If we add these taxes togheter, an high income person will be taxed 77%. A low income person (less than 7000 dollar per year) would get 55% tax, and I haven't included wealth taxes, petrol taxes, TV-tax, Housing tax, and property taxes, which takes even more of your income. Welfare Lessons from France | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Daily Commentary

CATO institute has a sad history of French bashing and twisting the truth.
 
I personally see the very real threat to free speech in Europe as a more serious offence than not being able to own guns. Do you?

It depends what you mean by "the very real threat". Which particular threat are you referring to? The fact that EU legislation falls very far short of constraining member states to practice identical free speech laws means that on this matter at least, you can't talk about Europe in general.

There have been a few examples of worrying cases of censorship. A magazine was closed temporarily and two journalists fined for publishing insulting cartoons of the Crown Prince of Spain and his wife. British libel laws become more anachronistic every day. Any legal recourse that is only available to the very wealthy is no recourse at all, in my book.

What other concerns were you referring to?
 
It depends what you mean by "the very real threat". Which particular threat are you referring to? The fact that EU legislation falls very far short of constraining member states to practice identical free speech laws means that on this matter at least, you can't talk about Europe in general.

Well we could start with their ban of books like Mein Kampf in the Netherlands, Austria - and the recent laws making it illegal to photograph public buildings in the UK. I must admit that this is how I read the implications of the law but I could be wrong. Also, the European stance on "hate speech" is quite ridiculous. Sending people to jail for speaking out against Muslim expansion or sending Muslims to jail for hate speech is quite worrying.

There have been a few examples of worrying cases of censorship. A magazine was closed temporarily and two journalists fined for publishing insulting cartoons of the Crown Prince of Spain and his wife. British libel laws become more anachronistic every day. Any legal recourse that is only available to the very wealthy is no recourse at all, in my book.

What other concerns were you referring to?

I think this is my main one :

Police protest over terror law ban on holiday snaps | News
Tourists could face prosecution for taking holiday snaps of London's sights, police said today.

The Metropolitan Police Federation has joined a protest against an anti-terror law making it a potential offence to photograph police guarding London's landmarks.


More than 150 people protested outside New Scotland Yard today at the law which makes it an offence to publish or communicate information on members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers which is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Peter Smyth, chairman of the federation, said: "This is open to wide interpretation or, rather, misinterpretation.

"How, for example, will it be expected to apply in practice to the 2012 Olympics, which will be both a photo-event par excellence and subject to an intense security operation?

"Are going to be rounded up and arrested en masse for taking suspicious photos?"

The UK is a leading member of the EU and my concern would be that some of the newer members will try to imitate the already draconian laws to be more accepted by the rest of the European continent.
 
Well we could start with their ban of books like Mein Kampf in the Netherlands, Austria - and the recent laws making it illegal to photograph public buildings in the UK. I must admit that this is how I read the implications of the law but I could be wrong. Also, the European stance on "hate speech" is quite ridiculous. Sending people to jail for speaking out against Muslim expansion or sending Muslims to jail for hate speech is quite worrying.

I think this is my main one :

Police protest over terror law ban on holiday snaps | News

The UK is a leading member of the EU and my concern would be that some of the newer members will try to imitate the already draconian laws to be more accepted by the rest of the European continent.

I was not aware of this new law in the UK. I suspect it will be ignored by overworked police officers who prioritise protecting citizens rather than intimidating them.

Nor was I aware that Mein Kampf was banned in NL and Austria. I'm pretty sure it has been banned in Germany since the end of the war, no? Having actually read the thing I can sympathise with the legislators, it has no redeeming qualities. Nevertheless banning books is a step in the wrong direction.

Hate speech I'll have to get back to you about. I'm really not fully apprised of where such laws apply and how they apply differently in different member states. I approve of hate crime legislation generally if it used as an aggravating factor to existing offences. I can't imagine how a hate crime could be that and not another indictable offence too. You beat someone up, it's assault, GBH, attempted murder or whatever. If you do it because the victim was selected as a member of a particular group, that makes it a hate crime and increases the sentence by, say 30%.

I can't see how hate speech can be indictable unless it also incited violence. I disagree with all blasphemy laws too.
 
Police protest over terror law ban on holiday snaps | News


The UK is a leading member of the EU and my concern would be that some of the newer members will try to imitate the already draconian laws to be more accepted by the rest of the European continent.

It is not illegal to photograph public buildings in the UK.
It's illegal to photograph members of the security services in the performance of their duties (in uniform). This is to avoid the targeting of security services for acts of terror.
This officer blown up in Antrim
PSNI head calls for support after officer attack - The Irish Times - Tue, Jan 12, 2010

One in Derry
PSNI officer is injured in booby-trap bombing. - Londonderry Sentinel (Portadown, Northern Ireland) | Encyclopedia.com

The family of one in Derry targeted..
http://www.psni.police.uk/attacks_on_officers_families_derry_110909

The famous shooting in Belfast.
Or the targeting of UK service personel
Tributes paid one year on from shooting of soldiers at barracks - The Irish Times - Mon, Mar 08, 2010

None of the above were on duty at that time.
 
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Some better options would have been:
1. More free
2. As free
3. Less free

If you say "no", that could mean you either think Europe is not more free than the U.S. or you think they are less free.

I bet that's why such a large percentage are saying "no".

As for me, I think they are as free.
 
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Re: Is Europe "freer" than America, or just as "free"?

Agree with the above.
Since this one OBVIOUSLY leaves off the possibility that America is Freer. Allowing only 'just as free'.

1. Europe is Freer.
2. AMERICA IS FREER
3. They are about the same.

In the area of Speech/"Hate Speech" America IS freer.
-
 
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but not everywhere thinks thats a right, here in Australia we figured it wasnt a right when someone went on a massacre in Tasmania.

guns are for people that need them, military, police, farmers, not your average joe blow

I need guns in case people who want to impose their concept of need on me take power.
 
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