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Comment by Houshalter | Hacker News Reader

>And I will argue that communism is fundamentally a good ideology.

This is a dangerous thing to say publicly! As you mention yourself, the United States has had red scares just a generation ago. Who is to say it won't happen again? And that is exactly why you should support freedom of speech and tolerance of differing ideologies. Or the next red scare will be even worse.

>statues of Lenin and Stalin were removed without much second thought, only USians would keep statues of their (war criminals)|(rebels) for 150 years.

As far as I know most of the USSR world war 2 monuments are still standinding. The US is removing even monuments to soldiers that don't feature any specific general or leader. By your logic we should tear down the famous Vietnam war memorial because the US lost the war.

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>This is a dangerous thing to say publicly!

It doesn't cost me much, apart from internet points. And really the ideas of sharing, equal laws, global humanism and opposition to the centralization/concentration of capital genuinely seem good to me. And I'm not from the US, having those opinions seems quite mild to me.

But yeah, I've made several political comments on HN these past few years, and the amount of votes (in both directions) seem to vary wildly according to what countries are awake, generally more downvotes when the US are awake.

You missed my point. I was saying that if a red scare happens again, you could be persecuted for having written that comment. I admit it's a bit implausible. But not completely so, when you consider US history and the declining respect for freedom of expression.

Yep I missed that.

In that case I'll just hope I've inherited something from my grandmother (who was a resistant during WW2). ^^

> declining respect for freedom of expression

... as opposed to the glory days of... when? A few decades ago, when blacks could say whatever they wanted, as long as they said it at the back of the bus?

... or was it when women's opinions weren't taken seriously at all, not when men were speaking?

... or was it more recently, with Bush's 'Free Speech Zones'?

When was peak free speech in the US?

The US is much more polarized now than in previous decades. Look at these graphs: http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarizatio... The free speech zones you complain about have increased, not decreased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Sure a century ago minorities had less freedom. That's a great argument to increase the freedom of minorities, not decrease freedom for everyone. Is that really your argument? That black people had less free speech in the past, so we should get rid of free speech now?

>The US is much more polarized now than in previous decades

I've seen this and I believe the data behind it, but I also think that while the US politics are very polarized right now, the actual spectrum of politics represented at the national level seems very narrow, and very right leaning (Reps and Dems).

> Is that really your argument? That black people had less free speech in the past, so we should get rid of free speech now?

No, that would be you putting words in my mouth. I'm asking when was this supposed time in history when freedom of speech was much higher in the US than it is today; what peak is the respect 'declining' from?

> By your logic we should tear down the famous Vietnam war memorial because the US lost the war

Nonsense, the statues are not being removed because they are from the losing side, they are being removed because they commemorate terrorists and traitors, and were in many causes erected by racists later on.

They commemorate soldiers who died in the largest war in American history, and were mostly funded by veterans.

Like I said, they celebrate traitors and terrorists, and they were mostly erected by racist terrorists later on during the days of Jim Crow, the KKK and the Civil Rights movement.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story...

They largely went up in two waves, in the 1890s and the 1960s, as explicit symbols of white supremacy. They were not erected shortly after the war to commemorate soldiers. They falsely evoke a time right after the war when Southerners held great respect for confederate "heroes," but that's misleading. I was surprised to learn this too.

http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a12015570/... https://www.google.com/amp/jezebel.com/confederate-monuments...

I don't find these articles terribly convincing. It's typical for monuments to be built decades after the event they commemorate. The world war 2 memorial in DC wasn't built until 2004.

I find it difficult to believe that it's just a coincidence that most of these monuments were erected during the eras of Jim Crow, and then the heyday of the KKK, and later still during the Civil Rights era.

There is basically no correlation whatsoever: https://i.redditmedia.com/IE4gFFzTylcD63F5V9xixn0Nh4ESSuWVoK...

Bollocks: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/the-real-story...

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