> Many countries recognize such rights as part of their constitution or primary legal framework, and those rights are recognized by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The First Amendment itself was inspired by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the English Bill of Rights.
> The premise that the United States, alone, recognizes freedom of speech as a legal right is simply absurd.
Hmm, maybe I accentuated too much the "embedded into their founding documents" part.
My understanding is that other countries do not have the same protections put upon speech. For example, in many places you can be arrested for racism or, say, holocaust denial.
That being said, I don't know much about France's laws.
I just found https://www.loc.gov/law/help/freedom-expression/france.php which is pretty enlightening.
So to start, I think the statement as I wrote it is false, since the distinction is really about the possible eroding of speech rights based on non-protected classes of speech. Here's an interesting excerpt from that link:
> Despite its foundational importance, freedom of speech was never intended to be absolute. In contrast to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, the 1789 Declaration of Human and Civic Rights provided limits to freedom of expression in its very definition. Article 10 declares that “[n]o one may be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, as long as the manifestation of such opinions does not interfere with the established Law and Order.”[7] Article 11 provides that “[a]ny citizen may therefore speak, write and publish freely, except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by Law.”[8]
And further:
> Similarly, the European Convention on Human Rights declares that
> the exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.[9]
So, the interesting bit here is there are a _ton_ of categories that are valid grounds to restrict speech. So again I think as I stated it it is false, but were my statement more accurate about making the point around the restrictions on content, it would presumably be correct.
> I'd soften it a lot, because as far as I know, no one is being forcibly imprisoned in their homes under shelter-in-place orders in the US. At least in my case, the orders for my city don't prevent me from moving freely. I have to wear a mask in public, and my local supermarket opens later and closes earlier and has item limits to stop panic buying, and there is an 11pm curfew, but those are hardly what I would consider to be the signs of a totalitarian police state.
Yes, I would soften it a lot as well. "Slightly" is an understatement. I do take issue with this though:
> and there is an 11pm curfew
A curfew to me is exactly the restriction on freedom of movement/expression that I would consider highly problematic. I'm curious, is that curfew related to COVID-19? Or was it already in place? Because after 11pm seems like the worst time to restrict travel given that there's not as many humans around.
(Thanks for making those points!)