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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Well the original US system is (so far) the best designed system for protecting from that sort of thing. It has multiple layers of checks via separation of powers, which is the greatest contrast to UK system where courts can't overrule parliament. The courts in the US closely protect the constitutional rights like free speech and are always shutting down new laws.

Constitutional amendments are also an extremely high bar (2/3rds in congress + 2/3rds of state legislators), so much so that they never even try them anymore. So adding a hate speech amendment or "sending offensive messages" law, like the UK did via parliament, would basically be DOA in the US.

But of course all rights can hypothetically be taken away in any human system, if there's enough public support or obedience.

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Currently speaking in the US will get you deported, or thrown in jail, or attacked by the government. The supposed checks and balances in the US system have all failed completely, either being overruled or simply ignored. You are at the point where your government is actively censoring your museums to tell a story that fits their propaganda.

It's genuinely hard to see a way out of complete degradation to a failed democracy at this point. None of this is hypothetical either. Sometimes I wonder if people on this site read the news at all, or are just willfully ignoring the reality of the situation.

American museums should not be telling stories to our people that we should be ashamed of ourselves. It's become too much, the pendulum is swinging back. Sorry

> our people

Do you think Black Americans, or native Americans feel shame when visiting these museums?

Or are they not "our people" to you?

We are all Americans. I however don't want to be constantly re-told why our great, if flawed, history makes WASP Americans out to be the bad guys at every turn.

Slavery and segregation are as much a blight on US history as the holocaust on Germany’s. It’s important that the US is not proud of its entire history. I’d rather not have obvious political hacks making decisions about what is on display and for that decision to be at least nominally in the hands of those with most knowledge of the historical details.

So it wasn't political hacks that tried to add their left spin to every piece of American history that they could get their hands on? Not trying to be offensive, but the tone of how American history is re-told today is not what I would consider moderate.

Are you considering how some part of history is told, or whether it is told at all? Because they're currently not reframing history, but erasing it. How do you reconcile this with what you consider being an earlier "left spin"?

What specific way is history being "erased"?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/01/smithsonian-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz03gjnxe25o

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/trump-anti-dei-purge-erasin...

Also see i.e. the bundies who used guns to prevent the government from taking away the private ranching rights that had been homesteaded and passed down prior to the them being nationalized by the BLM.

The 'pen' says they are not allowed to keep grazing their cattle there in Clark county, yet they still are to this day.

> checks via separation of powers,

This broke down instantly as soon as the same party got all three branches of government.

The actual place to look for serious US speech restrictions is "obscenity", like the Comstock laws, and modern things like Mississippi Internet age verification.

The past decade kinda proves this to not be the case though. I think you're conflating constitutional amendments with laws as well to make a point when it's simply a bad comparison. It's like comparing the UK prime minister to a mayor.

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