U.S. Free Speech vs. EU Free Speech

He has done a brilliant job defending his position and I've enjoyed partaking in this debate. My opponent appears to agree on most of these issues, and he characterizes our differences sufficiently. Ultimately he is correct that our disagreement here is with regards to weighing different values. My position is that freedom of speech is paramount, and that its negative effect on other rights is minimal. His position appears to be that restricting certain speech is necessary to maintain other rights, and while he gives some examples, I thoroughly disagree that the benefit is worth the cost. Ultimately, the readers of this debate need to ask themselves the following: Is it worth restricting your freedom of speech for anything my opponent has cited? .. .. Since this is my final round and I can't make any new arguments, I will essentially be clarifying my points in this round. To this point I have essentially made two arguments. In round one, my entire round can be summarized with: Freedom of speech is good. In my last round, my entire round can be summarized with: Freedom of speech is good, and European legal/social attempts to discourage speech are a cultural/legal reality and bad. My opponent rebuts the examples I gave, though whether or not someone was convicted and imprisoned for unpopular speech wasn't entirely the point. Rather the point is that unpopular speech is very much discouraged to the extent that for any reasonable person, it's just not worth the hassle. Furthermore, I was specifically asking my opponent to weigh what rights he is talking about here. On the one hand you have freedom of speech to criticize some group, and on the other hand you have. .. . what? Is my opponent asserting that there is, or should be, some sort of right to be a group above criticism? The elephant in the room for Europe these days is with the cultural scism with Islam. While debating the various aspects of that takes many more debates, and I'm certainly not going to go into much depth here or assert whatever opinions I have about it, or say much about Islam broadly, it is undeniable that there are Europeans that feel there is a problem, and addressing it bluntly is absolutely necessary. One such European is politician Geert Wilders. While Wilders is certainly a controversial figure, his controversy appears to be entirely related to his blunt criticism of Islam. Whether you agree with him or not, I doubt anyone in favor of freedom of speech would approve of banning a person from a country, as the UK did to Wilders, simply on the basis of unpopular speech. . https://en.wikipedia.org...Wilders has also been put on trial for hate speech, and though this legal action failed, the fact that someone criticizing a group of people could be put on trial with a chance of serious consequences in the first place, reflects the reality the freedoom of speech at odds with a political climate, is probaly not worth the hassle, and is therefore discouraged. Again, I ask my opponent, what rights were being weighed here? We have the right of one individual to bluntly criticize Islam on the one hand. .. and what right on the other? There are only two possible answers to this, and none of them are good ones.1) Islam has the right not to be criticized. This is, as poor of an answer as it is, actually the better of the two. The case could be made that Wilders goes too far with his criticism, and Islam has a right "not to criticism" that is too blunt leveled at it and therefore the rights of Islam supercede the rights of those to criticize it. That's absurd, but I guess those are the rights being weighed. I don't know if any other group in Europe has the right not to be offended, so perhaps this is a unique case if this is the answer my opponent is going to go with.2) Islam should not be criticized. .. . because of fearWhile this is a far more problematic response, at least it's honest and we can work with it. It is however, ultimately, a far worse response of these two because it acquiesces to social bullying and is just insulting to everyone including Muslims. So, this "right" of freedom of speech needs to be curtailed because Muslims lack the agency of being able to not cause social harm through violence if provoked. In other words, Muslims have the right to not be offended which outweighs your right to the freedom to criicize, because we fear them. Yes, that is pathetic. Unfortunately, my opponent actually justifies this in one of his responses to me:"We should also keep in mind that in countries with recent and deep-seated ethnic conflicts, e. g. Bosnia, hate speech laws may be essential for keeping the peace; hate speech in such countries could spark real violence. "I'm sympathetic to my opponent's assertion here and I understand the point he is making, but again, the right to freedom of speech for the modern world supercedes the needs of those who are unable to avoid killing each other because they are offended. Is it problematic that something I say might cause someone to go on a murderous rampage? Sure. But it's the problem with the individuals incapable of dealing with words, and not those that are expressing ideas and opinions, regardless of how offensive and ridiculous those words may be. Yes, ignoring the social consequences of this might have some short or even long term consequences. Saudi Arabia might face a civil war when blasphemy laws are recinded and its populace beings to realize just how ludicrous and insane their society actually is. But, and this is cricual to my argument, TOO BAD. The only way the world will modernize is when we say enough is enough, your quirky nonsense has gone on enough, this is what I think about it, get over it. "Freedom of speech - but" is not freedom of speech, and acquiescing to those fighting for the right not to be offended with the threat of violence is not something anyone who cares about freedom should take seriously in the least. There are many examples of this, but I think pointing to a politician, someone with power, who is discouraged from mere speech, is a good enough example to show why this is a problem. To reiterate, the entire point here, and in my previous round, is that the legal system is discouraging speech to an extent that any reasonable person would and should reconsider whether or not they should direct reasonable (or even unreasonabe) criticism towards a group that most certainly should not have the right not to be offended. .. .. My opponent and I don't entirely disagree on other aspects of this. Yes, it's a problem in the US that people can harm individuals through speech, and again, this is part of the weighing of these values. Ironically, while I think much of what I have said above is this generations defining issue for Europe, I believe privacy issues are becoming a paramount issue in the US. long time major issues like abortion, gay marriage, and communication media are all, and not just tangentially, privacy focused issues, and it is something that the US will continue to struggle with. In the context of this debate though, privacy appears to be the only value my opponent has weighed, and has therefore ignored the broader issue above. Again, I don't disagree with him on this broadly, but rights to privacy aren't enough to cede to irrational restrictions on how much and in what way, I can direct speech at a group. .. .. I'll ask once again, what I asked in the beginning of this round: Has my opponent convinced you that you need to have greater restrictions on what you can say, for any of the reasons he has cited? I think we all recognize that there are reasonable restrictions, and that there are things done through mere speech that have intentional and specific harm as an outcome. These aren't the things I am debating, and if Europe was only restricting these in the way that the US necessarily has to as well, then I wouldn't criticize, and there wouldn't be anything worth debating. Instead, due to politics, or fear, or whatever agenda it might be, there is a legitimate attempt to discourage certain speech, and Europe is NOT better off for doing so. While I realize the US isn't perfect in really any way, there is one thing that it has that no other nation does, and that is the ability for its populace to fearlessly criticize and condemn whatever it likes. I believe this society has only progressively gotten better due to that, and I fear that Europe's approach will progressively cause it harm. .. .. My opponent has done a great job taking a broad approach to this debate, and while there are specific arguments that I wish I could examine in greater detail; space, format and time restrictions prevent me from doing so. I realize I have simply dropped and ignored certain arguments that my opponent has made, but I have decidely taken a more philosophical approach. If I were able to do several of these debates, I would like to expand and rebut some of those other arguments, but instead I will close my final argument by simply reiterating the only 2 points I have made1) Freedom of speech is goodAccepting this, in the limited space I have to really prove this, requires that you understand that modern societies are in fact better than those that aren't, and a major feature of these societies is freedom, including freedom of speech. It's not coincidence. FOS allows us to openly criticize governments and groups in such a way that we improve and marginalize those perpetuating nonsense.2) The European approach to FOS discourages certain speechSome speech is going to be discouraged in any society, but the European examples are arbitrary and when considered on a long enough time line, are extremely detrimental. I wish I had more time and space to really get into every detail of this, but I believe it is very clear.