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Comment by insickness | Hacker News Reader

In the US there is a fear of government taking too much of a role in "shaping the people's opinions." While your argument makes sense in combating xenophobia, it seems these controls are authoritarian in that you're still allowing the government--and individuals within government--to exercise such control over non-government individuals.

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The difference is that this is made public. There is no secret conspiracy and marketing campaign to change public opinion. It is taught in schools and encoded in publically accessible law.

The big mistake in that logic is that controlling speech also means controlling what speech politicians can use. In the past years American politicians have literally asked for people like Assange and Snowden to be lynched or murdered in cold blood -- no due process, no courts, just shooting them or striking them down with a drone. If those politicians had expressed those sentiments on public TV in Germany, they'd have faced prison sentences.

The same people in the US who are scared of their government taking stances like "man-made climate change is real", "same-sex couples should be treated the same" or "maybe some people shouldn't own firearms" are the same people who comfortably arm the police to the teeth, send American soldiers to countries they wouldn't be able to find on a map, perpetually increase military spending, and demand the government regulates what people can do in their bedrooms or what public toilets they can use.

Americans aren't afraid of government getting too much power. Americans are afraid of government taking on positions they don't personally agree with and partisan thinking has led them to believe that "the others" are one term away from ruining the Greatest Nation on Earth and to think that as long as "their team" wins on election day, everything will be perfect.

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