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The only thing the democracy index gets right are the broad strokes. But then again, so could a high schooler with wikipedia and a free afternoon.

It's not implemented well enough to detect the fine differences between western countries.

Hate speech laws reduce the range of discourse. They suppress dissent. That's inherently undemocratic.

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I think the reason so many people feel that it's important to allow dissenting and objectionable speech is that the perception of 'harmful' speech is mostly subjective.

Relegating that permissiveness to a particular entity allows that subjectivity to be enforced in perverse ways.

Many people feel it is better to tolerate the objectionable and hurtful speech than to allow a 3rd party to use subjective judgment to censor.

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