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Comment by KorematsuFredt | Hacker News Reader

I have a very simple litmus test. In how many countries can you openly (with lots of publicity) organize "Draw a Muhammad" or "Burn the bible" events.

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Interesting. Kids in many countries throughout the middle east and northern Africa have essentially unrestricted access to firearms, including shit you can't buy in most US states, but your "Draw a Muhammad" litmus test wouldn't fly. What does this indicate?

Let's burn the American flag instead. How's that gonna go in rural counties of the US? Will it be safe, or will the response be armed?

>Let's burn the American flag instead

The response will be armed

You will not be Shot unless you tried to harm someone first

You will be yelled at, called names, and maybe at most hit across the head

They will try to stop you, put out the fire, and prevent you from burning the flag

They will not shoot you dead...

You're saying that I should expect to be assaulted and arrested in response to an exercise of free speech. That's a fail.

If I persist, or defend myself, as people attempt to stop me, are you positive that I wouldn't get shot by some trigger-happy kid like Kyle Rittenhouse?

And what happens if I physically intervene to stop them from putting out my flag?

Honestly, depends what state you are in and if defending property is legal.

The litmus test is to measure freedom and not effectiveness of guns on freedom.

It is pretty hard to organize 'Draw A Muhammad' workshop in non-muslim countries like Canada, UK or India. That tells you how less free those countries are.

Secondly, freedom is used (always) in the context of Government. In India, Canada or UK it is not the fellow muslim you have to worry about but the government jailing you. In the absence of a robust violent respons from society government will take away your freedoms one by one to simplify their own life at your expense.

> Let's burn the American flag instead.

Please do. It is an important freedom Americans have and constitutional granted free speech right. American flag is burned, insulted on regular basis in USA. Just like flag insulting national anthem is another form of protest in USA. I have not heard of anyone being punished or killed in USA for burning American flag. Most certainly the government can't punish you for the same.

How about getting an abortion as the test of freedom? My point is that “freedom” is very much a subjective definition.

> It is pretty hard to organize 'Draw A Muhammad' workshop in non-muslim countries like Canada, UK or India. That tells you how less free those countries are.

Sorry, bub. I live in Canada, and you're extremely misinformed about the law here. It would not be hard to organize a "draw a Muhammad" event here. If Megan Murphy speaking at the Vancouver Public Library is any indication, you could even do it on government property, replete with security to keep you and the protesters away from eachother.

Or, change my mind. Show me the legal precedent where Canada jailed somebody for drawing Muhammad. I'm curious about the UK, India and Australia, too. But I'm calling bullshit on your claim about Canada.

The closest I've seen was a dude got fined for distributing hate speech targeting an individual. He couldn't afford to pay the fine, and that was the end of that.

That is a poor test in my opinion. I do not value symbolic personal liberties like bible burning or drawing Muhammad more than economic or press freedom which have a much larger cascading effect on our lives. And the fact that the US is lacking in those two latter categories compared to many of our peer nations calls into question whether our freedom regarding guns or speech actually protects our other freedoms.

The US is not lacking in either press or economic freedom compared to ‘peer’ nations.

Did you click through to the link in my first comment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Freedom_of_the_World

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_Press_(report)

There are 2 indexes each for economic and press freedom. Our rankings on the economic freedom lists are 5th and 20th. On the press freedom ranks we are 44th, and 37th.

You seem to be looking at the the rank order alone, which just means there are a lot of closely bunched countries near the US on the indices.

If you look at the heat maps and the actual indices themselves, along with the countries with comparable numbers, you’ll see that those lists precisely support my claim.

Thanks for providing this corroborating data.

You are simply factually wrong in your description of this data. 3 of the 4 indexes I listed provide defined tiers. The US is in the top tier on only 1 of the 3 lists. On that one list there are 60 counties in the top tier. On the other two lists we are in the 2nd tier defined as "satisfactory situation" and "mostly free". The organizations behind the lists clearly think there is room for improvement. This data does not corroborate your point.

I am not factually wrong.

Here is what I said: “The US is not lacking in either press or economic freedom compared to ‘peer’ nations.”

Whether or not there are countries who have better ratings, any honest reading of the list sees that the US ratings are similar to peers.

When you consider how large and diverse the US is compared to most countries on the list, the ranking becomes more impressive.

The first list puts the US above all of Europe except Switzerland, and above all of Scandinavia, and Canada and Australia.

The second list puts the US above Sweden, Germany, and Japan for example.

The third, doesn’t have ranks, but places US in the ‘satisfactory’ category along with most of Europe, Canada, and Australia.

The fourth, is the only one in which the US does a little worse on their points scale, however *it is back in the top tier described as ‘free’ alongside all its peers, and above the UK, France and Japan in the ranking.

It’s just bullshit to claim these lists indicate that the US is lacking compared to peers.

I started writing out a longer response to you, but then realized it isn't worth it. If you aren't going to acknowledge that we maybe have room for improvement when we are internationally ranked in the 30s and 40s in press freedom then I don't see much value in continuing the conversation on how our freedom might be lacking.

> If you aren't going to acknowledge that we maybe have room for improvement

This is a completely dishonest representation of what I have said.

Here it is again:

> The US is not lacking in either press or economic freedom compared to ‘peer’ nations. Whether or not there are countries who have better ratings, any honest reading of the list sees that the US ratings are similar to peers.

Nowhere did I say there wasn’t room for improvement or even claim the US was at the top.

If you’re going to lie about both what I said, and what the links show, what do you think we can accomplish?

These lists seem to show that the US is pretty much on par with the rest of the western world. I'm not sure how you could look at these and say that the US is behind it's peers very much, especially on the economic freedom measures. Only the second press freedom list seems to have the US at the low end compared to other western countries, but it's still above the UK, South Korea and a few others.

Here is what I said initially:

>We are usually behind Canada, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries, and a few other European countries depending on the specific criteria being evaluated.

The countries we are behind on all 4 lists and therefore unanimously behind:

    - New Zealand
    - Switzerland

The countries we are behind on 3 of the 4 lists and therefore countries we are "usually behind":

    - Canada
    - Australia
    - Ireland 
    - Denmark
    - Finland
    - Netherlands

The countries we are behind on 2 of the 4 lists and therefore countries we are on par with:

    - Germany
    - Norway  
    - Sweden 
    - Iceland
    - Belgium
    - Austria
    - Portugal
    - Czech Republic
    - Lithuania
    - Slovenia
    - Andorra
    - Liechtenstein
    - Luxembourg
    - Estonia
    - Cyprus
    - Jamaica
    - Costa Rica

So that is a yes on "Canada, New Zealand... and a few other European countries". I don't know why you and the other poster are pretending that naming countries that we are ranked higher than disproves this statement. The only thing that isn't backed up by those rankings is that I said "the Scandinavian countries" when it is only Denmark and Finland ahead of us while we are on par with Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

You also said this:

> And the fact that the US is lacking in those two latter categories compared to many of our peer nations

Which is still bullshit.

As I said before, whether or not there are countries who have better ratings, any honest reading of the list sees that the US ratings are similar to peers.

Is your enter point through these several posts that my definition of "peer" is too broad? It should have been obvious in context that I was referring to something along the lines of "western democracies" since I listed countries before ever using the word "peer". It honestly seems like you are arguing just for the sake of argument at this point.

> It should have been obvious in context that I was referring to something along the lines of "western democracies" since I listed countries before ever using the word "peer".

I already dealt with that in this response:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28560646

> It honestly seems like you are arguing just for the sake of argument at this point.

That doesn’t seem honest to me.

I said "compared to many of our peer nations". You are acting as if I said "compared to all our peer nations". Pointing out countries we are ahead does nothing to disprove that there are 8 countries in which we are "usually behind".

But either way, I give up. This isn't worth spending any more time on. Congrats, you win!

> I said "compared to many of our peer nations". You are acting as if I said "compared to all our peer nations"

This is where the misunderstanding arises. You are actually incorrect. I’m not acting as if you said compared to all of our peer nations. I clearly and repeatedly accepted that we are behind some of our peer nations.

You on the other hand, are using the fact that we are not literally at the top of the list, to argue that we are behind our peers in a general sense.

If you weren’t you’d simply say “we aren’t at the top of the list - there are 8 countries ahead of us”, instead of the false, and more generic sounding “compared to many of our peers”.

Along that line of thinking it's now illegal to burn the US flag.

No, it is legal to burn the US flag assuming it's your flag (in the United States)

Sort of, there are still laws against it in almost every state.

https://apnews.com/article/803cf0e75e924afbbbe9c77f15517da5

Wow, it is infuriating that people are still getting harassed for that. However, the fact that it is constitutionally protected basically precludes any of those charges from being pursued. Apparently, sometimes flag burners are harassed with other petty crimes like theft/littering.

Those aren't enforceable, and haven't been for decades.

How often do you make use of your freedom to make meaningless antagonistic gestures to Muslims or Christians? Would you rank it as more or less important than the freedom to go for a run in public without being shot or harassed (which is not really afforded to Black Americans [0])?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/sports/running-while-blac...

How should I make sense of the fact that I saw several Black Americans jogging this week. Are they scofflaws and rebels?

You clearly didn't read the collected stories in that article. The NYTimes requested letters from Black people on their experiences running after a Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was murdered awhile running and a big part of the national narrative consisted of false allegations that he had just burgled some place.

It seems a lot of Black people are afraid to run because they know there's a real risk that they'll be shot by white people who will assume they've committed a crime. They're afraid people will immediately assume they're scofflaws, as you joked (?), and hurt or harass them.

So you may have seen black people running, but that may be because you live in a more progressive neighborhood with BLM signs that has made Black runners feel less like they'd be murdered in your neighborhood than in other neighborhoods (as one person explained in that article).

If we're measuring freedom, the right to exist in public without a reasonable expectation of violence and harassment seems important.

Okay, but you said "Blacks are not afforded the freedom to run," not that some people (how many?) have apprehensions or misgivings about doing so (not a lack of freedom). Apartheid in South Africa was a different thing from "some people are afraid, possibly irrationally so".

Lastly, this has nothing to do with gun ownership? You can find people expressing exactly the same sentiments all over western Europe.

Actually, what I said was

>...the freedom to go for a run in public without being shot or harassed (which is not really afforded to Black Americans)".

I could quibble about that claim, or point that I've read countless tweets and anecdotes from Black people describing that they have to carefully plan their routes and wear shirts from ivy league schools because they've been assaulted or harassed by white people in the past and they just want to make whites feel safe, or look back to my upbringing in Grosse Pointe, a wealthy suburb just east of Detroit that was hardcore redlined [0] where I saw Black people routinely harassed for existing in public. But the core of this is that Black people in American don't have the freedoms white people do. Black people don't get personhood here, unlike people who look like me [1].

And as a homicide researcher, I assure you, gun ownership is extremely relevant to the denial of freedom to Black Americans.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Metro_Detroit...

[1] https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1255088329634308096?s=20

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