If Only The Romans

[Thumpalumpacus]

The idea that some people are "qualified" to determine what is and isn't acceptable speech is far, far too authoritarian for my taste. Where such a design has been adopted, the abuses far outweigh anything seen in a country where free speech allows the polity to warn of and gather against such abuses.

Thanks, but no thanks. History shows that despots remove free speech first for what I hope are obvious reasons.

That despots always do this doesn't mean it can not therefore be necessary to do it for reasons other than securing despotism.

I think Cultures with long and well remembered historic experiences is in better position to judge what sort of speech likely leads to harm to their own people all out of proportion to the touted benefits of free speech than the individual tastes of outsiders based on one's embrace of political-philosophical views born much more recently, that is founded upon no reasonably similar experience, and that really lacks credible fundamental predictive power for its own consequences and relies to a large degree on emotional evocativeness that are perhaps more specific to particular cultures than to human experience in general.

You seem to be under the impression that I am prescribing for the Chinese what they ought to be doing in their own country, when in fact I'm deprecating that "solution" as being applicable here in America, as was touted by others in this thread. I certainly think that such power would be abused here in America, given our history.

However -- the fact that China has a State Administration for Religious Affairs indicates the state's desire to not cede that area of authority to nongevernmental organizations or people. That implies that the state regards it as a threat to its power, and in that sense they are indeed using this power to strengthen their despotism.

My personal leaning is that even in China, free speech would do much to empower the individual, at the expense of governmental authority. I'm pretty sure the Chinese government sees it that way too ... which is why free speech is derogated there.