Europe

It's not that they're free. It's that they're exceedingly privileged from exploiting the global south. And then racist against their victims. Basically the same as USA. It was never about "freedom" but rather genocide, slavery, exploitation, etc.

• Deported From Europe, Murdered by Israel
• Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters
• Nearly 9,000 migrant deaths recorded last year by UN migration agency, real death toll likely higher

The Economist is an imperial rag promoting pseudo-scientific capitalist ideology. They only care about pale skins.

the bar for what is considered free now is just lower

Anglo leftists will be like: "No." Because hatespeech and racism is only good when they do it. And many EU countries ban hatespeech.

So much land of the free that you go to jail for smoking weed in most EU countries.

"There are thus no European Rasputins pumping untold millions into political campaigns"

There's plenty of them, that's how most elections are won here too.

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

Europe is as "free" as russia or usa or china: as long as you conform and do as authorities say you are free. Try to cross that line (like protesting against the genocide in palestine) and the government will beat and arrest you.

France should take the statue of liberty away from us tbh

American obsession with money is weird when you think about it. Money is only useful when the human creativity, ingenuity, effort, etc. you want is for sale. Billionaires think their bunkers will save them after they make the world go to shit, but nobody is going to take care of these helpless bastards when there is nothing for their money to buy. Then there is the fact that money often ruins intrinsic motivation, which is why, for example, looking at the work of great artists and composers from the past, it’s clearly evident which works were commissioned vs. which ones were truly inspired work. A lot of open source software is inspired work that can be used without the limitations of paid software. Anyone running the arr stack with Jellyfin on a shitty old laptop knows all the enshittified streaming services combined can’t offer a superior experience. People with a loving and supportive family are wealthier than Elon Musk, who despite his net worth reeks of desperation for any superficial attention he can get. America is supposedly a “wealthy” country, but any country with a government that actually cares about its people and ensures they have a social safety net, clean food to eat without 1000 toxic additives, etc. is infinitely more wealthy than the USA.

from this article: "somehow europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it"; it's called a union, not "convinced to grant" (like an "ottriate constitution" from a king). we (others before us) work politically with political subjects through conflict (strike, demonstrations, public debate and parliamentary discussions). anyway we don't do it enough, but we still have the remains of the communist, socialist and social democratic parties of the second after the war, despite the fact that anglo-saxon neoliberalism tried (and partly succeeded) to eradicate the welfare state (both from a regulatory point of view and through the culture of consumption and overabundance). however, we hope that in the future we will work less and we live better :)

Already was. While the us was occupied with cosplaying as freedom freaks and destroying countless democracies for the sake of freedom, europe actually became free.

The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region. Oddly, surveys show people in countries both rich and poor value such leisure time; somehow Europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it. Even as they were depressing GDP by wasting time playing with their kids, the denizens of Europe also managed to keep inequality relatively low while it ballooned elsewhere in the past 20 years. Nobody in Europe has spent the past week looking at their stock portfolio, wondering if they could still afford to send their kids to university. Europeans have no idea what “medical bankruptcy” is. Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.

This whole paragraph had me on edge, a little unsure of whether The Economist, (edit for clarity: from presumably) an American publication (wing), legitimately thought these were good things or not.

Chat control and any similar proposal should be killed once and for all before such big statements are made.

Now? Always has been

Europe has had the ability to change one’s station in life - what people might equate to the “American Dream” - for a long time now, and has had it better than America has. You can go from poor to a middle class life more easily. However going from rags-to-riches is far more rare. Unfortunately, here in America we’ve equated the Dream and Freedom to mean going from middle class to Fuck You Money, having a personal arsenal, and breaking every social contract we possibly can. The only ones trotting out The American Dream ™️ as still existing are politicians and the people fighting any restrictions on getting richer while the rest of us are crabs in a bucket all stepping on each other trying to keep from drowning. Now, with trump, we have the basic Constitution under attack and what few freedoms that guaranteed we had left being eroded. Well, except 2A, but he’ll get to that eventually.

Yeah, Europe has absolutely been “free-er” and better in multiple ways for a long while now. The only reason most Americans don’t understand this is because guns and chasing fuck you money.

Nice article, I like how it is basically a list of things about Europe that aren't that great but then ends with "But in their own plodding way, Europeans have created a place where they are guaranteed rights to what others yearn for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant.

You can freely express any controversial view on Hungarian campuses, nobody cares at all. Most people in Hungary don't care about the whole Gaza situation one way or another, with a slight exaggeration if you asked the average university student in Hungary where Gaza is, they would think you're looking for some nightclub.

The only people who care about Palestine in Hungary are the far-right, Orbán's far right being pro-Israel because kleptocrats stick together, while the extreme far right is pro-Palestine because they hate Jews. They usually won't be university educated either.

As faculty, you can also express whatever views, a lot of people were straight up protesting the government at one point, but there is not much they can do with them legally and Orbán's gang didn't care enough to alter the laws for that.