Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I'm not going to be able to explain to you the thoughts I'm trying to express.

  Maybe not. Perhaps you just don't understand what the situation here is,
perhaps because it's different there.

  The fact is that some groups of people are being treated differently
than others, judged differently than others for the same actions. For
example, criticism of one religion might not result in even an investigation,
while similar criticism of another religion can result even in jailtime
(yes, it has happened). Crimes committed by a member of one group of people
against a member of another group are being judged differently (by both
the media and the justice system) depending on the groups in question,
even though the crimes may be completely similar. Preferential treatment
is being applied to some groups of people, often at the cost of
discriminating others.

  The very concept of "freedom" has shifted its meaning in Europe during
the past decade or two. It used to mean that the government has no right
to limit certain basic rights of people. Nowadays "freedom" is more like
concessions and permissions granted by the government to the citizens.
It's not anymore "you are free to do this because the government has no
right to restrict it". It has become "you are free to do this because the
government allows you to". European governments are granting themselves
more and more rights to limit people's freedom at their own whim.

  As far as I understand, this is slightly better in the United States.
For example, the first amendment to the constitution says "Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof" and so on. It limits what the government can do.

  Not so here. The Finnish constitution has no such wording. It grants
people freedom of religion, but it imposes no restriction on the
government with respect to preferential treatment towards one religion
or another. In fact, there exists a state church in Finland (namely the
lutheran church), which gets special rights from the government that no
other religions get. It's thus the official state church of Finland.

  It's rather ironic that Finland is mostly a secular country (I think
something like over 85% of Finns are atheists) while the US is mostly
a christian country (with something like 90% of christians), yet the
*government* of Finland is a christian government (because of the
official state church) while the government of the US is a secular one
(because it doesn't have and cannot have an official state church).

  The freedom in the US goes even beyond that. If you, for example, burn
a Koran and a Bible in the US as a form of protest or social commentary,
and post a video of it to YouTube, that's completely legal and protected
by freedom of expression. However, do that here in Finland, and you *will*
get jailtime. This is no exaggeration. You will literally get sentenced
to jailtime.

  Yes, I know that some people will argue that "well, that's proper
because you can't do that". The only thing I can say to that is that
I disagree. Burning a bunch of paper should not be a crime. It's paper.
Last time I checked, burning paper is not illegal.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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