> Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant.

Well, according to the Academic Freedom Index [1], there are 2 countries that have worse academic freedom than the US: Hungary (as mentioned) and Greece. The UK, Portugal, the Netherlands, Serbia and North Macedonia are broadly comparable.

> No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza.

In the UK, we do have terror legislation that allows us to detain journalists who talk about Gaza for 48 hours and confiscate their devices indefinitely (and no, we don't have free speech protections allowing us to not divulge passwords to these devices) [2].

> news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians

We do like to put them into prison though [3].

[1]: https://academic-freedom-index.net [2]: https://scottishpen.org/statement-on-detention-of-author-and... [3]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/04/pers-a04.html

There's very high taxation of high income individuals (60%) as well as companies, supported by a big majority of population, which is then used as propaganda by the gvmnt that high taxes benefit everyone because the government knows best what we need. My feeling is that fellow citizens actually support this idea. Those that don't agree find other ways, which is so easy in EU it almost looks like it's by design.

Such an environment is not as business friendly as it seems. Most politicians in this environment see a solution to every problem in new taxes. Hard to talk about freedom, when you're not allowed to vote on taxes.

There's a also a push for truthspeak - younger generations are no longer sure freedom of speech should be sacred, because it wasn't explained as important enough, so they themselves get ideas about what should be censored and why. Again, the gvnmt is quick to agree with them by offering a way to compile a list of truths.

Also, public healthcare in EU is only for the poor - if you can afford to pay private, you're not even thinking about going public. It just doesn't work like some people here thinks it does.

So, no, Europe is not a dreamland compared to USA, it just has a different set of problems.