A neo-Nazi is jailed for displaying swastikas. A woman is prosecuted for denying the Holocaust. A man is arrested for using a racial epithet. A magazine that publishes an article bemoaning the rise of Islam as a threat to Western values is forced to stand trial.

If you find any of that appealing, you might be better off living in another country. There’s plenty to choose from: Germany, Canada, Great Britain and France are just some of the examples of countries that clamp down on speech more than the United States.

While other countries have chosen to head off thoughts that cause discomfort, Americans see the First Amendment as a bulwark against government oppression and a key protector of freedom. Well, not all Americans. There are plenty who would willingly forgo free-speech rights in times of war or when hate is spewed or when indecency is shown.

Many people wanted to deny parade permits for Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations followers. Others fight for hate-speech laws and other forms of government censorship. In other words, they’d like for America to be more like France or Germany or Canada.

It’s remarkable that the United States stands alone in protecting free speech to the extent that it does. Because of the First Amendment, no other citizens have the right to speak their minds like Americans. Yet so many otherwise patriotic people hate to love it.

Some conservatives feel there’s too much freedom in times of peril. They’d prefer more controls on the media, for fear that criticism or bad news will aid our enemies. Some liberals feel that reasonable speech does not provide a sufficient counterbalance to hate speech.

The irony is that these First Amendment critics are free to bash it and its defenders with indecent language that is brimming with bile. And they often do.

Other countries presume to reach a consensus on what is over the line and then construct laws to protect civility. And so in an otherwise progressive country like Canada, the magazine Maclean’s had to explain itself to a government tribunal after publishing an opinion piece by Mark Steyn that mocked and heaped scorn on the religion of Islam. On June 28, the magazine prevailed.

As the New York Times recently noted, Steyn’s screed isn’t unlike many seen in conservative magazines and blogs in the United States. But if the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal had decided that the article was sufficiently injurious to the “dignity, feelings and self-respect” of Muslims, the magazine could’ve been forced to print a rebuttal or compensate the “wounded.”

It might seem nice to drive vile thoughts underground, but as civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silvergate told the New York Times: “Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.”

Ultimately, the controls clamped on free speech in other countries are condescending. It’s the government telling people that they are too impressionable or ill-equipped to form their own opinions and to fire back.

“Only in America” is often the punch line to a putdown. But in the case of the First Amendment, it’s a point of pride.