On Aug. 31, the nation of Brazil banned Twitter — no one in real life calls it “X” — in an argument over free speech.

The fight between Twitter’s owner, American billionaire Elon Musk, and Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been simmering for years. The Brazilian Congress passed an “Internet Bill of Rights” in 2014 that left moderation up to platforms, but the bill included a judicial takedown rule under which internet websites and social media platforms, though not immediately liable for users’ illegal or offensive content, could become liable if they failed to remove specific content after receiving a Brazilian court order.

Twitter typically follows national laws in the countries where it operates, such as banning accounts, removing posts or providing user data at these nations’ requests, even if those nations’ laws conflict with the laws of the United States.

In October 2022, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a populist conservative, narrowly lost the presidential election to leftist former President Lula da Silva. Spurred on by posts on Twitter suggesting the election was fraudulent, Bolsonaro supporters stormed the National Congress, presidential palace and the Supreme Federal Court on Jan. 8, 2023, not unlike the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the United States.

Bolsonaro is facing charges of an attempted coup and fled to the Hungarian embassy.

The Brazilian high court requested social media platforms suspend accounts linked to former Bolsonaro’s failed coup attempt, provide the IP addresses of those users and name a legal representative in Brazil after the most recent one resigned in August.

Musk refused to do so, while also reinstating Brazilian accounts that had been banned before he bought the company in 2022.

The court then banned Twitter from Brazil while imposing a fine more than the annual income of the average Brazilian on those who attempt to skirt the ban with a virtual private network.

The question is whether free speech is a fundamental human right or something bestowed by a government. While the U.S. Constitution proclaims the former, many other countries operate under the latter assumption.

In France, free speech laws penalize non-public insults to persons or groups because of their origin or identity with fines ranging from €500 to €3,000.

In Great Britain, similar offensive statements or “hate speech” carry fines of up to £1,000 with the threat of a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

The United States has no such laws because the First Amendment to the Constitution does not treat free speech like a government gift granted only to good citizens, but as an unalienable right inherent in our humanity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does the same, in Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Yet threats to that freedom abound, even here. In April 2022, the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a new Disinformation Governance Board, which drew the ire of both Republican lawmakers — naturally — but also progressives, civil libertarians, free speech advocates and civil rights leaders. The board was “suspended” shortly thereafter in May 2022, a move that should be celebrated by both sides and all Americans.

Why?

First, amnesiac lawmakers always seem to forget that a government policy, agency or power established by the party in power to curtail opposition from the minority will be equally abused once that opposition takes control and uses the power in turn to curtail the very party that imposed it.

Don’t create a weapon your enemy will use against you if you lose the next election.

Second, the idea of a “ministry of truth” infantilizes Americans, assuming that we can’t identify falsehoods without a government master, or that only bureaucratic experts can tell the rest of us what the truth is.

In any population, there will be a fringe who doesn’t get the joke, the wink or believes absurd conspiracies — after all, Qanon and “sovereign citizens” persist, YouTube has flat-earther videos and bear-eater Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was polling at 5% this election cycle — but as a collective, most people can spot lies, falsehoods and mistruths, even if we may debate them, especially in politics. Logical fallacies like confirmation bias, false dichotomy, whataboutism and sunk cost are more likely the culprit of flawed reasoning than overt misinformation by bad actors.

Third, the thing that terrifies Americans more than inflation, invasion, insurrection or immigration is the government deciding what “truth,” “misinformation” or “facts” are.

The freedom of speech comes with great responsibility — we must face the repercussions for that speech socially, professionally and personally — but from our friends, family and other citizens, not from the government, not ever. That’s the difference between inalienable free speech and what passes for such freedom elsewhere.

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in Texas v. Johnson in 1989.

Free speech is inherent in our nature. We have a right to say, think and share what we believe without any government’s interference. Free speech obligates no one to listen or to platform those ideas on privately-owned sites, media outlets, publications or in private spaces. Listeners have every right to judge the speaker as a lunatic, racist, liar, fool, undateable or unemployable, and mock them, counter their arguments with better ones and raise a chorus to out-amplify their words, which is the truest and best way to counter “bad” speech. Words matter, so use them wisely.