Geogramatt: Agreed.

About time. March of progress, etc. I'd still rather walk or take the bus, causes fewer problem.

And it should be obvious that there are other ways, practiced in other countries, to swamp public opinion - ways that do not permit what I've referred to as 'free speech' above - one might hmm think of China in this way. Oddly enough, in some such places people are smarter about reading between the lines in the press, and in what people say, than they are in places where a level playing field is imagined. But I still prefer the formal guarantees.
Like I said, propaganda exists in many forms, but it needs power behind it to be effective, and that power can be in terms of law, wealth, or (as is the usual case) a combination of the two. I can't at the moment think of any place where this is not the case.

@Geezer: When PC is used in nasty ways then I am against the nasty ways it is being used. But others use the same sorts of tactics, and the left in the US is not large, unless you are referring to US liberals, who aren't exactly a huge majority either.
Anyway, the problem with free speech in the US and many other places is not that speech is really restricted in any stringent terms, but that the mass of the media is controlled by huge corporate interests with fingers in many pies, dominated by advertising revenues, etc., and swamps public opinion with its points of view. Check out who owns major media outlets, and how articles are presented, buried, ignored or slanted by them. Many seem to think that papers such as the New York Times are somehow 'left', when in fact they generally merely present the views and promote the attitudes of sections of the owning class.
So when I speak of freedom of speech (and of the press), I don't by any means mean that it's all somehow open on a level playing field - I simply mean that there are plenty of formal, legal guarantees that say you can pretty much say what you want, even if you're not rich enough to be heard by many. This is indeed worth something, and it's important to make the most of it, no matter what your opinions, even though money and power weigh a hell of a lot more than your voice.
Yeah, as I've said, Yang seems naive to me too.

@Peter: My impression is that there are a lot of people spouting off freely in favor of Trump and for closed US borders as well - am I wrong?