The differences between the US and Europe with respect to free speech and online expression seem small but represent a massive difference in philosophy and world view.
JD Vance’s speech last week in Munich has upset the Europeans. The head of the security conference where the vice president spoke broke down in tears when discussing Vance’s words. 60 Minutes had an approving article on how Germany prosecutes thousands of cases of online crime every year: spreading lies or insulting people or groups can be grounds for arrest and prosecution. Their reporter joined a police action against a family whose son posted a “racist cartoon” online. The Europeans’ desire to stop lies or hurt feelings will be the end of the continent.
When I was growing up outside of Chicago, the local Nazis threatened to march in Skokie, then the home to many Holocaust survivors. There were debates as to whether to let them march: what are the limits to free speech when the speech is hateful? The Blues Brothers had the best treatment of this specific subject, by driving them off of a bridge and into a river. During that time, my father was adamant that the Nazis must be given the opportunity to march. He had gone through Nazi Germany. His father lost work because he was a Jew, and he lost his friends for the same reason. A local doctor in SS black sewed up his hand after he fell during a chase by Nazi Youth. So, if anyone would want to bottle up the wannabe Aryans, it should have been my dad. But, to the contrary, he said that they must be given the opportunity to march. “If you ban their speech, it will not be long before you ban speech that you accept today.” And he was right. Once you start banning speech, it is almost impossible to stop the process until it cuts at things that are near and dear to you.
And this is the key difference between the US and Europe. The founding documents of the United States make it clear that man’s rights are God-given and thus inviolable at the hands of any government. The European democracies grant their citizens rights and thus can take them away as they see fit. There is a Jewish teaching that God does not give a person a challenge to which he cannot rise to the occasion to meet. Thus, when a young couple has a baby, it means that God is betting that they can bring up and train the child successfully. In America, people are treated as responsible, thinking individuals. We would rather have lies, distortions, and misrepresentations available online and in print and let the people figure things out for themselves, rather than government authorities and their online partners do it for us. Mark Zuckerberg in the past vacillated between censoring political messages that Facebook described as false and letting them go through and giving the people the opportunity to think for themselves. The Trump/Vance administration is a firm believer in letting people figure out for themselves what the truth is. The Europeans refuse their people this opportunity because they ultimately do not trust “We the People” to come to acceptable conclusions.
If the issues were black and white, then maybe one could live with the European approach. Anyone who posts online that the Cubs won yesterday 12-3, when in reality they lost 7-0 will merit a visit from the polizei. The problem is that the European leaders and the Biden White House tried to convert anything that they did not like into misinformation or disinformation in order to control the narrative. Anyone citing data against the official positions on Covid, immigration or climate change would be considered to be violating speech laws by promoting “lies” as the government defines them. But there are data and experts to support the posted opinions and like the theory that the virus came from the virus institute, the unacceptable opinion might well be true. No matter. If you say that the vaccines don’t work and the official position is that they do, then you are lying online and may well be prosecuted in countries like Germany or England. In the US, let the information flow and let the people figure things out for themselves. Like God who Alone grants Americans their rights, the US believes in the people and gives them great leeway to run their lives and think for themselves. Since much of the official positions on climate, Covid, DEI, trans, and other subjects are based on ideology, governments try to enforce them as official truths. The alternative is that people will ditch the state truths and find out the real ones instead.
A country that sends its police out to arrest its citizens for online commentary is one that has no confidence in itself or its people. A country that trusted its people would give them the latitude to think for themselves on every subject. Let the information flow, and let the people winnow the chaff away and get to the kernel of truth. When governments do it for the people, the end result is often ideology masquerading as truth, and the people’s ability to discern atrophies, like all muscles that are not used for a long time.
The Europeans do not see that they are heading down the path of the old Soviet Union, where Pravda and Izvestia told the people what truth was acceptable. The new government newspapers will scream that Covid vaccines are perfect! They cause no illness! Climate change is real! We must destroy our flatulating cows immediately! They can brook no alternative opinions, because their views are the real lies, and a free market of ideas would show how empty their positions really are. “We can’t trust the people to think for themselves. We will tell them what to think, and anyone who says otherwise will be arrested for threatening the peace or promoting lies.” Such words could have come from the mouth of Joseph Stalin or Keir Starmer.
When Covid restrictions came into place, I would walk around the open-market shuk or downtown Jerusalem. Seeing once bustling areas deserted and depressing, I realized how fragile our apparently robust societies really are. Just a small hiccup, and all of the shopping, eating out, and entertainment are gone. So too with speech. We take it granted that we can express ourselves and we let each free citizen determine the correctness or truthfulness of public information. Not so in Europe. People, like in the USSR, are beginning to self-censor for fear of that knock on the door. Shame on Europe. The cradle of modern freedoms has become an intolerant nanny state. By trying to prevent the spread of lies or hurt feelings, they will bring an end to Europe.
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