The Imperial Bureaucrat

The European Union is trying to create a sophisticated, nuanced approach to free speech - as Volokh says, "as opposed to America's "absolutist" insistence that people should be able to express even evil and offensive ideas".

Everyone who genuflects to Europe for political and human-rights sophistication should read this.

This is a question at the very heart of free speech and democratic self-government: May people criticize their governors, suggest that what the governors condemn as evil is actually good, and therefore implicitly urge that either the governors or the rules they adopt should be changed? In broader and broader areas, the Europeans are answering "no."

I'll say it again -- I am not an expert on European law, and am thus hesitant to express what rules the Europeans should implement for themselves (though I feel pretty confident saying that this proposal would be a very serious mistake). But I've heard many people, including American law professors, suggest that America adopt a more European approach to free speech principles. It's helpful to see, then, what the more European approach would actually look like. And it's also helpful to see the slippery slope in action -- from banning advocacy of violence, to banning advocacy of discrimination, to banning Holocaust denial, to banning any speech that purports to justify behavior that an international criminal court has condemned as "genocide" or "crime against humanity."

How does one get through to these people?

Posted by Mitch at November 11, 2002 04:14 PM