The War on Free Speech: How the Left Is Rewriting History and Undermining Democracy

Free and prosperous nations are built and maintained not by governments, but by the individuals who comprise them speaking their minds, worshiping, and associating freely – and we must guard against assaults on these basic liberties with the same vigor as if we were defending our homeland against foreign invaders.  Last week, mainstream American news outlets aired absurd and oxymoronic segments insinuating that curtailing free speech was necessary to the preservation of democracy.  This is the latest in the progressive Left’s effort to make the future of America look more like Europe and less like what our Founders intended, and it demonstrates yet again why President Trump’s victory was so important.

First, 60 Minutes aired a disturbing special highlighting speech codes and censorship laws in Germany, implying throughout that these same laws should come to America.  One of the CBS hosts went so far as to say that while the United States allows “hate-filled or toxic” speech on social media and internet platforms, Germany is “trying to bring some civility to the worldwide web.”

How exactly is Germany bringing “civility” to the internet?  According to CBS, by criminalizing any online speech with which the German elite disagrees.  To drive its point home, CBS interviewed three German state prosecutors about its laws.  One displayed a shelf of files containing hundreds of cases where ordinary Germans were prosecuted for things they had said or posted on social media.  One prosecutor explained, helpfully, that German citizens “have free speech…but (free speech) also has its limits.”  What are these limits? When asked if insulting someone online was a criminal offense, the prosecutors responded, “Yes.”  

These kinds of laws are common today across Europe. Indeed, “hate-motivated” speech is illegal under European Union law.  For all of Europe’s angst about American democracy – and I had a front row seat to plenty of it as Secretary of State – it is Europe itself that has abandoned its commitment to upholding the values of free democracies in recent years.  Only in some places, such as Italy, is this slide toward progressive, socialist Marxism beginning to reverse course.

An even worse display was made last week, though, and it didn’t come from Europeans – it came from one of CBS’ lead anchors, Margaret Brennan.  She managed to top the German prosecutors during her interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio when she condescendingly chided Secretary Rubio by saying that Adolf Hitler rose to power because “he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.”  Yes, you read that right: Now the Holocaust happened because there was too much free speech – not because Nazi Germany was characterized by the one-party rule of an antisemitic political movement that crushed free speech on the path to murdering millions, something that Secretary Rubio pointed out.  The truth doesn’t matter to the progressive Left, though.  According to their philosophy, free speech is permissible only when it aligns with their ideology, freedom of religion is reconceptualized as freedom from religion, and freedom of assembly only applies to groups whose voices are allowed to be heard. The far Left’s aim is to use the same tactics of censorship, ostracization, and criminalization utilized by the worst authoritarian regimes in recent history, from the Nazi party to Stalin’s rule to the Chinese Communist Party today, to rewrite history so that the values that define our nation become anathema. 

Our Constitution’s Bill of Rights begins with protecting every American’s freedom of speech, assembly, and religion precisely because without it, republican democracy is impossible.  Our Founders understood that state-directed suppression and censorship would open the door to all manner of evil practiced in the interests of a vaguely-defined “common good” – a common good that the government alone would get to define.  They understood the best chance for our Republic to survive would be to ensure our nation was a place where even the most difficult debates could be had in the public square and where the best ideas could continue to win out on their own merits.  This is why it was so important that President Trump won the election.  Americans want to see an end to the march toward greater censorship and government power, and I hope the Trump Administration continues to roll back these efforts, whether they come from Europe or progressive elites in our own country.