Does Europe Need a First Amendment?

Professor Jonathan Turley wrote an interesting piece in the Washington Post today entitled “The Free World Bars Free Speech.” The article discusses how the West is losing its faith in its free speech values as evidenced by increasing convictions in various countries for criticizing and mocking religious faiths.  These countries include Western states such as the UK, France, Canada, Austria, and the Netherlands as well as non-Western countries like India and Saudi Arabia.  There is even a movement within the United Nations for an international ban on hate speech.

Of course, absent from this list of countries curtailing free speech is the United States.  The First Amendment of the Constitution leaves America virtually alone in its near complete toleration of racist and other forms of intolerant speech.  As a result, bigotry exists rather comfortably in American society as far as the law is concerned.  In many ways, Catharine McKinnon’s observation that “the law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course in this country” is true.

But society produces other  forms of pressure and constraint upon such speech.  Generally speaking, bigotry is taboo in America.  Our societal norms of tolerance and sensitivity to people of other faiths and colors provide an important check upon hate speech.  In fact, they in many ways disincentivize it.  Bigots in America are likely to find themselves shunned by the rest of society.  So, despite America’s horrific history of government-backed racism, tolerance seems to be progressing from the bottom up.

Nonetheless, it would be unwise for others to blindly follow the American example.  Europe is in many ways a demographic volcano.  The Muslim population has been on the rise in Europe for years.   This is not an assimilated Muslim population as is more generally the case in the US, but a minority that wholeheartedly clings to its traditional way of life.  It is a minority angry from its virtual isolation from the rest of European society.  In France, most Muslims live on the outskirts of the cities where education is poor and unemployment high.  They feel marginalized as opportunities do not seem to extend to their people.

Inflammatory speech is thus the spark that can potentially set Europe ablaze.  Now one might wonder how this is any different than the circumstances in the United States.  After all, minorities, and African Americans in particular, are predominant in inner cities.  They too do not have the same employment and educational opportunities as the majority.  However, the US not only seems to be at a different stage in its race relations, but race relations in America is in fact a unique dynamic altogether.  Whites and blacks have lived together in the US for centuries and the fight has always been to rid affirmative laws that branded blacks as inferior to whites.  These laws have now been wiped away and we are more or less in a state of de jure equality.  Minorities in the US might be angry but they are not as angry as Muslims in Europe.  The worst of American race relations seems to be in its past whereas Europe’s race war may well be in its future.

It seems that Europe’s leaders have considered this reality.  In forgoing its own First Amendment, Europe has erred toward the side of stability.