I’ve been discussing with friends the issue of free speech as it is understood in Britain and the United States. I’m sure that I’ll have some similar conversations when I visit the USA shortly.<\/p>\n
There is a cultural difference between the United States and Europe on freedom of speech which I believe has its roots in the different histories of the two parts of the world.<\/p>\n
Most Americans believe that words and actions are quite distinct and that words should not be criminalised but actions can be. This is the essence of the First Amendment. In this scenario, it is usually argued that the answer to bad speech is good speech and in time the latter will prevail.<\/p>\n
This approach comes from the history of the USA which was largely founded by religious immigrants fleeing Europe where they were persecuted for expressing and practicising their particular religious views. Modern America has no experience of religious wars or ethnic cleansing or extermination camps. The elimination of the American indian does not influence current American thinking. The incarceration of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War was not the result of bad actions or even of bad speech – but the paranoia of wartime.<\/p>\n
n contrast, most Europeans believe that words and actions are related, that the first can lead to the second and that, in cases of particularly bad speech one should not wait until it actually results in bad actions. Therefore it is argued that certain forms of bad speech should be criminalised before it leads to bad actions. This is the essence of our incitement laws and, in some European countries, the criminalisation of Holocaust denial. In this scenario, the answer to the worst of bad speech is to prosecute it – although usually such prosecutions have to be brought by a public prosectors who makes a judgement as to whether on balance it is in the public interest and such prosecutions have to be heard by a jury who are expected to ensure that such trials are not used to constrain free speech.<\/p>\n
This approach comes from the history of Europe which was torn apart by centuries of religious wars and most especially from the experience of the Second World War when the Holocaust could be seen as the end result of centuries of verbal and other denigration of Jewish people.<\/p>\n
Ultimately all freedoms have to be qualified because one’s man’s freedom is frequently another man’s lack of freedom. So one man’s freedom to have slaves is at the expense of another man’s right to be free. One man’s right to bear arms may be at the cost of an innocent bystander being shot dead. A rich man’s freedom to donate any amount of money to political campaigns can be effectively to crush the right of a poor man to be heard politically. One man’s right to insult Jews, homosexuals, Muslims, or women undermines the rights of such groups to live free of fear and humiliation.<\/p>\n
Perhaps because of the country of my upbringing and residence, I prefer the more nuanced European approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been discussing with friends the issue of free speech as it is understood in Britain and the United States. I’m sure that I’ll have some similar conversations when I visit the USA shortly. There is a cultural difference between the United States and Europe on freedom of speech which I believe has its roots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8657"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9536,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions\/9536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}