'Free Speech' and the 1st Amendment Aren't Always the Same Thing

Maybe we should understand what people in other countries think before we tell them they are wrong.

A Muslim man holds a sign in front of police during a protest against The Innocence of Muslims in Athens on Sept. 23. (AP)

"Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech," President Obama told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. "Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs."

This defense was too measured for some. My Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg argues that "[b]lasphemy is an indispensable human right . . . the essence of free speech." Obama could have explained that to the world, "but he didn't."

I'm sure others found it too robust. Stanley Fish (a beloved former prof) recently explained that Arab rioters -- indeed, one could read his essay as saying, all Arabs -- reject liberal values and regard any criticism of Islam "as a blow that is properly met by blows in return."

Americans seem curiously unaware that, in many countries, thoughtful, modern, secular-minded people don't reject free speech -- they reject the claim that it protects The Innocence of Muslims. Under the most advanced legal norms in their countries, free speech doesn't include the right to incite hatred against racial or religious groups.

American society has made choices about which kinds of speech to permit and which to forbid. Since the mid-1960s, we have protected most racial and religious hate speech, even while we reject threats against individuals, incitement to immediate violence, and "fighting words." Most of those choices, I think, are good ones. Attempts to silence hate speech may begin with good motives; but, over time, they tend to silence discussion, not to foster dialogue.

But that American view isn't the "essence" of free speech. Much of the advanced, democratic world questions it, not from ignorance but from painful experience.

Human rights as international law came into existence after World War II. The field was born in a determination that fascism and Nazism would never recur. Regimes like Hitler's maintained power through censorship, but they came to power because as political movements they observed no boundaries on decent discourse. They used mass communications to dehumanize their enemies -- Jews, socialists, non-"Aryans." By mainstreaming hate speech, they undermined and destroyed democratic governments, then justified official discrimination and finally genocide.

A mature regime of international human rights, many observers believed, would take both these dangers into account. Unchecked incitement to war and hatred might be every bit as dangerous as official censorship and repression. The international human-rights norms they forged reflect both cautions.

View post:
'Free Speech' and the 1st Amendment Aren't Always the Same Thing