Our Views: Free speech is tough sell
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In a world where peoples are divided against each other already, there are two views of Geert Wilders. One is that he is a truth-teller about Islamic extremism; the other is that he is a bigot who paints all Islamists with a broad brush of prejudice.
His high-profile rabble-rousing, though, gives some insight into how the world will cope with what the late historian Samuel Huntington called a clash of civilizations. Shall we have the full, and often uncomfortable, debate about ideas, or shall we seek to silence views that we disagree with?
These questions particularly highlight the differences between the United States approach to free speech and that of much of the rest of the world, including our friends in Great Britain and elsewhere.
Wilders is a Dutch parliamentarian who was refused admission to Britain because of fears his message would spark violence. The kingdom is home to 2 million Muslims; governments there have sought to calm racial and religious tensions since suicide bombers killed 53 rush-hour commuters in 2005.
Wilders outraged Muslims by comparing their holy book to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and calling for ending Muslim immigration to Europe. His short film “Fitna” implies Islam justifies violence and terrorism; it has become a cause to combat his view of the religion.
What is important about Wilders is the response to his provocative views. Wilders sued in British courts and won against a government ban order; he has since spoken as well in the United States.
In America, the right to free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution; the idea of banning a speaker because of fears of violence is not part of Americans’ DNA. But in the rest of the world, free-speech rights are greatly limited by government authority, even in the advanced democracies.
There are, of course, painful histories that led to restrictions on speech. In Germany, advocating views that smack of Nazism is forbidden by law, because of the horrors that Hitler brought to the world. But the American view of speech tends to be that the marketplace of ideas, rather than the government, should sort out what is right.
During a period in which the civilized world struggles against a network of fanatics bent on violence, the American principle of open debate is difficult for even some of our friends in foreign governments to appreciate. An unfortunate tendency is for those in liberal societies to apologize for the actions of the ignorant in response to free-speech issues. When riots broke out in Muslim countries against Danish editorial cartoons that mocked Islam’s founding father, the “provocation” of speech was deplored by government officials seeking to calm the waters.
Free speech matters. One knows one enjoys the right when one speaks up on behalf of those with whom one painfully disagrees.
That is a principle, though, that is a tougher sell in many countries than Americans think.
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