Free Speech: Why is so much of the "liberal West" acting so illiberally?

Many of our basic rights in the West are currently under assault

What has happened to the “free world”? What has happened to many of the countries that stood up to communist tyranny in the Cold War and fought fascism in World War II? It seems that in every corner of the West liberty and freedoms are under assault. The right to free speech, the right of assembly, the right to privacy, property rights, basically all the things that we in the West have long held dear are being undermined by governments. The war on speech is especially apparent.

Consider this development in Ireland.

Hate speech bill is ‘restrictive and undemocratic’ warns barrister, as 7,000 people sign petition

Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Ms Sullivan, who is reviewing the proposed bill, said Irish people currently enjoy freedom of speech “without too much thought or appreciation”.

But she said when “deprived”, the fundamental freedom becomes “comparative to oxygen or water”…

…“One of the fundamental rights protected under the Irish Constitution is the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions. It is one of the foundations of a democratic society and it is in everyone’s interests that it be preserved.”

She warned that, under the proposed bill, it will be an offence to “incite hatred” against an individual or a group on account of “certain protected characteristics” — but “there is no clear definition of what ‘inciting hatred’ means”.

Not only this. As we understand it the Irish government would like to enlist an army of online Karens to snitch on their fellow citizens in the name of fighting “hate speech”.

There is no “hate speech” by the way. There is hateFUL speech but in free societies such speech is protected. In totalitarian countries speech is often considered a crime however.

…when the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being framed in 1948 the Stalinist states argued strongly for a provision for states to restrict the right to freedom of expression.  That was rejected and the current Article 19 explicitly defends that right.

The Irish Bill that was approved last Wednesday is clearly an attempt to delimit that right, no matter what way it is parsed or justified.

Given that the modern fight against free speech has Soviet origins it is unsurprising that the current attempts to restrict speech mostly come from the far left (even if the laws also work for the benefit of other less “lefty” interests.)

The sordid origin of hate-speech laws: A tenacious Soviet legacy

There is definitely a fight for freedom in Ireland. Interestingly International Man of Musk has weighed in saying he will pay the legal bills for people in Ireland who are prosecuted under the proposed law.

We have to say, and we have given Elon Musk a pretty hard time over the years, that he’s done some good stuff of late.

But the war on basic human rights in the West is hardly limited to the Emerald Isle.