It is not by accident that we see the movement on America's campuses, of all places, toward Orwellian control of speech evidencing itself at the same time that we see our failed president conferring with the discredited chancellor of Germany, both advocating censorship of the Internet. The left lost its election at home and the left lost the Brixet vote in Europe, the left now strikes back and moves to survive.
In their utopian worldview it is inconceivable that their version of government could be wrong, they must assume that the electorate is wrong, or better, deceived by the propaganda of the right which must be censored for the people's own good.
Living in Germany, I have often felt that the Germans have taken precisely the wrong lesson from the Holocaust. They believe that Hitler came to power through propaganda and the remedy for that is to forbid malicious propaganda and as a consequence we see laws forbidding denial of the Holocaust, for example. We see throughout Europe and increasingly in Canada and on the American campuses criminalization of "hate" speech. This is precisely the wrong lesson, the Germans should turn toward the Enlightenment and fight propaganda with free speech. We believe this in our bones and that is why we have New York Times versus Sullivan which frees political speech and unshackles its from the chilling effect of libel suits. This reaction is so common to our American understanding as to be but a banal observation but, believe me, it's is a doctrine foreign to the soul of this part of Europe.
The great danger of the German approach is, of course, that the government gets on the wrong side of the definition of propaganda, as we see they are now doing respecting Islamic terrorism, Christian proselytizing, and "hate speech" wherever the government finds it inconvenient.
How often do we see one leftist threat after another marching across Europe and at the same time popping up like weeds in America? Just as progressivism leapt over the Atlantic Ocean at the turn of the last century and countless examples thereafter, so now censorship is being imported.
