Posted on 08/11/2026 8:04:45 AM PDT by MtnClimber
During Henry’s Kissinger’s famous “Year of Europe” speech in 1973, the then Assistant for National Security affairs observed that, “our values, our goals, and our basic interests are most closely identified with those of Europe.” Indeed, while perhaps Kissinger’s remarks were accurate when taken in the context of Soviet repression and a shared continental commitment to containing the threat, the transatlantic consensus he described has since frayed. Have some East Asian countries moved to take Europe’s place as free speech protectors?
Last September, five armed British police officers stood in London’s Heathrow airport, waiting for the arrival of Graham Linehan’s flight from Arizona with strict orders to arrest the Irish comedian upon his entry into the United Kingdom. Linehan’s offense? Three posts on X, written months earlier from his home in the United States. He was searched, interrogated, and hospitalized from the stress of the ordeal before being released on bail. He was barred from posting again until his case was resolved. On July 9th, 2026, the Metropolitan Police seemingly recognized the absurdity of Linehan’s arrest, compensated him £25,000, albeit still refusing to acknowledge any unlawfulness with the arrest. Instead, the police apologized on account of “shortcomings in both the investigation, arrest and imposition of bail conditions.”
In 2023, over 12,000 people were arrested in the UK under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. This amounts to just over thirty arrests per day across 37 separate police forces - a 58 percent increase relative to pre-pandemic arrests in 2019.
The UK is hardly alone in its ruthless pursuit of policing speech. The European Union mandates that each of its member countries criminalize a form of hate speech, provided that it is public, intentional, and incites hatred against a group
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearbooks.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
The left would criminalize free speech here in the USA if they could get away with it.
We used to have a free-speech crisis at our house all the time when I was a kid. My Mom would yell at us to sit down and shut up!! At least we weren’t arrested.
Yes, let’s remember that example.
They arrested a foreign comedian for posts he made in the US where he enjoys first amendment protections.
Let’s think about that one. Could they arrest an American in Britain for posts that American made while in America? Obviously they think they can.
In September 2024, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that the First Amendment is a "major block" to stopping online disinformation during a World Economic Forum panel on green energy. He noted that it is difficult to build consensus or combat false narratives when people consume biased media because the U.S. Constitution prevents the government from simply eliminating those sources.
The anti-free speech UK is leading the way:
“Over 100 social media posts have been referred for potential arrest by a specialist UK police unit, the National Internet Intelligence Investigations team, as of August 2026.”
The European elites are determined to undermine the traditional concept of a white, Christian Europe. They have mandated censorship to achieve that goal. Freedom of expression is criminalized while the so-called European Court of Human Rights enforces rights for third world economic migrants to settle in Europe. It’s plain nuts.
We should go back to avoiding foreign entanglements already.
One of the reasons our Revolution “was” so successful was the freedom of speech.
I say “WAS” because our lawyer class elected and unelected, has been chipping away at it for many decades.
On the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson complained that the First Amendment “ham-stringed” the government by reducing its power over people.
When Condi Rice was Secretary of State under Bush, she made clear that post-Cold-War Europe does not share our values. She was right, and subsequent history proves it. From WW II on, we were allied with Europe, but it was an alliance of necessity. Prewar, most Americans thought of Europe only as a place where they came from, and which they or their parents gladly left. Postwar, NATO was strictly a security pact to counter the imminent threat from the Red Army on a prostrate Europe’s doorstep; with a troop commitment which Eisenhower envisioned as lasting no longer than ten years. Other than the effete elite, most of us have little in common with Europe today, and thank god Trump is acting like it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.