In his Munich speech, Vice President JD Vance illustrated a significant disconnect between Americans and Europeans when he lamented the attendees’ relentless attacks on free speech as a betrayal of shared values. In fact, free speech never was a principle that Europeans promoted, observed, or had regard for. Far from a shared value, the philosophical difference between how Americans and Europeans regard free speech is one of the defining differences between the US and the rest of the developed world. 

One narrative of speech-policing in Europe holds that after the Holocaust, Europeans – with Germany and its collaborators in the lead – were so shocked and embarrassed by what they had done, that they enacted strict speech codes with regard to Neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial. These laws established cultural permission and legal precedent for other restrictions on speech that European governments deemed heinous – racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, nativism, Islamophobia, transphobia, global-warming denial, vaccine skepticism, and other thought crimes. According to this narrative, Europe has slipped down a slippery slope, from Holocaust-denial laws to draconian speech codes that stifle open inquiry and criminalize dissent. 

In fact, however, Europeans never shared Americans’ veneration of free speech nor struggled against the natural impulse to police and criminalize speech. Some argue that Europeans, in contrast to Americans, outlawed expressions of Holocaust denial and Nazism because Europeans were more shocked and repulsed by the Holocaust and thus more outraged by Neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial.  This is untrue.   First, there is good evidence that Europeans were less repulsed and outraged by the Holocaust than Americans.  Moreover, the real reason Europeans found it so easy to outlaw Holocaust denial is that Europeans – like most nations in history – always saw speech codes as common-sensical, and found Americans’ free-speech sensibilities bizarre and reckless.  

To the degree that free speech was defended in Europe, it was defended on pragmatic grounds: that when people can express their ideas freely, the public benefits from a marketplace of ideas. But this meant that when this marketplace of ideas produced bad ideas, criminalizing their expression was (and remains) a perfectly reasonable remedy. By contrast, the conventional American approach to free speech is primarily moral.   Americans have been advocates of free speech because liberty is first in their minds, not a well-regulated marketplace of ideas. They fear and condemn government-policed speech not because it might diminish the marketplace of ideas and thus stifle productive discussions that might benefit society, but because they believe that it is morally offensive for the government to forcibly punish or intimidate anyone into silence. Certainly, American champions of free speech do value the marketplace of ideas for pragmatic reasons,  but their primary concern is preserving a society of free men and women, who are free to speak their minds without fear that their rulers will punish them for it.   

America was not born venerating free speech. Until the 20^th century, the Bill of Rights prohibited only Federal authorities from policing speech, leaving state and local governments to do so according to local laws, customs, and sensibilities. Over time, however, Americans made free speech the central core of American identity as the first article of faith in America’s civil religion, and began to enforce free speech nationally. 

The American approach to free speech is evident in the method that American governments have developed to disdain, delegitimize, and marginalize unpopular ideas. While Americans repeatedly are tempted to outlaw speech they consider beyond the pale, the preferred method established to disavow and discourage such ideas it is to withhold Federal contracts and funding from those who voice them. For example, the Ku Klux Klan can operate and disseminate its ideas freely in the United States, but it cannot qualify for any form of government contract or funding. Its members are entitled to speak their minds freely, but they are not entitled to government contracts and funding. In Bob Jones University v. United States (1983) it was ruled that the Federal Government may deny tax-exempt status to a university for disallowing interracial dating, one example of the indirect approach to dealing with racially offensive ideas.  

Indeed, this is the method that the Trump administration is adopting to combat the unprecedented wave of antisemitism washing over America’s biggest cities and most prestigious colleges and universities. In accordance with the Antisemitism Awareness Acts of 2018 and 2019, the Trump administration designated antisemitic discrimination (alongside discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin) as a Title VI violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It thus promises to prosecute antisemitic actions – harassment, violence, and vandalism by individuals, or institutional discrimination by college administrations – rather than criminalizing individuals’ antisemitic speech. Additionally, the administration vows to enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act on foreign students who support Hamas, citing the law’s authorization to deny or revoke the visa of foreign nationals who, contrary to their visa application, support groups or activities that U.S. law defines as terrorist. 

Free speech is not a principle that Americans share with other Western nations. In fact, America’s free speech fundamentalism is one of the quirks that make the United States so puzzling to Europeans. Americans exalt and celebrate it as their first, central, and defining freedom, whereas Europeans regard it pragmatically, as a practical instrument, like interest rates, calibrated to serve society’s shifting needs and desires. Europeans see free speech as one element in constructing a productive marketplace of ideas. Americans, on the other hand, regard it religiously as a moral truth that is the foundation of a good and just society.