A New McCarthyism

Two years ago, I moved to the United States to found a think tank devoted to defending global free expression. What better place to launch than America, which is, according to the law professor and First Amendment expert Lee Bollinger, “the most speech protective of any nation on Earth, now or throughout history”? 

Despite being Danish, I’ve always found America’s civil-libertarian free speech tradition more appealing than the Old World’s model, with its vague terms and conditions. For much of my career, I’ve been evangelizing a First Amendment approach to free speech to skeptical Europeans and doubtful Americans, who are often tempted by laws banning “hate speech,” “extremism,” and “disinformation.” That appreciation for the First Amendment is something I share with many foreigners—Germans, Iranians, Russians—who now call America home. For some of us, that tradition has become a kind of secular article of faith—the realization of which not only offers a sense of identity, but also a rite of passage into American ideals. Indeed, many of us noncitizens nodded in agreement in February when Vice President J.D. Vance said that European speech restrictions are “shocking to American ears.”