True, the United States remains an exceptional experiment in free and democratic self-government. Of all the Western-style liberal democracies, the nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" — as Lincoln put it in 1863 at Gettysburg — is grounded in the oldest written constitution, sustains the largest economy, enjoys the greatest diversity, possesses the largest capacity for projecting force around the world, and shoulders the most extensive responsibility for preserving the freedom and openness of the international order. Yet the increasing hostility of influential segments of its population to free speech — not least, speech that affirms American exceptionalism — shows the United States to be in an unwelcome respect all-too-similar to fellow Western liberal democracies.
Its position in the text of the First Amendment symbolizes free speech's indissoluble connection to religious liberty and political liberty. One can neither worship (or not worship) God in accordance with one's conscience, nor persuade and be persuaded by fellow citizens, if government dictates orthodox opinions and punishes the departure from them. Indeed, the more authorities — whether formally through the exercise of government power, or informally through social intolerance — prescribe a single correct view and demonize others, the more citizens lose the ability to form responsible judgments and defend the many other freedoms that undergird human dignity and self-government.
In both American and European societies, according to Michta, the tyranny of public opinion not only dictates what one may not say but also decrees what one must affirm. In both societies, ideological litmus tests govern public discourse. The notion that lively give-and-take is the route to public consensus is fading.
Elite opinion in the West, Michta maintains, not only leans left, but seeks to silence the right. For much of the academic, media, and political establishments, progressive opinions glow with righteousness while viciousness and ignorance indelibly stain conservative convictions.
Cultural and political elites besmirch caring for one's own nation as xenophobia. They fervently embrace globalization. They trumpet their commitment to save the planet while pressing for impossibly expensive and utterly unworkable environmental measures. They revile the popular desire to preserve traditional morality and the nation's inheritance even as they take for granted ordinary people's humanitarian conscience.
The West's descent into unfreedom, argues Michta, stems from the aggressive promulgation of ideas at odds with liberty and limited government. In the 1960s, a critical mass of university professors used their tenured positions not merely to argue for but to institutionalize the belief that to achieve a just society it was necessary to sweep aside the fundamental principles and institutions of liberal democracy.
Over the last 20 years, the neo-Marxist students — and students of the students — of the '60s generation have intensified attacks on free speech. Neo-Marxist thinking replaces the proletariat with a bevy of identity-based groups whose claim to authority arises from their success in portraying themselves as victims of bias and oppression which, they maintain, are deeply embedded within the West. Like Marx's proletariat — or those bourgeois intellectuals whom Marx declared would break from their class and speak on the proletariat's behalf — the neo-Marxists assert that by virtue of their grievances, they have acquired a monopoly on the truth.
The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe 30 years ago and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that followed, argues Michta, "carried a hidden threat" that further damaged the West's commitment to free speech. The great victory of democracy and freedom in the Cold War over communist totalitarianism convinced Western elites that they were uniquely suited to bring democracy and freedom, as they uniquely interpreted it, to the entire globe.
That delusion fuels the self-consuming scorn many intellectuals in the United States as well as in Europe direct at the principles of liberal democracy. At universities, America's founding promise of individual freedom and equality under law is often treated as irredeemably tainted by racism and sexism, colonialism and imperialism. In some cases, free speech is placed on the list of "incorrect phrases" that ought not be uttered, because it belongs among the "impure thoughts" of which minds must be cleansed.
In light of long-term trends, those who care about the erosion of democratic norms in the United States — and who believe that that the United States can serve as a model to fellow liberal democracies — would do well to focus their energies on upholding the constitutional requirements of free speech, cultivating tolerance, and learning to benefit from a diversity of opinion.