On my flight home from Poland, I was doing what I often do: writing. A male flight attendant from Germany noticed me and asked what I was working on. “A column,” I said. We chatted briefly, and I explained my beliefs about the importance of exchanging ideas without racing from disagreement to hate.
He leaned in, gave me a look halfway between amused and serious, and said: “You know, what you’re writing is illegal in Europe.”
He wasn’t kidding, and that blew my mind! I'm just a guy living in the corn and potato fields of central Wisconsin. I've read about protests and countries fighting to limit their citizens' speech. I don't consider myself ignorant; I'm a student of history and well-informed, but witnessing a protest against Israel in a city's square and that conversation hit me hard.
Since coming home, I can't get that warning out of my mind, along with a question: In the past several years, how hard have the Democrats worked to limit my speech?
Freedom of expression is often a topic of concern for Europeans, yet it exists under a sense of oppression, tightly bound by legal constraints. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that the right to free expression exists, but only within "limits prescribed by law." Those four words give governments all the wiggle room they need to try keeping their people compliant.
And it's not just a thought experiment; it's being put into practice.
In Germany, platforms are required to remove "illegal" content within 24 hours under the NetzDG law. France tried going further, but its efforts were rebuffed because the Avia law encroached too far on liberties. Due to the European Union's Digital Services Act, bureaucrats have broad authority to define "illegal content" while penalizing platforms that fail to remove it.
Europe doesn't have free speech; it's a privilege extended until the courts rule that it goes too far. And it appears to be working; slogans are banned, tweets are investigated, and words challenging official narratives "disappear" from public view. There are consequences: A woman in England was sentenced to jail for praying. Another Brit was arrested and charged for standing silently in a position that appeared to be a prayer.
Meanwhile, in Poland, a few dozen people loudly protested Israel's acts in Gaza.
Double standard, anybody?
If you're a regular here at PJ Media, you already know America is distinct because of one thing: our unconditional First Amendment. The First Amendment doesn't say that free speech exists "within limits"; it says that the government shall make no law abridging it.
It's blunt and clear: It allows us to be wrong, abrasive, mocking, offensive, and even cruel, plus, in my case, I'm allowed to call our governor an idiot. Because our Founders understood that dangerous words are typically the ones tyrants fear most, those words remain legal.
Here's something Europeans, and many Americans, forget: The First Amendment survives only because of the Second. The right to bear arms has never been about hunting or shooting clays; it ensures that no tyrant, whether an English crown or a bureaucrat in Brussels, silences people without consequences.
The First Amendment is the shield, while the Second is the sword that makes the shield real.
After he walked away, I realized that the flight attendant's remark wasn't what chilled me; it was the casual tone, as if it was apparent, even expected. To the German citizen, the criminalization of words wasn't alarming, just ordinary.
What we have is a set of examples where liberty erodes; there aren't dramatic crackdowns, but incremental adjustments that give people time to grow used to what's expected. Writers pre-edit thoughts, teachers avoid sensitive topics, students learn that silence is safer than honesty, and people police their own words before the government needs to.
When people forget to speak freely, they eventually also forget how to think freely.
Some Americans shrug and say, “That’s Europe’s problem.” But Europe’s problem doesn’t stay in Europe. Global companies enforce European laws on their platforms, often applying the same restrictions worldwide. When Brussels demands the removal of content, it doesn’t matter if the speaker was in Berlin or Boston; the censorship bleeds across borders.
We are already seeing the creep of those standards into American debate. Efforts to regulate “misinformation,” campaigns to broaden the definition of “hate speech,” and universities enforcing rigid speech codes all echo Europe’s model. The temptation to police words for “safety” grows stronger every year.
And once you hand the state the authority to define what is safe to say, you have already surrendered freedom.
Over the past fifteen years, Democrats have claimed the mantle of protecting expression even while tightening its leash.
Under President Obama, the push for net neutrality was sold as a defense of an open internet, preventing service providers from throttling or blocking websites, or controlling the flow of ideas.
The idea sounded noble, but it also revealed a Democratic pattern of defending free speech in the abstract. Yet, in reality, they pursued regulations that let them decide which voices deserved to be heard.
Like a bad penny, that habit resurfaced in 2021, when Democratic Senators Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono, and Amy Klobuchar introduced the SAFE TECH Act. Their bill would have gutted Section 230, exposing platforms to lawsuits for any content they “amplified.” They pitched it as a way to rein in harmful disinformation. In reality, it would have forced companies to smother controversial viewpoints before anyone ever read them. That’s the contradiction Democrats hope nobody catches: praising free speech while narrowing its boundaries.
Washington Democrats have been less eager when it comes to defending us from abusive lawsuits meant to silence us. That's why the federal anti-SLAPP Act keeps rotting in committee. If the act becomes law, the powerful would find themselves stripped of one of their favorite weapons: lawfare—suits filed not to win, but to bleed critics dry and scare the rest of us into silence. An anti-SLAPP law would hand ordinary Americans a shield, forcing elites to think twice before weaponizing the courts.
Therein lies the problem: Congress buries it because the same class that could pass it is the one that benefits from keeping it frozen.
Rarely in history have politicians forfeited control unless they have no choice, because until Americans start shouting from the rooftops, any SLAPP reform is, like Carnac the Great's questions, kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls' porch.
In fairness, not every Democrat ignores the problem. In 2022, Representative Jamie Raskin introduced the SLAPP Protection Act, a modest measure aimed at resisting legal intimidation, which didn’t advance, but at least acknowledged the abuse.
At the state level, Democrats in Wisconsin have reintroduced their own anti-SLAPP bill, giving the state's residents a fighting chance when targeted for speaking their minds.
These efforts are the rare exceptions where some Democrats understand what's at stake, even if the rest of Washington's elites prefer leaving their intimidation weapons untouched.
Most of the time, when Democrats do act, it's typically out of convenience. For example, this year, they rolled out the NOPE Act, aimed at blocking politically motivated prosecutions of critics, including media outlets, faith groups, and nonprofits.
The NOPE Act looks like a legitimate defense of free speech on the surface, but this effort only came about after high-profile controversies showed how easily government powers stifle dissent.
In a 2022 speech at Stanford, the Light-Bringer Barack Obama made his position clear by declaring disinformation a threat to democracy, while urging more oversight of Big Tech.
The Great One's message wasn't one of embracing debate; he wants to regulate it, giving more authority to bureaucrats who already have too much.
His speech is a microcosm of the Democratic stance: Defend the "right" speech, regulate the rest, and let Big Brother decide the difference.
Although what the flight attendant told me was merely an observation, his tone carried the weight of an indictment, because in Europe, words themselves are criminalized.
Democrats here at home spend much of their time and effort threading the needle between defending speech they like, while stomping on speech they don't.
Obama's net neutrality was sold as a way of preserving a free internet, but lawmakers worked to chip away at Section 230, the backbone of free digital speech.
I like Jamie Raskin as much as I like diarrhea, but his anti-SLAPP bill was a rare defense of ordinary people who find themselves up against powerful interests. However, his efforts were undermined by measures like the SAFE TECH Act, which would've opened the door to censorship in the name of "safety." While the NOPE Act had noble parts, it wasn't altruism that spawned it; it was born out of political convenience rather than something rarely seen in D.C.: principle.
It's a pattern that matters because once we accept speech is negotiable, we've already lost. Europe openly enforces restrictions, while in many cases, Democrats chase after them through regulation and flowery language about their battle against "misinformation."
It's always the same result: fewer voices, less dissent, more control.
Then something chilling happened after Charlie Kirk's murder: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi talked about making hate speech illegal. Although she walked those comments back, it remains a kind of warning shot that we need to take seriously.
If we let our government decide what counts as "hate," we're handing our rights over to a power that would outlaw not only slurs and insults, but anything the ruling elite finds troubling; the same logic Europe has used for decades.
That's how liberty deteriorates in practice, not theory.
During my flight, the man assumed he was making small talk, but what he really did was touch a divide that defines the age we live in: in Europe, this column is probably illegal; in America, it's not.
So far.
When Democrats draft bills carving up speech into categories, and even when Pam Bondi, America's top cop, talks about making hate speech illegal, alarms should be ringing louder than they already are. We surrender the First Amendment once we allow the government to define safe words.
That's why the Second Amendment is just as important as the First, because once lawmakers or regulators decide which words are crimes, the only remaining backstop is the citizen refusing to be silenced.
The First Amendment is our voice. The Second Amendment is the guarantee that our voice can't be stolen.
So, yes, the flight attendant was right about Europe, but wrong if he thought that it should be normal everywhere.
America remains different.
Only if we fight to keep it that way.
When that flight attendant casually told me my column would be illegal in Europe, he revealed a truth Americans can’t ignore: free speech is rare, fragile, and easily stripped away. And while Democrats occasionally wave the banner of “free expression,” their record shows otherwise: Carving exceptions, regulating platforms, and deciding which words are safe enough to say.
That’s not freedom.
That’s conditional permission.
PJ Media exists to draw the line, to speak what others won’t, and to remind Americans that the First Amendment stands only because the Second defends it. If you believe speech is not a privilege but a right worth fighting for, we’re your voice.
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