This is a provocative question, of course, or at least it is seemingly everywhere in the world but the United States. In just the last three years, the Supreme Court has protected highly offensive funeral protests, violent video games, animal “crush” videos, and a host of other types of expression. No law punishing blasphemy or “defamation of religion”—as approved by various UN resolutions and making inroads into the legal codes of even Western countries—could possibly survive First Amendment scrutiny. But that’s not the case elsewhere in the world, as an excellent new video by Danish human rights lawyer Jacob Mchangama shows (courtesy of Free to Choose TV; see press release):



America isn’t immune from increasing demands that free speech be limited to respect religious feelings. Recall the condemnations of the anti‐​Islamic video that may have caused rioting in Cairo on September 11 of last year (but not in Beghazi, as details of that scandal develop). The outcome of this battle will have profound consequences for the ability of people everywhere to freely express themselves and follow their beliefs. Democratic governments play a dangerous game when appeasing religious sensitivities rather than defending free speech.





Mchangama, not coincidentally, is affiliated with the invaluable Human Rights Foundation—an organization that deals with actual human rights violations rather than simply being a vehicle for pushing a transnational leftist agenda—whose president, Thor Halvorssen (with whom I’ve been acquainted since college), calls himself a “classical liberal” rather than a man of the Right or Left.