This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 12th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. The United States is pretty special when it comes

to the protection of a broad conception of the freedom of speech.

In many other countries, either insulting the government or the dominant religion can land you in jail.

And in China, even protesting with blank sheets of paper sends a very clear message about the restriction

of a basic liberty.

Jacob Meachangama is author of Free Speech, a history from Socrates to social media.

We spoke last week.

The United States, of course, has had a long and for a while,

I guess uncertain struggle with respect to speech,

but the First Amendment appears to be pretty clear.

This U.S. Supreme Court seems to be pretty clear in its interpretation of it.

But internationally, how special is the U.S. with respect to speech?

Well, there certainly is a very real degree of free speech exceptionalism in the US,

especially when it comes to why we might call viewpoint absolutism.

So for instance, no government restrictions

on hate speech unless it reaches some fairly high thresholds.

And in general, it takes a lot for the government to be allowed to restrict free speech in the US as opposed to the

European Union, for instance, where all member states are obliged to prohibit certain types

of hate speech, that this also follows from international

human rights law and is integrated in all European democracies in their criminal

laws so in that sense European democracies in their criminal laws.

...