In 1941, as the United States neared war with Germany and Japan, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt listed the “Four Freedoms” vital to life - and offered “freedom of speech” as the first freedom, even before “freedom of fear.”
Roosevelt’s stirring words were part of a centuries-long American tradition of protecting free speech - a tradition the United States spread globally. Free speech became a core value, a way for democracies to set themselves apart from dictatorships.
No more.