I have been meaning to write up an article on how free speech is being slowly and systematically curtailed in Sweden for some time. Today though, VDARE.com beat me to it.

The article sums up the situation in Sweden nicely, taking the recent prison sentence of Pastor Åke Green for attacking homosexuality in a sermon as a starting point:

Public prosecutor Kjell Yngvesson explained the conviction:
"One may have whatever religion one wishes, but [the sermon] is an attack on all fronts against homosexuals. Collecting Bible [verses] on this topic as he does makes this hate speech."

It goes downhill from there.

The situation described in the article is not limited to Sweden, but is applicable to most of Europe.

In order to stifle any discontent relating to third-world mass immigration, such discontent has, step by step, been outlawed. Personally, I can’t see any reversal of the trend any time soon.

In the US, however, the situation is somewhat different. Thanks to a stronger conservative movement, as well as a firmer constitution, efforts to outlaw politically incorrect expressions outright have been unsuccessful. However, the situation in Europe is relevant to the US in several ways:

1: When US liberals declare that they only want “Hate Crime Laws”, etc. in order to punish actual criminal acts, not speech, they are most likely lying through their teeth.

2: Thus, on this issue, the slippery slope is real. When anti-incitement laws were first instituted in Sweden, their proponents gave limited, ‘reasonable’ rationales for their use. Then the expansion started, through gradual rewrites of the law, as well as precedent.

In short: Americans have to fight the proponents of “anti-hate” laws before they manage to gain a toehold. Otherwise, you might very well, through the march of precedent, have lost your freedom of speech before you realize it was ever at risk.