Europeans often feel irritated by the way Americans boast about the freedom of speech in the US. After all, aren't European countries modern democracies with liberties and freedoms comparable to those on the other side of the Atlantic? Surely, freedom of expression no longer is an American prerogative -- so what the hell is all this noise?
Factually, the European view is justified. While legislation differs somewhat from country to country, law is seldom the most serious impediment to freedom of speech in today's Europe. Technically speaking, we have pretty much the same level of freedom of speech as Americans.
What, however, separates the American conception of free speech from, say, the Finnish one, is that the majority of Americans seem to be able to live with the fact that people who hold differing views should all have the same right to speak their mind. Of course you will always find American-flag-waving hillbillies who will tell you that people criticizing, no, excuse me, badmouthing the President are America-hating liberals who should move to Sawdy Arabia to hang out with their turrorist buddies. But by and large, most Americans would agree that free debate is what America is made of.
Not so in Finland. Despite all the legislation and all the rhetorics about the freedom of speech, Finns tend to have a notoriously low tolerance for the other opinion. We simply cannot stand "stupid" people who don't understand that we hold the sacred truth. So, we tell them to shut up. Or even better, we tell them to keep singing but to change the tune and sing with us.
Most recently, Finns -- or at least a couple of Finnish journalists -- seem to have discovered that Poles are morons. About a week ago, the blogging Helsingin Sanomat staff writer Petteri Tuohinen declared that he is deeply shocked over the Polish President Lech Kaczynski's desire to have the death penalty reinstated in Europe. "How can the head of state of a European country say something so unbelievably stupid," Tuohinen wondered (emphasis added).
Today, Tuohinen was joined by his HS colleague Heikki Aittokoski who published an "open letter to Lech Kaczynski" in the print version of the same paper. Aittokoski not only attacked Kaczynski's views on capital punishment, he also called the Polish MEP Witold Tomczak's proposal to hang crucifixes in the European Parliament "Catholic-conservative clowning" and made fun of the League of Polish Families' name. Finally, he hinted that the EU would be better off without Poland.
Nice. Let's just get rid of everyone we do not fully agree with and keep Europe as ideologically homogenous as possible. In fact, why not get rid of the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons as well. I bet they are stupid too.
What bothers me here is not the fact that Mssrs. Tuohinen and Aittokoski do not like the death penalty. I am not a big fan of it myself. Neither do I want religious symbols hanging in the European Parliament. But the way the two journalists try to dismiss conservatism and conservative Catholic faith as stupid and picture practically the whole nation of Poland as a bunch of clowns just goes against my idea of respecting the other opinion and the intellectual freedom of other people.
Sure enough, Tuohinen and Aittokoski have every right to ridicule President Kaczynski and the Polish people, but would it not be intellectually a little less cowardly to try and debate issues like the death penalty and religion based on facts rather than just say "shut up, stupid?" Wouldn't that make their arguments sound a little more convincing?
Surprisingly, Helsingin Sanomat also published an editorial today, defending the right to talk about the capital punishment. While I find it great that the same paper can print different kinds of opinions, I wonder what is tells about our culture that the biggest newspaper in the country sees a need to publish an editorial to stress that everyone should enjoy the freedom of opinion and the freedom of speech.
Shouldn't that go without saying?
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