Britain and Europe have become ¡°a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom,¡± according to Samuel Samson, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

His punchy boss further threatens to bar European visitors to the U.S. for ¡°censoring¡± Americans online. Vice President JD Vance also condemned European ¡°backsliding¡± on basic democratic values in a speech that outraged his audience at the Munich Security Conference last autumn.

It used to be liberal progressives and radicals who denounced the state for infringing freedom of speech. Now it¡¯s the turn of the populist right to rage against ¡°woke¡± censorship. U.S. President Donald Trump¡¯s own respect for the democratic process is questionable and administration officials, contemptuous of academic and artistic freedoms at home, make unlikely ambassadors for human rights abroad. But what if these populists have a point?

Alas, the U.K. and Europe should look hard at their protections of the rights of individuals to say whatever they please. Some governments who would regard themselves as liberal minded are in danger of stifling, if not killing, free speech, albeit out of kindness. That¡¯s where the muddle begins.

In theory, all states, even totalitarian ones like North Korea and dictatorships like Russia, which murder truth-telling journalists, subscribe to Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states ¡°everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference.¡± In practice, all states also have restrictions on freedom of speech, and rightly so. Shout ¡°fire¡± in a crowded cinema out of mischief and you¡¯ll be held responsible for those trampled in the rush for the exit; incite a crowd to lynch a victim and you¡¯ll spend many years behind bars. Individuals also have the right to protection against libel, slander and harassment.

This is the stuff of a thousand philosophy seminars. But balancing individual rights with social responsibility is harder than it looks. The U.S. Supreme Court has made a better fist of it than most by extending First Amendment protections for free speech in recent decades, ruling that the authorities may only prosecute inflammatory speech that¡¯s ¡°directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.¡±

Several European governments, however, have now tilted in the wrong direction ¡ª toward censorship and overreach. Germany goes to absurd lengths to protect its political class from personal abuse, for instance. France and Italy have similar laws. In the U.K., however, the desire to promote social harmony and protect minorities has taken precedence over free speech.

So, a retired police officer was arrested in his Kent home by a posse of...