http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/stealthy-moves-against-freedom-of-speech
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=63046

Advocates and defenders of the First Amendment and freedom of speech are strung out like the three Roman legions that were ambushed and ultimately annihilated by barbarians in the dense Teutoburg Forest in Germany in 9 A.D. Out of a force of about 36,000 fighting men, the Romans suffered between 16,000 and 20,000 casualties.

The First Amendment, appended to the Constitution with nine other Amendments which became known collectively as the Bill of Rights, reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And that Amendment is all Americans have at present protecting them from censorship and a dictatorship. We are marching into an ambush by secular advocates of censorship and Islamic ones. Our political leadership is either as ignorant of the perils as were the Roman army’s generals, or just as careless in its defense, or oft times even hostile to it.

No European nation has the equivalent of the First Amendment. As Bruce Bawer, an American journalist who has lived in Europe for years, noted in his October 2010 column on the trial of Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who stood trial for “blaspheming” Islam (and who was subsequently acquitted of all charges):

One of the most bizarre aspects of being an American in Western Europe – at least if you’re an American who has opinions and is used to expressing them freely – is getting accustomed to the fact that there’s no First Amendment over here. Some of us grew up thinking of Western Europe as part of the “Free World.” But how free is a country if it doesn’t recognize freedom of speech as a fundamental right?