Is Speech not Free in Europe?

I wish this guy had mentioned the case of Oriana Fallaci as well, which is a disgrace and blemish on any democractic country's free speech record but especially for a former facsist state like Italy. He does make a good point about what free speech includes:

Freedom of speech, as its name suggests, does not mean freedom for views
that go down well in polite society but not for views that stink: it means
freedom for all speech, the freedom to think, say and write what we please
and the freedom of everyone else to challenge or ridicule our
arguments.

More politicians, pundits, and media elite should perk their ears to that last sentence. Their ideas have every right to be challenged and ridiculed especially if they're illogical and unintelligent. Unfortunately, many in these catagories only resort to ad hominem attacks when their ideas get challenged. What happened to reasoned and intelligent discussion in which the actual argument or idea was debated? Perhaps I'm naive and that never happened. But then I think about the Lincoln-Douglas debates and they certainly laid out arguments and tore each other's ideas apart or attempted to. Of course ad hominem barbs were thrown in but at least it wasn't the substance of the argument. Of course the deteriorating American attention span is to blame as well. If TV is any indication, American's can only handle 30 second sound bites which doesn't lend itself to reasoned debate, but awfully well to personal attacks. I don't really believe the American mind is that mushy, but our media elites like to believe so because it gives them the excuse they want to push pap.