Americans believe we're exceptional. The mere idea of copying Europe is dead in the water before you can explain why it's a good idea.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after we've tried everything else.
This attitude and culture will probably be the downfall of the USA.
Trump personifies this view and takes it to extremes, he basically talks as if whatever he says is all that matters and nothing else is important.
Going to learn the hard way, that's for sure.
I'm a British national. When I left the UK in 2018, people were still talking about Dunkirk like it was a British victory rather than a rolling defeat whose only (even then partially) successful component was the final evacuation; about WW2 like it was a simple victory rather than a Pyrrhic victory; and about the Empire like the end of it was the UK's choice.
I don't share your positive outlook. There's at least two other likely scenario's:
- a large part of the country might not learn at all
- the only lessons being learned are about how to stay in power
Scrutinizing belifs generally don't lead to anything but misery for everyone involved. This is very different from scrutinize crime that has happened.
The only grey area is the role of secret police. Some people, possible a majority, do want the government to scrutinize belifs and political views in order to determen risk. I am less sure, but I also know that human rights and protected classes has less protection against risk assessments conducted by the secret police.
1) The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights [0] which was written by the United Nations (with Eleanor Roosevelt as the committee chair). As a Declaration, the document itself has no legal weight, and the US has only ratified three out of nine core treaties that are based on it. One of them is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [1], which does seem applicable here. Before rejoicing however, consider that the other two treaties that the US has ratified are the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [2] and the United Nations Convention Against Torture [3] -- so don't expect any miracles here.
[0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCPR
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICERD
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNCAT
For reference, ACLU fact sheet from 2013 about the US' track record on human rights: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/121013-human... (PDF)
2) The European Convention on Human Rights [4], which is both a document and a court where human rights violations can be tried. Its jurisdiction is all members of the Council of Europe [5], which is broader than just the European Union (even Russia used to be a member, but was kicked out after the invasion of Ukraine). The EU requires all members to ratify the ECHR as one of the conditions of membership.
[4] https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-convention/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_europe
For reference, the text itself: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Convention_ENG (PDF)
3) The EU itself has a Charter of Fundamental Rights [6] which covers the same topics. From what I could find, the main reason for the name change is that the EU fundamental rights are broader than the international human rights, so this avoids confusion when discussing either in international contexts.
[6] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
For reference, explore the Charter: https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/title/title-i-dignity