Free Speech: Is It Fine to Say Something Offensive?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Space_Time, Oct 20, 2016.

  1. Liberty4Ransom

    Liberty4Ransom Banned

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    Aww poor little gross looking ginger freak show.
     
  2. Daggdag

    Daggdag Well-Known Member

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    I disagree. If you make a statement of fact about someone else it is YOU who must prove it. In most slander case, the person accused of slander has the burden of proof, not the person accusing.
     
  3. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Here's more:

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-white-first-amendment-slogans-20170608-story,amp.html

    Op-Ed Actually, hate speech is protected speech

    Conservative agitator Milo Yiannopoulos speaks on campus of the University of Colorado on Jan. 25. (Jeremy Papasso / Associated Press)
    Ken White
    Free speech and its limitations are on Americans’ minds. In the past year we’ve seen Nazis and white supremacists rally in our cities, angry protesters chase provocateurs off of college campuses, a comedian wield a bloody effigy of the president’s severed head, and slurs and overt racial animus made a staple of political discourse. Controversial speech has people talking about what restrictions, if any, society can enforce on words we despise.

    That inquiry isn’t inherently bad. It’s good for citizens to want to learn more about the contours of our constitutional rights. The dilemma is that the public debate about free speech relies on useless cliches, not on accurate information about the law.


    Here are some of the most popular misleading slogans:

    “Not all speech is protected. There are limits to free speech.”

    This slogan is true, but rarely helpful. The Supreme Court has called the few exceptions to the 1st Amendment “well-defined and narrowly limited.” They include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, true threats and speech integral to already criminal conduct. First Amendment exceptions are not an open-ended category, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to add to them, especially in the last generation. Merely observing that some exceptions exist does not help anyone determine whether particular speech falls into one of those exceptions. It’s a non sequitur.


    Imagine you’re bitten by a snake on a hike, and you want to know rather urgently whether the snake is venomous. You describe the snake to your doctor. “Well, not all snakes are venomous,” your doctor responds. Not very helpful, it is?

    “You can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

    Almost 100 years ago, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. coined a version of this now-familiar metaphor. Holmes used it to explain why the Supreme Court was upholding the criminal conviction of Charles Shenck, who was jailed merely for distributing materials urging peaceful resistance to the draft in World War I. Fortunately, the Supreme Court — often led by Holmes himself — retreated from this terrible precedent, eventually ruling that speech can’t be punished as “incitement” unless it is intended and likely to provoke imminent lawless action. In other words, this favorite rhetorical apologia for censorship was used in the course of a decision now universally recognized as bad law.

    Holmes’ usually misquoted slogan (he said that the law allows us to punish someone for falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater) is really just another way to observe that not all speech is protected and there are limits to 1st Amendment protections. As I said before that’s not in dispute, but invoking the truism does nothing to resolve whether any particular speech falls within the well-defined and narrow exceptions to the 1st Amendment.

    “Hate speech is not free speech.”

    This popular saying reflects our contempt for bigotry, but it’s not a correct statement of law. There is no general 1st Amendment exception allowing the government to punish “hate speech” that denigrates people based on their identity. Things we call “hate speech” might occasionally fall into an existing 1st Amendment exception: a racist speech might seek to incite imminent violence against a group, or might be reasonably interpreted as an immediate threat to do harm. But “hate speech,” like other ugly types of speech we despise, is broadly protected.


    “We must balance free speech and other interests.”

    Censorship advocates often tell us we need to balance the freedom of speak with the harm that speech does. This is arguable philosophically, but it is wrong legally. American courts don’t decide whether to protect speech by balancing its harm against its benefit; they ask only if it falls into a specific 1st Amendment exception. As the Supreme Court recently put it, “[t]he First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits. The First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs.”

    “‘Fighting words’ are not protected under the First Amendment.”

    Years ago the Supreme Court recognized a very narrow 1st Amendment exception for “fighting words.” If the exception still survives, it’s limited to in-person face-to-face insults directed at a particular person and likely to provoke a violent response from that person. It doesn’t apply broadly to offensive speech, even though it’s often invoked to justify censoring such speech.

    “Maybe this speech is protected now, but the law is always changing.”

    The Supreme Court’s approach to constitutional rights can change very quickly. For instance, it took less than a generation for the court to reverse course on whether the government could punish gay sex. But for decades the court has been moving towards more vigorous protection of free speech, not less. Some of the most controversial and unpopular speech to come before the court — like videos of animals being tortured, or incendiary Westboro Baptist Church protests at funerals — have yielded solid 8-to-1 majorities in favor of protecting speech. There’s no sign of a growing appetite for censorship on the court.

    Even as a free speech advocate and critic of censorship, I’m happy to see a public debate about the limits of free speech. Any debate that raises consciousness about our rights can be productive. But the free speech debate should proceed based on facts and well-established law, not empty rhetoric. Familiarity with our rights and how they work is a civic obligation.

    Ken White is a 1st Amendment litigator and criminal defense attorney at Brown White & Osborn LLP in Los Angeles.
     
  4. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Here's more:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/white-supremacists-and-nazis-make-me-fear-the-first-amendment-2017-6

    For the first time in my life, I'm afraid of the First Amendment
    Slate
    Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
    Demonstrators who supports keeping Confederate era monuments hold flags before the Jefferson Davis statue was taken down in New Orleans, Thursday, May 11, 2017. Associated Press/Gerald Herbert
    As a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, I have been forced of late to spend too much time thinking about Nazis. In mid-May, a handful of white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, xenophobes, and recreational racists—among them Richard Spencer—marched through one of our parks with flaming torches in support of a Robert E. Lee statue that has been slated to be sold by the City Council.

    The demonstration grabbed headlines worldwide, the statue's removal has been placed on a six-month hold by a judge, and the Ku Klux Klan is now seeking permission to march here in July. A few weeks after the first march, a Facebook post from a local black farmer went viral due to its suggestion that the arrival of the white supremacists was more a culmination than an inciting incident, and that the fight over the Lee monument was empty symbolism that distracted from a meaningful discussion about the systemic racism that already exists here. The post included the claim that "it isn't Richard Spencer calling the cops on me for farming while Black. It's nervous White women in yoga pants with 'I'm with Her' and 'Coexist' stickers on their German SUVs." White women in yoga pants were upset. Alt-right websites rejoiced.

    The post included the claim that "it isn't Richard Spencer calling the cops on me for farming while Black. It's nervous White women in yoga pants with 'I'm with Her' and 'Coexist' stickers on their German SUVs." White women in yoga pants were upset. Alt-right websites rejoiced.

    My little city in central Virginia has become the stuff of reality TV. The local police, who didn't see the Lee Park thing coming, are dialed up to 11. And with threats, incitement, and actual assaults perpetrated both by alt-right sympathizers and the protesters who oppose them, their job is no longer to stand back but to surge in almost as soon as the shouting begins. Now, when we come to meet in our town square, we are uncertain of whether we are suiting up for events that fete the Constitution or violent altercations for which we should park with an eye to high-speed retreats. Lee Park itself, where my babies learned to walk, has become ground zero for people expecting the worst.

    This is how I felt as I headed to a local counter-protest the morning of May 31: afraid for the first time in my 16-year residence in a town I love. I was afraid that the cycle of arrests and assaults that have followed the Richard Spencer march would lead to more arrests and assaults, afraid about where we parked the car because white supremacists in this town have followed protesters home from rallies, afraid for the first time in the small town where my kids walk everywhere alone. For the first time in a lifetime of journalism, I was also afraid to wear my press credentials because today, in this town, they might invite punching.

    Last week, I had come to a place where I was thinking—if not saying aloud—that maybe it was time for me and the First Amendment to see other people. It's not me, to be sure, it's the First Amendment—or at least what's become of it. I am weary of hate speech, wary of threats, and tired of the choice between punching back and acquiescing. I am sick to death of Nazis. And yet they had arrived, basically on my doorstep.


    For the Framers, the thinking went, free speech was just speech, nothing more and nothing less. The best way to deal with the most appalling speakers would be to ignore them, in the hope that they would go away or drown trying to be heard. That they wouldn't survive the marketplace of ideas. It's the same reason we tried to ignore Donald Trump for so long or at least failed to take him seriously. Or so I wrote in 2015. We tried to ignore Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos. We tried to ignore Ann Coulter and Richard Spencer. We ignored them for so long and for so hard that they now get to ignore us. And these days, people who used to feel free to shout and threaten are emboldened to punch, body-slam, and stab.

    It is a short hop, we are learning, from "words can never hurt us" to actual sticks and stones and the attendant breaking of bones.

    That is what has become of free speech in this country. That is why I was contemplating breaking up with it. I don't think I'm alone, either. There are a lot of people out there who feel that they ignored racist, xenophobic, sexist white supremacists at their own peril, for months and years, when they should have been punching back. And now, a lot of people in my town are not quite sure what to do. Some liberals cheered when

    Some liberals cheered when Richard Spencer was confronted at his gym and cheered again when Ann Coulter didn't speak in the free speech haven of Berkeley, California. Some have decided to meet what they perceive as violence with violence of their own: A growing list of "anti-fascist" groups have announced they are willing to use "direct action" against their foes if necessary. Many progressives are sick and tired because they have found that their attempts to protect free speech have resulted in a world that is not flush with the reciprocal exchange of ideas, but one that is shimmering with the threat of imminent violence and the daily fear that comes when you live with the possibility of that violence.

    Cities that never worried about much beyond trampled flora at their Memorial Day parades now need to prepare for protests as if they are riots in the making, at tremendous cost to our collective psyche. Consider the choices available to the mayor of Portland, Oregon, after two men, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Ricky John Best, were stabbed to death as they tried to stop a white supremacist from harassing two young women on the light rail. Portland is in a state with robust constitutional speech protections. It has also suffered a long and frightening string of racial incidents in recent months. The white supremacist who killed two men in May had attended "free speech" rallies. And now at similar rallies everywhere, including my hometown, protesters on both sides are prepared for violence. Violence, these days, is almost expected. The only question seems to be whether cities will try to prevent bloodshed before it can happen. It's why, immediately following the stabbings, that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler tried to revoke permits for future alt-right protests altogether.

    portland oregon mayor ted wheeler
    In this Jan. 17, 2017 photo, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler speaks during a press conference in Portland, Ore. Associated Press/Don Ryan
    Of course, per the U.S. Constitution, Wheeler could not revoke these permits and stop these events regardless of how good his intentions were. And they were good: "My main concern is that they are coming to peddle a message of hatred and of bigotry," he had told reporters. "They have a First Amendment right to speak, but my pushback on that is that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution." Unfortunately, he is wrong as a matter of fact and of First Amendment doctrine because if Nazis get to march in Skokie, Illinois, racists can march in Portland. (The ACLU of Oregon quickly reminded him of this on Twitter, pointing out that "The government cannot revoke or deny a permit based on the viewpoint of the demonstrators. Period.") Soon, Mayor Wheeler's office was walking back the claim that he was calling to suppress speech, saying he was simply trying to avoid physical violence. As an attorney friend in Portland reminded me, this is exactly why elected officials have attorneys, so they can say, "I wanted to cancel the rallies, but my lawyers wouldn't let me."

    The conundrum facing Wheeler, though, is the conundrum facing us all. It's the same one that has been plaguing me: Is the First Amendment allowing us to batter and attack one another in ways that are more pernicious than the act of silencing speech? Why is my city, roiled and bruised by the events of May, still allowing the KKK to march here next month?

    richard spencer alt-right
    Richard Spencer, who leads a movement that mixes racism, white nationalism and populism, raises his fist as he speaks Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, in College Station, Texas. Associated Press/David J. Phillip
    So far in Charlottesville, we have kept violence at bay. But that fact has not felt like a promise. Last Wednesday morning, some of the white nationalists announced plans to gather again. The police showed up in full force, as did counter-protesters organized by local faith groups. Actually, the counter-protesters outnumbered the alleged white supremacists by about 30 to 1. Everyone I spoke to was anxious. That, not politics, was hanging in the air. The faith groups were trying to guess at who would pull a knife; the young man who had been hassled by the Richard Spencer crowd back in May for wearing a yarmulke was back, again in his yarmulke. Nobody knew which guy might be the guy—the one with the knife, or even the gun.

    The scene wasn't as clear-cut as you might think a confrontation between white supremacists and anti-white supremacists would be. A local candidate for city council, Kenneth Jackson, was off to the side trying to talk. He was there with the support of Jason Kessler, one of about four white supremacists in attendance. Both wanted the Robert E. Lee statue to remain standing. Jackson is black and gay.

    Kessler made headlines last week after he "covered" the torch-march for the Daily Caller; his piece declined to mention that in addition to attending, he'd been a speaker celebrating Holocaust denialism and white superiority. His article still stands, a valoric love song to white supremacy, now with an editor's note appended that reads "The author notified The Daily Caller after publication that he spoke at a luncheon May 14 on behalf of an effort to preserve the monument." After spending the subsequent weeks being harassed everywhere he went, he was back in the park. He carried a megaphone he did not use.
     
  5. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Here's a response to the above:

    http://thefederalist.com/2017/06/12/charlottesville-shows-left-isnt-prepared-fight-racism/

    Charlottesville Shows The Left Isn’t Prepared To Fight Racism
    The contemporary mania for fake hashtag activism gives the Left the illusion that they are social justice warriors constantly fighting the good fight against white supremacy—without ever actually doing so.
    Robert Tracinski By Robert Tracinski
    JUNE 12, 2017
    The fight over Confederate statues in my hometown of Charlottesville has some of the fighters feeling pretty traumatized. Here is Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s Supreme Court commenter, who is also a local.

    My little city in central Virginia has become the stuff of reality TV…. Now, when we come to meet in our town square, we are uncertain of whether we are suiting up for events that fete the Constitution or violent altercations for which we should park with an eye to high-speed retreats.
    This is overdramatic. No, we’re not suddenly overwhelmed by fear and loathing in Charlottesville. The neo-Nazis who marched a few weeks ago are a very small group, most of them from out of town. The ringleader of that protest, junior gruppenfuhrer Richard Spencer, apparently lives in that hotbed of seething racial conflict, Alexandria, Virginia. (Note to the rest of the country: Alexandria is also where a lot of the bien pensant DC elites live.)


    I’ll admit that seeing a bunch of neo-Nazis show up with torches in our civilized little town was kind of a kick in the gut, even if the Nuremberg-style theatrics of the thing were undercut by its Tiki-and-Citronella implementation. But here’s the thing: it’s not like we didn’t know they were out there. Ironically, it is the Left that keeps telling us that everybody is a racist and keeps finding signs of entrenched and systematic “white supremacy” everywhere. So why are they shocked to the core when actual, real-life neo-Nazis show up?

    How shocked? Lithwick is so shaken by the experience that she begins to question the value of freedom of speech and the First Amendment.

    Last week, I had come to a place where I was thinking—if not saying aloud—that maybe it was time for me and the First Amendment to see other people. It’s not me, to be sure, it’s the First Amendment—or at least what’s become of it. I am weary of hate speech, wary of threats, and tired of the choice between punching back and acquiescing. I am sick to death of Nazis. And yet they had arrived, basically on my doorstep….
    Many progressives are sick and tired because they have found that their attempts to protect free speech have resulted in a world that is not flush with the reciprocal exchange of ideas, but one that is shimmering with the threat of imminent violence and the daily fear that comes when you live with the possibility of that violence.
    Further irony alert: Lithwick laments that “violence, these days, is almost expected” at public protests. You might want to ask who pioneered that approach. For answers, try going back to that great era of protest, the 1960s.

    You can snicker at this and remark that the traditional “liberal’s” love of free speech turns out to be pretty loosely glued on. But I prefer to take this as an honest introspective report on the state of mind of a member of today’s mainstream, moderate, educated Left. They favor freedom of speech—so long as they never have to encounter really bad people with vile views who actually use that freedom. But when white supremacists suddenly show up near their homes and neighborhoods, even for just a few hours, they panic and find themselves at a loss for what to do.


    That’s a bad sign, because it means that the sector of American politics that most preens itself on its opposition to racism is not really prepared to oppose racism when they encounter it. Let’s put it this way. When you are confronted with racists and your first reaction is that maybe we should curtail freedom of speech and start punching people, that’s a confession that you have no other, better response prepared.

    Let’s Start with Some History
    How did this happen? Well, let’s start with the fact that the person who is so shocked to encounter actual racists is particularly shocked to discover them in downtown Charlottesville. But why would anyone be shocked by that in Central Virginia?

    This is not exactly Mississippi, but about 50 years ago, it was the home of Massive Resistance, a campaign of state and local government obstruction to prevent racial integration in the schools. We need to recognize and celebrate the enormous progress we’ve made since then. But it would be naive to think that the views behind segregation and Massive Resistance are going to completely disappear in two generations. Even the most advanced society will still have people who cling to discredited ideas. (The resurgent popularity of socialism is proof of that.)

    Yet for all of their insistence on the deep history of racism in America—when it suits them—the Left tends not to actually encounter any strain of that history that might cause uncomfortable friction with their own worldview. Lithwick, for example, is a Canadian transplant who moved from Washington DC to downtown Charlottesville, a nice little enclave of well-off, educated white academics with unimpeachable “progressive” views. At least, that’s what it is today, during the time she actually remembers the city, long after the people who put up those statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson have passed on.


    Here’s another irony alert: the Left’s campaign to expunge all evidence of the Confederacy from the public square fits with the same desire to assume that all decent, respectable people agree with them, that the battle of ideas and values in the culture has been won, and all they need to do is wait for the old generation to die off.

    By contrast, I’m a Midwestern transplant, but I didn’t settle down among the university types. I live in a rural area outside the city, where for the first ten years we were here, our only real neighbor was an elderly redneck with frankly stated racist views. He was poor and uneducated and didn’t even have indoor plumbing (yes, really), so he wasn’t exactly putting the “supremacy” in “white supremacy.” But even if that neighbor has passed on, he was a helpful reminder that racist views have not entirely passed on. That, in turn, can leave you a little more prepared to deal with them.

    Lots of Leftist Anti-Racism Is Deliberately Impotent
    So why isn’t the Left more prepared? Part of the problem, I suspect, is that they have engineered their lives to make sure they never meet an actual racist in the flesh, while still using racism as an all-purpose bogey man. So they have to manufacture a lot of trivial and imaginary targets for their “anti-racism” efforts. When you spend your time finding “racism” in the form of frat boys getting drunk on Cinco de Mayo or Kylie Jenner wearing a camouflage bikini, it’s no wonder you’re not prepared when genuine racists show up outside your front door.

    The contemporary mania for fake hashtag activism gives the Left the illusion that they are social justice warriors constantly fighting the good fight against white supremacy—without ever actually doing so. Decades of intellectual makework knocking down straw men have left them unprepared to confront the real thing.


    It has also left them with a disastrous lack of credibility in addressing potential allies on the Right. Decades of trumped-up accusations of racism have caused a lot of people to reflexively ignore anything the Left says about race. Let’s put it this way: when you make out squeaky clean straight arrow Mitt Romney to be a crypto-racist, a lot of people are going to ignore you when you set your hair on fire about Donald Trump.

    Lithwick does recover somewhat toward the end of her lament, and the most interesting half-admission comes in her description of a spontaneous debate at a later event at Lee Park, where people on all sides were not fighting but arguing with each other. She concludes:

    What the fear and the calls for banning marches misses—what I doubted before I went to see it for myself—is that an actual conversation about speech, race, fury, and pain, happened in a city park…. If everyone had just stayed home last Wednesday in Charlottesville, there would have been no need to be afraid. There would also have been no dialogue.
    The least charitable interpretation of this is that the Left always talks about wanting a “conversation on race,” but they try to prevent one from actually happening, because a “conversation” has to have more than one side. But I’ll give this a more charitable interpretation and welcome this opportunity to discover that people’s views out in the rest of the world are more complex. For example, Lithwick describes a gay black man who opposes removing the statues because he regards it as a purely symbolic cop-out.

    It’s an opportunity to move outside the bubble—and become more prepared to understand and engage in the real fight against racism.

    Follow Robert on Twitter.
     
  6. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Here's more:

    https://thefederalist.com/2017/07/20/worried-future-free-expression/

    Be Very Worried About The Future Of Free Expression
    If you don’t believe political correctness is a threat to free speech, you haven’t been paying attention.
    David Harsanyi By David Harsanyi
    JULY 20, 2017
    “Ads that perpetuate gender stereotypes will be banned in UK, but not in the good ol’ USA!” reads a recent headline at the Web site Jezebel. Yay to the good ol’ USA for continuing to value the fundamental right of free expression, you might say. Or maybe not.

    Why would a feminist — or anyone, for that matter — celebrate the idea of empowering bureaucrats to decide how we talk about “gender stereotypes”? Because these days, foundational values mean increasingly little to those who believe hearing something disagreeable is the worst thing that could happen to them.


    Sometimes you need a censor, this Jezebel writer points out, because nefarious conglomerates like “Big Yogurt” have been “targeting women for decades.” She, and the British, apparently, don’t believe that women have the capacity to make consumer choices or the inner strength to ignore ads peddling probiotic yogurts.

    This is why the “Committee of Advertising Practice” (and boy, it takes a lot of willpower not to use the cliché “Orwellian” to describe a group that hits it on the nose with this kind of ferocity) is such a smart idea. They will ban, among others, commercials in which family members “create a mess, while a woman has sole responsibility for cleaning it up,” ones that suggest “an activity is inappropriate for a girl because it is stereotypically associated with boys, or vice versa,” and ones in which a man “tries and fails to perform simple parental or household tasks.”

    If you believe this kind of thing is the bailiwick of the state, it’s unlikely you have much use for the Constitution. I’m not trying to pick on this one writer. Acceptance of speech restrictions is a growing problem among millennials (one poll, for example, shows 40 percent of them okay with limiting speech offensive to minorities) and Democrats (more than 50 percent have warmed of the idea of banning hate speech). For them, opaque notions of “fairness” and “tolerance” have risen to overpower freedom of expression in importance.

    You can see it with TV personalities like Chris Cuomo, former Democratic Party presidential hopeful Howard Dean, mayors of big cities, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office claiming that “hate speech is not protected by the Constituion.” It is Sen. Dianne Feinstein arguing for heckler’s vetoes in public university systems. It’s major political candidates arguing that open discourse gives “aid and comfort” to our enemies.

    If it’s not Big Yogurt, it’s Big Oil or Big Somethingorother. Democrats have for years campaigned to overturn the First Amendment and ban political speech because of “fairness.” This position and its justifications all run on the very same ideological fuel. Believe it or not, though, allowing the state to ban documentaries is a bigger threat to the First Amendment than Donald Trump’s tweets mocking CNN.

    It’s about authoritarians like Laura Beth Nielsen, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University and research professor at the American Bar Foundation, who argues in favor of censorship in a major newspaper like Los Angeles Times. She claims that hate speech should be banned because it has “been linked to cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and requires complex coping strategies.” Nearly every censor in the history of mankind has argued that speech should be curbed to balance out some harmful consequence. And nearly every censor in history, sooner or later, kept expanding the definition of harm until they shut down the rights of their political opponents.

    Anyone who’s watched partisan groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, who accuse civil rights lawyers of being in a “hate group,” understands where this goes.

    Actually, you can see where it’s going by checking out Europe. Dismiss slippery slope arguments if you like, but in Germany, where “hate speech” has been banned, police have raided the homes of at least 36 people accused of posting “illegal content.” There is a proposed bill right now in Germany that would fine social media companies millions of dollars for failure to remove hate speech within 24 hours. When debates about immigration are at the forefront in Germany, the threat to abuse these laws is great.


    In England, a man was recently sentenced to more than a year in prison after being found guilty for stirring up religious hatred with a stupid posting on Facebook. There are “hate crimes” cops who not only hunt down citizens who say things deemed inappropriate but implore snitches to report on the vulgar words of their fellow citizens.

    When I was young, liberals would often offer some iteration of the quote misattributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This was typically in defense of artwork that was offensive to Christians or bourgeoisie types; a soiled painting of Mary or a bad heavy metal album, or whatnot.

    You don’t hear much of that today. You’re more likely to hear “I disapprove of what you say, so shut up.” Idealism isn’t found in the notions of Enlightenment but in identity and indignation. And if you don’t believe this demand to mollycoddle every notion on the Left portends danger for freedom of expression, you haven’t been paying attention.

    David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter.
     
  7. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Here's more:

    http://nypost.com/2017/09/24/the-perils-of-nazi-punching/

    OPINION
    The perils of ‘Nazi-punching’
    By Karol Markowicz September 24, 2017 | 8:14pm
    Modal Trigger The perils of ‘Nazi-punching’
    Getty Images
    MORE FROM:
    KAROL MARKOWICZ


    Last week, a man was spotted wearing a red swastika armband while riding on a Seattle city bus. A bystander took his photograph and posted it online along with his location. This mobilized antifa to find the man and confront him, resulting in his being punched in the face and knocked out cold.

    A video of the interaction went viral and, predictably, the Internet cheered. And this was just the latest in a series of videos over the last few months of white supremacists getting punched in the face, to the joy of the watching public.

    Indeed, this kind of thing is happening so often that the phrase “punching Nazis” is now part of our lexicon. Yet unfortunately, what’s actually happening is speech is being shut down with violence — threatening a fundamental American right. Sure, the speech might be vile and hateful, but it’s still just speech.

    The ugly fact is, a growing segment of the population now equates simple speech with violence — and sees real violence as a justified response. Mild-mannered conservative Ben Shapiro needed $600,000 in extra security to speak at Berkeley; imagine if an actual Nazi tried to speak there.

    Fighting white supremacist speech with more speech, rather than blows, is essential — or they win. Punches accomplish little and, in fact, can further the white-supremacist cause.

    Heck, getting a reaction is part of their game. Punching them makes them appear like the sane ones caught in a world of insanity. When they tell us America has stopped being great, they show us evidence in the violence their speech produces.

    Surely an America that is strong and confident won’t condone violence against a tiny group of people with whom it disagrees.

    OK: I’m not immune from the feel-good sensation of watching someone I consider horrible get smacked. I admit to watching a loop when Richard Spencer was caught on video taking a hit shortly after President Trump’s inauguration.

    I admit it: Watching Nazis get clocked feels good. It’s normal to think their vile views deserve to be silenced. Still, stopping words with violence is something Americans need to condemn.

    Alas, YouTube has posted dozens of videos of the Seattle strike, some with hundreds of thousands of views. Is there another crime of violence YouTube would so readily allow to be shared on its platform?

    After Spencer was socked, The Nation ran a story titled “Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched — You Can Thank the Black Bloc.” An Observer op-ed actually argued the attack was “self-defense.”

    Are we really comfortable with antifa, or any mob, playing judge and jury like this? Who’s to say they won’t expand their scope to include perfectly reasonable people who happen to disagree with them on, say, health-care or immigration policy?

    SEE ALSO
    Guy in Nazi armband learns the hard way he's a jerk
    And let’s be honest: At one point or another, just about all conservatives are branded Nazis. George W. Bush was constantly referred to as Hitler, both by protesters and by many mainstream figures, including Rep. Keith Ellison, now No. 2 at the Democratic National Committee.

    Paul Krugman’s “The Great Unraveling” featured Dick Cheney with a Hitler-like mustache made of oil. In 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin were both likened to Nazis. Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Nikki Haley — pretty much any Republican on the national stage has been called Hitler or Goebbels or Eva Braun.

    Does every Republican deserve to be punched?

    And don’t think violence won’t beget more violence. White supremacists, after all, aren’t likely to take blows without fighting back. And they might well go beyond just fists. That’s the road we’re on.

    I’m a Jew of Eastern European descent, and actual Nazis are responsible for the displacement and annihilation of part of my family. Defending the free speech of their modern-day counterparts, who marched through the streets of Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” is hard — but necessary.

    But, truth is, these creeps actually need to be protected if we are to preserve a bedrock right that helps guarantee the essence — and future — of this country.

    The irony is that white supremacists are eager to erode our freedoms and our proud American character. Why cheer for thugs like antifa, who help them do that?
     
  8. CCitizen

    CCitizen Well-Known Member

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    If a person is convicted of hate speech, then they may be punished -- up to years in UK:
    [​IMG]

    But many Progressives fire and blacklist people for saying things they disagree with which are far from hate speech.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2017
  9. CCitizen

    CCitizen Well-Known Member

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    Even a criminal convicted of hate speech in Europe must not be subject to vigilante violence.
     
  10. SkullKrusher

    SkullKrusher Banned

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    Yes it is acceptable to say something offensive, as long as it done in an orderly and peaceful manner, then remaining silent, allowing some time for the opposition to respond with something offensive, in an orderly and peaceful manner.

    Australia would have been invaded, and occupied by the Japanese in WW2, and every Australian been killed, imprisoned, had not the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941.
    The USA saved Australia from total extinction.

    So try remember a little history before running off the mouth with all the anti American blah blah.

    If you insist, however, on the this kind of diatribe, Aussie Leftist Whacko, please feel free to visit Berkeley CA, the other delusional radical Left Marxist city in USA, which believe free speech should be squelched for anyone with viewpoint to the right of Mao, Lenin, and Castro.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2017
  11. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Here's more:

     

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