Me, neither. They’re actively making the world a worse place. They’ve gotten into their head that freedom of speech is itself a virtue and forget about everything else. They forget that freedom of speech is just a tool to try and make a better world.
And I do get tired of people bringing up a logical fallacy and using it to argue things. The slope is not slippery. Hate speech laws do not inevitably lead to anything else. Other countries have them, and those countries have not descended into complete censorship.
France has hate speech laws. Doesn’t stop Charlie Hebdo, now does it?
To argue that hate speech laws will inevitably lead to all these horrible things is just denying reality. And since they won’t lead to those horrible things, why not enact them, and make the world a little bit better?
Oh, and France bring able to remove the burqa has nothing to do with this. They didn’t argue it was hate speech. They argued a legitimate government interest in being able to identify people.
An argument that could easily be made here in the U.S. And nothing in our constitution would stop it. Only the RFRA–a law–might, since you’d have to prove it was the least burdensome on the women’s freedom of religion.
Notice what’s completely absent in that argument? Freedom of speech. It has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s yet another fallacy: the non-sequitur.
Speaking of arguing from fallacies, how do you feel about strawmen? Because the objection to hate speech laws isn’t that it will lead to “complete” censorship. The concern is that it will be used only to suppress speech the government doesn’t like. You’re correct that France’s hate speech laws haven’t been used to shut down Charlie Hebdo. But is that because the French legal system has a precise and objective standard for determining what is and is not hate speech, and Hebdo is on the correct side? Or is it because Charlie Hebdo is a bunch of mostly white guys who chiefly attack immigrants and Muslims? And even if it is the former, how do you demonstrate that to the satisfaction of a minority that has pretty regularly been the target of official government discrimination?
Miller, I’m puzzled. You seem here to be saying that it’s not possible to have a precise and objective standard for hate speech, so therefore hate speech laws are suspect, because they will be used to favour certain viewpoints and oppress other viewpoints.
And yet you yourself have explained and applied the concept of hate speech on these message boards (here and here), to the point of banning a poster for hate speech.
So if you are saying that hate speech laws are of questionable fairness because there is no objective standard of what constitutes hate speech, are you admitting that your decision to ban someone for hate speech was simply a subjective decision on your part? to follow the chain of thought in your post about Charlie Hebdo, did you ban that poster because his posts constituted hate speech, or because you personally didn’t approve of what he was saying?
Or, if you are saying that here on the Boards there is an objective standard for what constitutes hate speech, why is that the the legal system and the courts cannot similarly determine and apply an objective standard for hate speech?
i might add that your comment in your post explaining hate speech:
is not that different from the approach taken by the Supreme Court of Canada in interpreting hate speech provisions.
Which is great. That means Canadian constitution is objectively better than the EU constitution as it successfully protects its citizens from the these kinds of abuses whereas the EU one does not, as demonstrated by the fact that the law was upheld by European court. But by protecting its citizens rights from infringement by both “Burqa ban” and “Hate speech” laws, the US constitution is objectively better at it’s job than both EU and Canadian constitutions.
Firstly I am not American! And while I can’t speak for the Canadian constitution, I am very familiar with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and its a complete mess. It is far too long and the rights in it are far too hard to pin down. As demonstrated by the example above (and many others). So yes I am aware that other countries constitutionally guaranteed freedoms (Including my own) but the US bill of rights (a small number of relatively well defined rights) are objectively better in this case.
Not incidentally that I agree with David Cameron’s recent attempts to get Britain to withdraw from it, because I trust him to write an better alternative about as much as I trust him to look after my butchers shop overnight.
Simply not true. Freedom of speech, even objectionable speech, is a fundamental human right. Countries that restrict it are objective less free than ones that do. If your citizens can be prosecuted someones rights to tell an off color joke or use a derogatory racial epithet (or insult the king) they have had their fundamental human rights infringed upon.
No it stems from actual concrete examples where governments who are not bound by the 1st amendment HAVE infringed people’s rights. Not hypothetical “what ifs” actual real cases in liberal democracies.
Again, nothing Fred Phelps has said could be made illegal without completely gutting the first amendent, so you are saying we should gut the first amendment because people can say upsetting things. That would make the US an objectively less free place and infringe everyones basic human rights.
The SDMB is private property. You can throw me out of your house for hate speech…or for any other reason.
Governments work differently. A formal legal ban on hate speech is distrusted by many of us, because we don’t feel sufficiently safeguarded against it being used to ban our speech.
This is the point of the OP, and many of us agree with it. It isn’t exactly a “slippery slope” argument, as a question of who will watch the watchers, and whom can we trust with the power to decree that one word or phrase is not permitted.
I’d like to explore that thought in the context of the previous things I’ve said here, because it contains an element of truth, but I see it as a different truth than those who express such concerns.
It once again raises that iconic American boogeyman, the fear and distrust of government. But I think many of us in modern democracies see government in exactly the terms that Lincoln described – that it is of the people, by the people, and for the people, and that this is the nature of a working democracy in a free society protected by constitutional rights. And so if it can be said that the government “doesn’t like” certain speech, it’s the people who have rejected it, and if that rejection passes constitutional muster and is upheld by the courts, then it’s fair to conclude that the prohibition supports an overriding public interest, and that it reflects the kind of society that people want to live in.
I keep bringing up the constitutional aspect because it’s important. People raise these frightful imaginary scenarios where hate speech laws can cause any and every form of unwanted speech to be banned, but that’s just not so. Hate speech prosecutions in Canada are rare and of the few cases that have been brought, there have been notable dismissals. The notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel was charged under hate speech laws, and his case resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned his conviction on the basis that his abhorrent and distasteful material nevertheless was not promoting violence and was therefore protected speech. Likewise, anti-Semite David Ahenakew was exonerated because deliberate hateful intent could not be demonstrated.
BTW, I think in an earlier discussion I mistakenly cited the Zundel case as an example of a hate speech conviction. I was misled by the fact that Zundel was detained on a security certificate and deported to Germany, where he was in fact eventually charged and convicted of hate speech and imprisoned. But his conviction in Canada was deemed unconstitutional and overturned.
But some have been convicted, and in my view we are a better society for it. James Keegstra, for instance, for teaching anti-Semitism to school children. Bill Whatcott for distributing flyers condemning gays in hateful and incendiary terms, although some lesser charges were dismissed on constitutional grounds. And I particularly want to cite the conviction for burning a cross on the lawn of a mixed-race couple for which two brothers were jailed. This seems like a striking juxtaposition with an almost identical case in R.A.V. v City of St. Paul where the conviction was overturned on grounds of free speech, or Virginia v Black where it was deemed a protected message of shared ideology, as if a burning cross was like an old-time marshmallow roast over a campfire instead of a virulent symbol of a century of racial violence.
Firstly, as a reminder: No country on Earth, including the US, gives its citizens the right to say anything without chance of prosecution.
For example, incitement to commit a crime is not protected speech.
There is somewhat of a gray area between hate speech and incitement. US law draws a line in a somewhat different place to many (most?) other developed nations, but I think it’s a misconception to imagine the US = free speech, other developed countries = not free speech because hate speech laws.
If the argument is that we cannot let the government restrict speech because we’ll inevitably get a slippery slope, well, the government already restricts speech in lots of ways, and if there’s a slope it appears we’re going down it very slowly.
Personally, where I would draw the line is between stating an opinion and just trying to rile people up and create divisions. One good rule of thumb for telling the difference is whether the message is peppered with pejoratives…you can state an opinion without resorting to such rhetoric.
There are two separate questions here. (1) Should his rants be considered hate speech, and (2) should the particular time and place in which he chose to disseminate them be allowable.
I strongly suspect that the answer to (1) would be “yes” according to how hate speech laws I’m familiar with are written, though I can’t claim to have made a thorough study of his poisonous invective and I’m not interested in doing so. But I believe it would be so judged by such laws on the basis of its extreme offensiveness combined with strong insinuations that gays must be killed, and that it is designed to instigate at least hatred and mistreatment of gays and the possibility of violence if not outright threats to their lives.
With respect to (2), it’s already a moot point unless you disagree with Section 601 of Public Law 112-154 signed by President Obama in August 2012, which section is titled Prohibition on disruptions of funerals of members or former members of the Armed Forces. Do you disagree with it?
My own opinion is that it doesn’t go far enough. So in short, if what remains of Phelps reprehensible “church” is constitutionally protected on point (1), which I doubt it would be under the laws and interpretations I’m familiar with, he could still be in violation of point (2). I maintain that both serve a public interest and that we would be a better society for it, instead of a slavish adherence to First Amendment absolutism because of some nebulous and unfounded fear of government.
Well, first of all that isn’t exactly the point of the OP. The point seems to be that hate speech laws can’t work – even though they do; that they will lead inevitably to terrible abuses – even though I have yet to see them where I live; and then he tries to prove it with an example – even though the example is from a country that has never had western style democratic freedoms and is thus irrelevant.
But to your question – who can we trust with the power to regulate speech? The same institutions that already regulate it, because as Mijin correctly states, speech is not wholly without restriction and never has been. These institutions are the democratic process and the government it empowers, and the judicial system that interprets laws and the protections of the constitution. If you can trust those institutions, the safeguards are already there in the accountability of democratic government and the freedoms enshrined in the constitution.
If you can’t trust them, you’re already doomed, because there’s nothing else. Constitutions can be amended and they can be ignored, as we’ve already seen. So it’s inexplicable why someone thinks that a particularly narrow, constructionist or absolutist interpretation of it will protect them against an evil government bent on tyranny. All it does is foster a hateful society where the promotion of hatred and the demonization of minorities is considered an acceptable norm. History seems to show that this is more likely to lead to tyranny than the converse.
You’re right there are two separate issues. I’m less concerned with #2. #2 is about content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions focusing on disturbing the peace, trespass, and impeding access or egress.
As for #1, that is a content based restriction. To my knowledge, Phelps never advocated or incited violence in a legal sense. Assuming that’s true, he should be and was free to say whatever he damned well pleased. And that is how it should be. But I am interpreting your response to say that Phelps’s actions under #1 should be criminal. Is that accurate?
Both R.A.V. v City of St. Paul and Virginia v Black involved burning a cross on someone else’s property in a clear act of intimidation, but the convictions were nevertheless overturned on First Amendment grounds.
Virginia v Black actually involved two cases and resulted in multiple rulings and dissents. One of them involved burning a cross in the front yard of a black family. The other was a KKK rally on private property in which overt threats were made against blacks and Mexicans, then a large 25 to 30 foot cross visible from the road was set on fire. A woman who lived on the property testified that the proceedings scared the hell out of her. I guess that would be the “message of shared ideology” that the Supreme Court said it was protecting. :rolleyes: Cite.
So that example actually makes the completely opposite point to the one you are trying to make. The fact that those people would (rightly) be prosecuted in the US without gutting the 1st Amendment, so based on that there is no need for “hate speech” laws in the US!
“Hate speech” is not some edge case or gray area in the 1st Amendment, the right to say offensive things is the reason the 1st Amendment exists! Saying offensive things about religion would have been just as offensive to people in days gone by as saying racial or homophobic slurs are now, and EXACTLY the same arguments were made for banning those.
You can interpret it any way you like. Based on what I quoted over here – specifically that the demonstrations were “… the most crudely vitriolic and sustained expressions of unrelieved hatred of LGBT people in America today. Although he does not physically attack gays and lesbians, Phelps calls for them to be tried and executed, and celebrates the death of those who do meet a violent end.” – it seems like a stretch to say that Phelps “never advocated or incited violence” and he was certainly disruptive and offensive beyond measure at a solemn and symbolic private event.
So I would concur with Justices Alito and Stevens that “Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case. In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims.” I would venture the opinion that Phelps would probably have fallen under hate speech laws as I understand them.
Let’s understand that hate speech laws are not without peril of potential abuse. Any law is. That’s not the salient question. The question is under what circumstances is society better off, what’s the best balance of risk, and how much vile hatred should a society be willing to tolerate and still be able retain a moral claim to basic human decency. These are the issues where we differ.
The irony of this statement is… well, too good to be true. Am I being whooshed? For the record, I’ll point out that I wasn’t “making a point” at all. I was correcting Velocity’s misapprehension of wolfpup’s argument. I am basically agnostic on hate speech laws.
The reason the First Amendment exists is decidedly not to protect the right to say “offensive things.” Blasphemy was a crime in most states for most of our history, despite the First Amendment and similar protections granted by state constitutions.
In the past century, courts have taken a more expansive (and correct) view of the amendment, like most amendments. But it’s not one the founders would have recognized.
Wrong. Just wrong, wrong, on point after point. The cases I just cited were cases of hateful intimidation where the convictions were nevertheless overturned on First Amendment grounds. This is the whole point. And hate speech IS frequently a gray area, just like the real world is full of gray areas, and that’s why I refer to this ridiculous interpretation of the First Amendment as “absolutist”. And finally, no, hate speech laws are not about purely “offensive” speech as the sole determinant, and a number of cases in Canada were overturned precisely on that basis; there also needs to be an element of inciting hatred, an element that decent people view as a cancer on civilized and peaceful society.
