Should all hate speech be protected under the 1st Amendment?
 

Speech is speech. Just because it\'s said doesn\'t mean you have to listen. It should most definitely be protected.

And you? What do you say?

Absolutely. Without integrity, the first amendment is nothing. We have to be willing to endure the freedom of others if we want our own freedom.

Agreed. People can urge, goad, pressure or otherwise influence people they know and don't know into speaking (or believing) the way they think is right. Likewise they can infuriate others as freely as they can give a compliment. It is not the government's job to do that.

No speech should be criminal. All hate speech should be handled in civil court. Slander, Defamation of character, Verbal harassment and other speech meant to harm or incite violence - A person should be held accountable for all these things.

Some speech has been deemed not to be protected under the First Amendment. Particularly, speech that causes physical harm--the classic example is "shouting fire in a crowded theater". It's an outdated example, but the point is still the same--speech that could be reasonably expected to cause property damage or personal injury isn't protected. Neither is speech deemed "obscene" by the standards of the community. So there's no absolute "Speech Is Speech" argument to protect so-called hate speech.

I'm not saying I don't think some so-called hate speech isn't protectable. Just that that's a fairly crummy argument for it. Which isn't to say you couldn't argue that the Supreme Court was wrong in making those decisions, but that's literally what you have to say to make a case for it.

I'm sorry, but I find it ridiculous that anyone would want to protect one's "right" to the incitement of violence. The value of freedom should not trump the value of public peace.

Black groups back KKK's white pride rally | World news | The Guardian
Friday October 22 1999
If we don't support their right to free speech, why should anyone have free speech? Who is going to be the arbiter of determining what isn't hateful speech?

I'm confused by this logic.

Lawmakers.

No rights are absolute, but "hate speech" or bigoted speech should be allowed so long as it doesn't result in physical harm.

The quote commonly attributed to Voltaire applies. I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

I personally believe the free and unimpeded exchange of ideas to be a fundamental necessity of a free society. As soon as we begin to limit that freedom because some ideas are unpopular, that freedom effectively no longer exists. Therefore I can only conclude that it is absolutely necessary that all forms of expression need to be protected, even those that I find personally distasteful. I may not like hate speech. I find the idea of racial prejudice both puzzling and more than a little abhorrent. Due to my own beliefs as outlined above, it is absolutely necessary that I defend the freedom of any individual to express these ideas.

The US constitution does not apply to me, so my opinion is academic. All the same, I would argue that it must necessarily protect hate speech; otherwise, it's meaningless.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Ben Franklin

It's up to the listener as to whether violence is necessary or not, and up to the DA to prosecute if the listener acts poorly.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
-John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

You would protect one's "liberties" of treason, slander, and incitement to ethnic cleansing?

I think perhaps you are misreading what Franklin means by "essential liberty."

Does this imply that Charles Manson isn't as guilty as we were lead to believe?

incitement to violence is a problem. so's yelling fire in a crowded theater, to wax cliche for a minute. on the latter, it is evident that the premise of the thread is wrong: not all speech acts are equivalent (and, to be pedantic about it: speech in general is not at issue).

yelling fire in a theater is a clear example of something over a line.
speech that incites violence may or may not be--but this seems a matter that should be the subject of vigorous debate were this a democratic polity---but it kinda isn't one, so we do what we're told. anyway, "incitement to violence" is not typically something that is advanced on it's own---were it advanced without context, there'd be no particular problem with including it in a set of statement types that are problematic at the least--but often incitement to violence is a consequence of another order of statement. to take a particularly repellent example, the use of radio in rwanda to incite genocide was couched in a politics of ethnicity. things get ugly here: if all that was at issue was the type of statement, would you argue that what mattered was the incitement to violence--in which case an argument could be made to suppress it---or would you argue that what mattered was the fact that these incitements were couched in a political argument? if the latter, this would open you up for problems of linking political claims to potential for violence, which would quickly become an excuse to ban political speech that you don't like.

fact seems to be that the ethical problems concerning, say, rwandan radio emerge from the consequences. ethics is left enabling you to say "o. that was bad." and very little beside.

so it seems that this ethical question (what types of speech should not be allowed) is a properly political question (what types of speech should be marginalized)....

does marginalization amount to censorship?

In the U.S. there are laws against treason, slander, as well as libel. Ratbastid's fire in a theatre is a good example of speech that is not allowed. A false exclamation causing immediate reaction falls under fraud laws.

As far as bigoted speech, if someone is dull enough to buy into it, they were bound for failure in life. Rarely do you see a bigot driving a Porsche. I heard it all the time growing up in the south. I never bought into it. People in the U.S. should be allowed to say the N word, call Jewish people money lenders, and me a cracker. People can wear an "I'm With Stupid" tee shirt if they want. It lets normal people know not to associate.

That paradigm doesn't work in some nations.

Speech yes, incitement no.

isn't hate speech incitement by definition?

No.

Saying, "I hate green people!" is not incitement.

Saying, "kill all the green people!" is.

I don't think saying the latter should be illegal. 99% of the population won't act on that, and the 1% that does was already of a mind to do so.

If somebody says, "c'mon guys, let's go kill all the green people!", that might be different

Technically, this guy is inciting.
http://eyjan.is/freedomfries/wp-cont...ain_morans.jpg
I don't think he'll change minds and gather support for his pro-war movement.

but if hate speech had not been defined as incitement to violence, then it would not have amenable to restriction.

oh yeah: "i hate green people" is an example of a sentence type.
because you wrote it here, it is a speech act, but it's framed as a meta-action. framed in this way, there'd be no incitement in it--even if you were to say explicitly racist things as examples of racist things that could be said, there'd be no incitement in it (and this gets to the problem of distinguishing incitement from other types of speech---in this case, it'd be about the situation and the verb tenses)

so it's the same type of sentence, but not the same type of speech act as incitement to violence/hate speech---this is why i think the op is framed badly.

i don't think the ability to fashion a sentence is at issue here---you can fashion any sentence you want--it is the social implications of saying certain kinds of sentences---of repeating them (politics is repetition)--that is the problem.

if you strip out context, you erase the idea of incitement. how can you incite to act if there's no situation to act in or on?
it would seem to me (the post is not ordered well)
ok, again: i would seem to me that incitement involves statements in the imperative. hate speech might extent to statements that define or explain actions ("i am going to kill you because you belong to category x)---what holds them together is the move from the mechanics of the sentence to assumptions about intent.
once you start thinking about it, hate speech gets vanishingly narrow, working mostly as an ex=post-facto rationale for charging someone with first as over against second degree murder say.

Hate speech is a very quaint notion here in the states as roachboy points out...for the time being. But times are changing and I think the issue of 'free speech' will need to be re-addressed. Particularly as this country changes ethnically and, equally important, economically.

Anything about this country that we recite by rote we should probably be questioning.

Context, yeah. That's the word I was looking for. Aren't most hate crime cases the result of an actual attack? I don't know of anybody who's been arrested for hate speech. But there are people who are arrested and charged with a more punitive hate crime if the words are in context with an altercation.

At first I thought this said "ethically". I was happy to hear about that change.

The fact that this country is changing ethnically may at least marginalize the issue. Haters will have to start keeping lists of who they hate.

Well said, roachboy. Another way of looking at it is with this construction: "We should do [blank] to [the other] because they aren't [us], and they are the cause of [something we fear or hate]."

There are many bits of this kind of thing throughout history. Go back to your Rwanda example, and especially Nazi Germany.

Incitement to violence. That should not be allowed. Period. And yes, people most certainly do act on it. That's how assaults, riots, beatings etc start.
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Look no further than the USA, Canada etc. Plenty of examples of hate speech and incitement.

Said the man from KKKalifornia.

yep, very true. We may be one of the worst states in the union for hate crimes and incitement.

It's true. The Jewish and Muslim communities are both targets of hate speech (hate crimes in general) in the Greater Toronto Area. But, of course, they aren't exclusive groups when it comes to this.

In my case, I was thinking of some of the worse examples.

Good question. The answer, perhaps unfortunately, is Yes.

Currently in Canada we are facing limits on our free speech due the Canadian Human Rights Commision and its provincial counterparts. These arms length goverment agencies prosecute persons based on complaints, on the public dime, and have (until recently) a 100% conviction rate under their hate crime provisions. They have (or are) prosecuting a diverse array of persons, such as white supremicists, publishers of right wing magazines, and Canada's long running popular news magazine Macleans. They have freely used tactics such as entrapment, allowed employees to submit complaints (one employee accounts for nearly 50% of all hate crime complaints), and gathered evidence without regards to warrants and privacy laws.

These events indicate to me that our choice should always be towards more free speech, not less. While I support reasonable limits on free speech, I do not support giving the government tools to prosecute based on a persons thoughts. Besides, it is better to having these people sharing their speech, such that we might defeat it in the realm of public debate, than running wild as whispers in the dark of our minds.

Sorry it should be "If we don't support their right to free speech, how could anyone have free speech?" That was my point of the Sharpton/KKK tie. Sharpton knew that if the KKK's rights were trimmed in some fashion, his could also be.

As far as lawmakers being the arbiter, I dont' think that very efficient since they seem to rather blanket the whole instead of the single instance, as exampled by the TSA and other "security" measures.

Well said, I agree.

All speech should be entirely free, and all individuals held responsible for the consequences of their actions. If someone chooses to yell "fire" in a theater, they should be held responsible for emergency response costs and lost revenue to the theater, not for what they said. If someone speaks with the intent to coerce others into violent action, they should be held responsible for that violence, not for their words. As always, a jury of reasonable people should consider a person guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt before judgment is passed, something that our society seems to be forgetting amidst the onslaught of bullshit from the talking heads on TV. Public opinion should hold no legal weight and the media's arbitrary objects of obsession ensure that certain unfortunate individuals are unconditionally denied the right to a fair trial.