Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S (NYT - 6/2008)

[pinto]

Found this interesting article while looking for legal arguments about hate speech and the First Amendment in light of recent, well publicized events. Much of it reviews our First Amendment protections to free speech in comparison with legal standards in other Western democracies. ~ pinto

Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S.
By Adam Liptak
Published: Wednesday, June 11, 2008

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States did not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

<snip>

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

"It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken," Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, "when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack."

Waldron was reviewing "Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment" by Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist. Lewis has been critical of attempts to use the law to limit hate speech.

But even Lewis, a liberal, wrote in his book that he was inclined to relax some of the most stringent First Amendment protections "in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism." In particular, he called for a re-examination of the Supreme Court's insistence that there is only one justification for making incitement a criminal offense: the likelihood of imminent violence

<complete article at>

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/world/americas/11iht-hate.4.13645369.html?_r=1

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. This is one rare area where we are superior to the rest of the 1st world

Whenever I am pressed to identify some area where the US isn't a pathetic back-water compared to Europe about all I can come up with is that we take some expressive rights more seriously here.

Our relative puritanism in sexual matters somewhat obscures how very open we are (legally) in everything other kind of expression.

[msongs]

2. funny how fear based religions and their peddlers hate criticism at the same time they condemn every

non worshipper to hell or worse.

Msongs

[freedommachine]

3. Speech is not a crime,

and if your not inciting a riot or yelling "FIRE!!!" in a crowed venue, all speech should be protected. Especially unpopular speech. What would happen if someday simply saying publicly that a particular war or foreign policy was wrong became considered "hate speech". I could imagine a pretty scary scenario if that were to happen. That is as distasteful as so called "Free Speech Zones".