In reference to an article in the IHT (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/11/america/hate.php), there seems to be a significant debate over what one can and can’t say outside of the United States. Sadly, our neighbors up north are victims of their own government’s inability to secure their rights to free speech.
There are some fundamental issues at play here. I think many of them can be summed up in the phrase by Lewis, a defender of free speech, “in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism.”
Free speech, along with the other protections of the 1st amendment, does not live “in an age”. They supersede time and are suspended only on the most temporary of bases (e.g. wartime). I struggle to agree with the imminence exception and loathe efforts to limit speech based upon the feelings of others. I should be allowed to walk up to a Jew and call him a Jew. I should be able to walk up to a cop and call him a pig. I should be allowed to walk up to Obama and call him a socialist wannabe nigger who is a pathetic disgrace to the proud history of true African-Americans.
However, I should be prepared to accept the consequences of my speech including social ostracization, lost business, and possibly complete emotional isolation.
The problem with exceptions to rules is that everybody feels that their opinion represents an exception. And while mine certainly does, the changing of the rules to protect the feelings of others is pointless.
The 1st amendment does truly distinguish us from the rest of the world. We should remember that the next time we allow a foreign leader to come onto our soil and call our President the devil and our country the devil’s home base. That is, of course, news but not hate speech. What would Canadian courts say to us about our leader going into Quebec and claiming that the French leaders were pansies and that Quebec is a wannabe France without the guts to even enter wars to be able to wave a white flag? My guess is that they would call that hate speech.
It’s the double standards that come into play that make these exceptions impossible to reconcile and therefore a danger to all of us. Indeed, if you limit my speech, you are one step away from limiting my thoughts. But wait, that is actually the goal isn’t it? Therein lies the truth. Free speech laws are not about changing people’s expression patterns in an effort to protect others in society. In reality, they are there to change people’s thoughts. Truly though, the founding fathers knew that a right to free speech was essential to the right to free thought. Ergo, in many countries, including many in the Western world, free thought has been outlawed.
Tags: 1st amendment, canada, civil liberties, civil rights, free speech, politics
