If only we had European-style Hate Speech Laws on the books, we wouldn't have a white supremacist in

[Warren DeMontague]

85. there is no ambiguity in "Congress shall make no law...". That is unambiguous language.

The fact that many people can't simply deal with free speech - speech, mind you- and need to scramble to find "exceptions" or justify them, that it bothers them so deeply and profoundly- probably indicates something about the human psyche.

These "countless other democratic countries" don't have the 1st Amendment written into their national legal DNA. (the 2nd Amendment can also be read as unambiguous, but unlike the 1A also contains the qualifier about a "well-regulated militia" ) And for all the talk of how wonderful these speech restricting laws are, these countries still have xenophobia, they still have far right political parties- there's no evidence that these laws have accomplished--- anything, really. Even Germany, which certainly has some reasons of their own baked into their legal DNA for forbidding Nazi iconography, ends up using those laws against Chinese tourists who don't even understand what the salute they're making even means. Arresting them does not keep Germany from sliding back into fascism, to argue otherwise is inane.

But, yeah, lets go with that: just a law that outlaws Nazi gestures! Who could be opposed to that? And think of all the problems it would solve... like, real-world problems! Gone overnight through a simple piece of well-intentioned legislation! Right?


...right?









Okay, congratulations. You've just outlawed the funniest episode of Fawlty Towers.


And that's, again, the crux of the biscuit. It's not just that it's impossible to craft a meaningful legal definition of "hate speech" that would work in OUR constitutional framework, it is also that symbiology and speech is so intrinsically tied to context and meaning and interpretation that there is no fucking way you can haul it into a court of law and judge it on a rational, consistent, objective basis.

So what you're left with, again, is jimmying with one of this nation's bedrock principles of liberty simply because some speech pisses some people off. Terrible idea.