| christian grantham | |||
| Christian Grantham was a student activist in the late 90s and later was a consultant to domestic policy forums for the Clinton Administration as well as events for HRC and GLAAD. | |||
|
|
|
||
latest posts
December 23, 2004
This morning on CSPAN, Constitutional Attorney Bruce Fein argued for laws making hate speech a felony crime in the United States. The position is one recently enacted in France.
The conservative majority in the Senate upper house approved a bill previously passed in the National Assembly to establish an authority to help victims of bias.Under the new law, anyone found provoking hatred or violence of a person on the basis of sex or sexual orientation would risk one year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euro ($60,000).
[France bans sexist speech - Reuters - 12-22-04]
Canada has similar laws that assault free speech hoping to rid society North of the border of criminal expressions of hate. While I might oppose hateful messages, it is wrong to censor speech. Such laws dumb down society and presume that a majority of people in the free marketplace of ideas are incapable of placing the proper value on the message.
Nothing puts messages of hate in their proper place and context like the free marketplace of ideas. Without people choosing to exercise their right to free speech with hateful banter, how would reason find its way into the majority opinion? Such debates and discussions would simply yield recourse to the government rather than allow society to be an active player in a democracy of ideas and values.
Limiting free speech is tyranny, no matter what common good is being claimed for such limits, and amount to nothing more than thought policing. When the government presumes to care for the intellectual capacity of society by limiting speech, it’s a matter of time before those governments become the tools of political tyranny for the extreme left and right.
filed under: Free Speech
