TheBluesMan
Moderator Emeritus
The following is about a third of the entire article. Well worth the read.
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=13645369
There are some really good points on both sides, but I have to align myself solidly with the free speech crowd. The author of the article sums it up well, "The problem with so-called hate speech laws is that they're not about facts," he said in a telephone interview. "They're about feelings."
I sometimes post on a Christian Apologetics site and have read a lot of things that have bothered me because it goes against my beliefs. I might even go so far as to say my feelings were hurt. But I cannot imagine bringing a lawsuit against the website or the poster because of it.
"America Alone" is not far from the truth. We stand alone against much of the world in the area of free speech, gun rights, search & seizure laws, etc. I am concerned that these "Euro-values" (aka Cali-values) will gain a footing and irreparably change our laws for the worse.
Opinions?
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=13645369
Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S.
By Adam Liptak
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.
Under Canadian law, there is a serious argument that the article contained hate speech and that its publisher, Maclean's magazine, the nation's leading newsweekly, should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their "dignity, feelings and self respect."(emphasis added)
The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions in Vancouver last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean's violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up animosity toward Muslims.
As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out.
"It's hate speech!" yelled one man.
"It's free speech!" yelled another.
In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minority groups and religions - even false, provocative or hateful things - without legal consequence.
The Maclean's article, "The Future Belongs to Islam," was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called "America Alone." The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.
"In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one's legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment," Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called "The Exceptional First Amendment."
"But in the United States," Schauer continued, "all such speech remains constitutionally protected."
Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.
<snip>
Entire Article
There are some really good points on both sides, but I have to align myself solidly with the free speech crowd. The author of the article sums it up well, "The problem with so-called hate speech laws is that they're not about facts," he said in a telephone interview. "They're about feelings."
I sometimes post on a Christian Apologetics site and have read a lot of things that have bothered me because it goes against my beliefs. I might even go so far as to say my feelings were hurt. But I cannot imagine bringing a lawsuit against the website or the poster because of it.
"America Alone" is not far from the truth. We stand alone against much of the world in the area of free speech, gun rights, search & seizure laws, etc. I am concerned that these "Euro-values" (aka Cali-values) will gain a footing and irreparably change our laws for the worse.
Opinions?