“Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command, and in most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned,” he wrote. “Suppose, for example, that the State of Illinois required all residents to sign a document expressing support for a particular set of positions on controversial public issues — say, the platform of one of the major political parties. No one, we trust, would seriously argue that the First Amendment permits this.
I have to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed the past few days with those readers who have said that Nazi and white supremacist speech should be banned, and that the U.S. should enact “hate speech” laws, similar to those in Canada and some European countries, making certain sentiments simply illegal to express in public. Likewise with symbols like Nazi flags with swastikas. The reasons offered were that such “hate speech” is likely to cause violence, either now or in the future. These people were, in effect, asking for a reinterpretation of the First Amendment, which allows all public speech save that that constitutes personal harassment in the workplace, is defamatory, or is a direct instigation of violence on the spot: “fighting words”.
How quickly liberals become authoritarians and opponents of free speech when they hear speech that they consider vile!
Well, what happened in Charlottesville was not a violation…
View original post 1,873 more words
Recent Comments