Ump on a Blog

This country was founded on the principle of freedom of speech. The fact that it was contained in the very first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States indicates just how important it was to the founding fathers.

However we all know that in practice this has limits, as even the Supreme Court has decreed. Shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre is the most commonly-cited example: that is inciting panic, not exercising free speech, as has been ruled. Additionally, while saying that you intend to kill the President of the United States is protected speech in theory, the rather well-armed boys and girls at the U.S. Secret Service might have a different idea in practice. For those of you thinking about saying that in public, get used to cold dark places.

So since history has established that the freedom of speech is not absolute, the question arises, what else should fall into the category of unprotected — or let’s be blunt, illegal — speech. I raise this topic infrequently, since I have somewhat more conservative views on the matter. But this morning I had a couple of epiphanies, clarifying for me the exact basis for my views as well as the justification for them.

Hate speech, and by this I mean exclusively the instruction or advocacy of violence against another person or group of people, should (in my opinion) be punishable as would be a crime such as assault. For me they carry the same weight. And so we’re clear on this, the only minority group I belong to is ‘immigrants’. But since I am from Canada, you get an idea of just how much of a WASP I really am. So this is not a view borne of sour grapes. I’ve never been discriminated against in my life to my knowledge. I think people know that if they ever did, I’d cross-check them into the side-boards.

There are numerous arguments against banning hate speech. The most common being, “Who is to decide which opinions are valid and which ones aren’t?” This is the same as saying, “How do you know that the girl who got raped and murdered didn’t deserve it?” I have established a standard in the previous paragraph that can discretely and sensibly be coded into law. Words that meet such a standard are no longer opinions, they reach the point of discernable action. “I like turquoise better than sapphire,” is an opinion. Just because you put, “I think” in front of, “We should kill all the blacks,” doesn’t make it an opinion. It is a position of advocacy aimed at bringing harm to another human being, and it should be stopped.

“We need to allow these ideas to remain as part of the public domain, to serve as an example of what evil has come before, and to remind us that we should never allow it to rise again.” Really? We wiped out Polio, do we think that we should have kept a little of it around to remind us of how horrible it was? Should we have prohibited a small part of the population from getting vaccinated, just so we have the disease available for us to use as examples in classrooms and human interest stories on the news? Surely there has to be a better argument than that.

“Laws like that are dangerously close to punishing people for what they think. That’s Orwellian ‘thought police’, and it’s a slippery slope.” Even under my law, people can think whatever they want. They just can’t say it, write it, broadcast it, or publish it. I can think about killing the bald-headed middle-manager at my company who sits in his office trading stocks all day instead of doing his job, but until I actually strangle him with his Rush Limbaugh Collection tie I haven’t broken the law. The same principle applies here. Laws are about lines. My right to swing my fist as hard as I can ends at your face, as the saying goes. My law is as enforceable as murder, rape, assault, theft, or jaywalking. As for a slippery slope, my response to that is always that we should deal with it when we start to *actually* slip.

So now that we’ve gotten the main arguments against it out of the way, let’s look at justifications. People will argue that hate speech is just one way that we are different from one another, and differences are a good thing. They help us understand ourselves and each other. Fair point. But when we look at hate speech specifically, and compare it with other differences between us, we find that it falls into a very specific category.

Let’s take four differences to use as examples. I have blonde hair; you have brown hair. I speak English; you speak Spanish. I am a wealthy and educated professional; you are an impoverished high-school drop-out. And I am an anti-Semite, you are not.

Differences in hair color: does this hurt us as a people? Is there any harm done to anyone as a result of different hair color? Should we unify hair color through genetic alterations so we can alleviate the suffering inflicted upon us as a result of all of these blonde people running around? The answer of course is no, this does no harm to anybody. Does it help us as a people? Again I would say that in a purely physical, practical sense, it does not help us in the slightest. So is there any reason to change the fact that we have different hair color? Nope. It doesn’t help, but it does no harm, so leave it alone. Simple.

Different languages: does this hurt us as a people? Overall I would say not, but not knowing the language of the land in which you live is a potential issue. If I moved to Nunavut, I think it would be better not just for me but for the locals as well if I brushed up on my Inuit. Similarly, I am a strong advocate of every American resident learning English in addition to their native language. But on the whole, speaking different languages presents barriers in certain areas, and can be an inconvenience under certain circumstances; but I think it would be a stretch to say that it hurts us. So does it help us? I would say yes, it does help us. There are words in some languages that can’t be translated into other languages accurately, concepts that are encapsulated in a word or phrase that embody new ideas for others unfamiliar with that culture. This expands our knowledge and allows us to grow culturally and intellectually. So yes, it does help us. Should we try to eliminate the language differences among us? I would suggest that we should not. It helps us, and it does no harm, so leave it alone.

Differences in education and prosperity: does this hurt us as a people? I would say that it actually does, yes. These are a result of a combination of talent, skill, determination, opportunity, and just dumb luck. Maybe I coasted my way through college and got lucky when I got hired by an unknown start-up that paid me partially in stock options (and just happened to be named ‘Google’). Maybe you were a straight-A student who fell into a deep depression and quit school after getting raped by your mother’s boyfriend. Should I reap rewards I don’t deserve, while you suffer through life with a fate equally incongruent with the effort you put in to succeed? This is a source of genuine (and in many cases, warranted) strain from local communities all the way up to the international scale. So yes, this very demonstrably causes us harm.

Does it help us in any way? Well, some would say no, but on the whole I would say that it does help us. We advance our existence as a whole through the efforts of our most talented and determined (and lucky) members. Those who strive to advance their education and innovate in their fields make all of our lives better, and for bad or good, that comes with rewards. But we would not be where we are today without the discoveries and creations of those who have come before us. The methods they used could be called into question in many cases, but the results are very provably to our benefit. So should we eliminate the differences in education and prosperity in our communities? This is a more difficult conclusion, since it is a case of cost versus benefit. That conclusion will depend on a lot of things, mainly whether the decision maker is more likely to be on the ‘cost’ or ‘benefit’ part of the equation. So let’s leave this one as ‘undecided’.

But now we come to the biggie, differences in hate speech. Does the presence of hate speech hurt us? I think only an idiot would suggest that it does not. We have wars going on in a half-dozen countries all over the globe, many of which based exclusively on the hate speech of one religious, cultural, or political group against another. Here at home, racial tensions are beginning to swell again, as the rise in the Hispanic population threatens to bring the U.S. population of Caucasians below the 50% mark for the first time ever. That milestone will result in a groundswell of racist sentiment, and will surely cause violence to erupt again in certain parts of the country. Hate speech is a plague both here and abroad, there can be no debate.

But here’s the important part: does hate speech help us in any way? In the first part of this essay I showed convincingly that it does not, and that arguments to the contrary are hollow and unsupportable. This then becomes the primary motivator for banning hate speech: it hurts us, but does not help us. So why, then, do we try to defend it?

Numerous industrialized countries have such bans in place, and various people have been deported and had their citizenship revoked for hate speech crimes. This is not ‘1984′ all over again, you don’t see Canada or Finland self-destructing for lack of absolute and untethered freedom of speech. Denmark has not implemented KGB tactics in order to flush out those who might advocate violence.

A simple and well-defined ban on hate speech is a common-sense response to the rise in racism and prejudice that has been the primary blemish on the post-Industrial age. Hate speech should be wiped out, and the United States should be the ones leading the charge into a new era where such things are merely unpleasant memories of a time long since passed.