Attacking the Freedom of Speech

So, we're supposed to give up our coveted freedom of speech, which is under assault all over the rest of the world, because it supposedly makes some of our allies uncomfortable? Or that we're somehow out of touch with the jurisprudence in the rest of the world? Sorry, but that's not how it works.

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

“It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”

Professor Waldron was reviewing “Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment” by Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist. Mr. Lewis has been critical of attempts to use the law to limit hate speech.

But even Mr. Lewis, a liberal, wrote in his book that he was inclined to relax some of the most stringent First Amendment protections “in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism.” In particular, he called for a re-examination of the Supreme Court’s insistence that there is only one justification for making incitement a criminal offense: the likelihood of imminent violence.

The imminence requirement sets a high hurdle. Mere advocacy of violence, terrorism or the overthrow of the government is not enough; the words must be meant to and be likely to produce violence or lawlessness right away. A fiery speech urging an angry racist mob immediately to assault a black man in its midst probably qualifies as incitement under the First Amendment. A magazine article — or any publication — aimed at stirring up racial hatred surely does not.

For starters, we get a single legal expert pushing this notion. Who else among those legal experts are calling for more restrictions on speech here in the US? I'm curious.

Of course, I consider free speech to pretty much be an absolute - and let's be clear here - I'm talking about government restrictions on speech though I do support the ban on fighting words or threats. I find the restrictions on speech in places like Europe (for making sales of Nazi memorabilia for example) to be unconscionable because the best defense against hate speech is more speech, not criminalization. That leads down a path to restrictions that infringe on the rights of everyone.

This latest article in the Times is an outgrowth of the current mess in Canada, where Macleans and Mark Steyn are dealing with a kangaroo court process that would criminalize their factual representations of the threats facing the West as a result of the Islamist movement because some Muslim group claims that their feelings were hurt. As Steyn points out, this is about feelings, and not facts. The Canadian process is more interested in how some people might feel, but ignores the facts.

UPDATE:
As Jay Tea at Wizbang points out, the Pakistanis are trying to force their interpretation of "free speech" on Europe. If the Pakistanis don't like what you say, they'll engage in violence. It's a shakedown of course, but it's much more. They really do hate us for our freedoms.