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[Hate Speech]: how America (and the world) deals with it
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You're being deliberately obtuse. It was the "other countries to aspire to" that made it a conceited statement.
Really obviously.
-edit-
And throw in a side of "you have forgotten the faces of your fathers" for cringe-inducing nerdiness on top of the conceit.
We have a concrete example of a country and law: Canada. Could you or someone else explain it?
I'm not a lawyer.
But we've already had a Canadian forumer explain that Canada doesn't consider social satire like South Park to be "hateful" under their laws.
Unfortunately another attempt at legislating morality already provides an example.
14 year olds sending pix of themselves nude being put on the sex offender registry, just as an example.
I can guarantee that hate speech legislation will fall into the same thing. The social makeup of America is not homogenous, and what you call simply offensive, others (including our more conservative judges who enacted the sex offender example above) will call hate speak.
As alarmist as Fox News is, you're essentially getting the snapshot of people in this country who make up a significant amount of the populace. And yes, many of them hold office and positions where they could leverage hate speech laws for the shit you see on that channel.
I would define hate speech as false--presented as true--statements (the plural is key), directed at or about an identifiable group (using the statutory definition) intended to alienate, disenfranchise, and otherwise disempower the target group or, if believed, engender feelings of extreme hostility towards the target group.
What does that mean in a practical sense? It means that South Park episodes are not hate speech, because South Park does not, to my knowledge, claim to be a documentary. It means that "I hate the WBC" is not hate speech because that's just a single statement of opinion and it is unlikely to have any effect on how members of the church feel, or people feel about members of the church. It means that "Mormons are bigots" is not hate speech because, again, that's just a single statement (and the truth of it is arguable). EDIT: Also not hate speech are things like "gay people should be allowed to get married" and "abortion should be legal". I hope I don't have to explain why.
So what is hate speech? It almost always involves fairly substantial bodies of work, released over a significant period of time. The constitutional test case--because Canada enshrines the right to freedom of expression in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms--was R v. Keegstra. Mr. Keegstra was a high school teacher, and this is how the Supreme Court of Canada described his pattern of behaviour (over the course of about a decade):
That kind of thing is hate speech.
Another kind of expression that may fall under the hate speech umbrella is a demonstration meant to intimidate and insult a vulnerable minority. I don't know how R v. Krymowski shook out in the end (acquittals on what amounted to a technicality were appealed to the SCC, who sent it back to be tried again), but the behaviour that triggered it was something like this:
That kind of thing could be hate speech.
I am comfortable with that definition and those examples. I think the reason for the confusion in this thread is the ambiguity to the definition of hate speech that everyone is bringing to the table. It's nice to see someone put forth an idea of what that is for everyone to check their own definition against.
The fact that the government would maybe show you mercy except for "extreme" cases (that they define) where they throw the book at you is not very comforting. In fact, the harsh penalty intentionally chills some speech that would be near the line, because people fear triggering the law and then finding themselves begging for mercy before a judge.
The absolutel maximum matters because that's the stick they beat you with to drive you away from even the possibility of a violation. Suggesting that "well, usually the government takes pity on you" makes it a much worse law, not a much better one.
So the problem isn't with the hate speech laws, it's with the American electorate.
I agree completely.
But you're willing to allow them to flex more of their morality muscle with the implementation of free speech regulations?
We have an agreement on our problem, but you're willing to risk them going overboard to enact legislation on a nebulous set of subjective "hate monger" laws?
That's nice. Meanwhile, in the real world, judicial discretion in sentencing is a real thing that generally works pretty well.
EDIT: Also, unless you're suggesting that judges are mere puppets to a highly political and secretive "the government", your use of "the government" is rather misleading here. And if that is what you're suggesting, then you have a real problem on your hands.
It doesn't matter, its hypothetical as hell.
But, again, the point is that there isn't anything wrong with the way other countries do it.
Canada's laws make sense for Canada.
Is the way we do it here best for us? Maybe. But its equally clear to me that with a better electorate you can have hate speech laws and a slightly more civil national discourse (slightly) without flying off the rails into 1984 territory.
Maybe people who want to loudly trumpet that "our way is best" need to add the caveat "when you have as many mouthbreathers as we do."
I would wonder why this nation of cretins can be trusted without restrictions on hate speech, if hate speech is so harmful that other more civilized nations have benefited from restricting it.
Hate speech is pretty harmful yeah.
We're not exactly drowning in it here though. We're not on the verge of an ethnic cleansing or something.
But since the argument of the day is "People cannot be trusted to regulate hate speech!"
I will continue to point out that many other countries have succsessfully handled this responsibility. So if America cannot, it is in fact a flaw in America and not proof that we're secretly the very best.
1)Prove its falseness. Find me the perfect hate speech law.|
2) That's not a slippery slope, a hate speech law will lead to tyranny and enslavement is a slippery slope. A hate-speech law will chill other speech is just pointing out that it can have effects on speech outside of what was intended.
You are basically sticking your hat on a rhetorical trick,
It is possible to right a sufficiently narrow hate speech law, therefore any hate-speech law that over reached was simply not narrow enough.
You never prove the first part. If it is so trivial why have other countries written ones that were over broad.
And you are once again ignoring the second point that people bring up. Once CA is allowed to outlaw gay bashing, because it doesn't find the speech of value, what legally prevents Alabama from outlawing speech against the Traditional Family.
Those are both examples of hate speech, yes. I fail to see why they need special laws in order to deal with them, though. A high school teacher teaching things that aren't true should be fired, not prosecuted.
If one statement about hating bigots doesn't qualify as hate speech, what about a counter-protest? That's likely to have an affect on how people feel about the group.
Also, Confederate flags count as hate speech? Lock up the South! (Hey, maybe there's something to this hate speech law idea after all...)
The only thing that other countries have accomplished is burying the hate speech into layers of gobbledegook. They haven't changed the underlying problems and the racism, xenophobia, and nationalistic attitudes continue unabated. Actually, the quickest way to give a social movement momentum is to bury it under a pile of legislation. Please see what happened with Islam in Central Asia during Soviet rule, marijuana culture, or explicit language in popular music. As long as Big Gov is "repressing" these things, it gives the perpetrators a sense of relevancy. If they are allowed to shout their bile from the tallest mountaintop and find nobody cares, it tends to take the wind out of their sails a bit.
I mean, look at the KKK. By and large they are still the shitheads they've always been, but their actions have moderated in comparison to what they were in the 1960's. This wasn't fueled by anything other than the social change of accepting other races. There used to be millions of Klu Klux Klan members in the country, and now it's estimated to be a few measly thousand. As much as I hate to bring about the civil rights movement, it's relevant here because of the social response to it. The legislation created to enforce segregation was done away with, and then laws about harrassment, murder, and mob violence were simply enforced. No new hate speech laws were required, and although racism is still prevalent we now have black CEO's, black leading stars, and even a black president.
So, in this day and age when we have sexual orientation slurs, religious persecution (and "persecution" in the case of Christians bitching about not being able to sing Christmas carols and Wal-Mart using a sign that says "happy holidays"), religious oppression, and even political party hate mongering... what exactly makes this time in our lives a special snowflake that requires legislation so people will stop using their potty mouths?
Federalism has a lot to do with it. Foreign relations, defense and interstate trade are pretty much the only areas where the Fed has sole authority. CA can have it's own complete and tighter set of environmental laws, TX can be "don't give a fuck".
But it works the other way as well. You can have Sanctuary Cities/States, and then you can have AZ immigration laws(although these are being challenged on the sole federal authority ground).
This almost swung me too.
You tell me. I've given you a definition of hate speech. Describe a counter-protest in some detail, and then tell me how it is or is not hate speech, based on my definition.
I really don't want to play this stupid game. The law I quoted refers to "statements", the definition I provided emphasizes "statements" and I even drew further attention to the importance of the plural form. Given that, I hope you realize that it's transparently cheap and disingenuous to pull a single sign or statement out of a body of expression that might, when taken as a whole, constitute hate speech, and say "oh wow, you think this single thing is hate speech?"
I guess maybe stop using Fox News as your translator from English to conservativease.
"war on christmas"
"attacks on traditional family"
This is all demagoguery. As opposed to gay bashing, which is actually real and doesn't require spin to get to where it is a thing.
Which doesn't answer the question at all.
Because conservative Christians actually do complain that when they see two men holding hands they are being victimized by gay radicals who are destroying their family.
In order for the left to be "just as bad" we'd have to have Rachel Maddow claiming that she is the victim of a hate crime every time she received an invitation to a straight wedding.
I'm sorry to dismiss all the counter "examples" of the right wing being "victimized" as demagoguery but you know, actually no I'm not sorry.
Not sorry for being honest.
Nope.
Hate speech is not mean-offensive-controversial speech. Alabamans might find pro-LGBT rhetoric mean, they might find it offensive, they might find it controversial, but what it is not is false, explicitly directed at an identifiable group, or intended to engender feelings of extreme hostility towards any particular group. That is "what legally prevents Alabama from outlawing speech against the Traditional Family."
You have asked me to explain to you how language can be used to write a law that is narrow or broad, because you literally don't believe this is true without "proof".
Either you're being a goose or? I have no answers that will satisfy you dude. I don't even know what you want at this point.
But this isn't what's happening.
They consider gay equal rights to be an attack on their way of life. They find the idea so objectionable that people have died because of it. All it takes is one case to set precedence and its over.
Who is being picky now.
Its not too hard to come up with ex post facto justifications on why you think those who disagree with you shouldn't be allowed to do so.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
What makes something hate speech isn't how objectionable it is.
"Let us gays get married"
and
"All Jews out of Maine!"
Are not comparable statements. Even if you really really really hate the gays and think that just by existing they are injuring you doesn't make the statements at all the same.
Claiming that the first statement is any sort of "attack" is just spin.
Whaaaaaat
Dude. The chilling effect of the maximum sentence being very high is the reason why they set the maximum sentence very high. Prosecutorial discretion is a thing that the government uses to get what it wants, be it leniency in exchange for rolling on your supplier, or reducing copyright violation by trying to fine a kid a few million dollars for downloading a Jay-Z album. Sure, not everybody is going to get the book thrown at them, but the threat of it is a deterrent even if almost no one gets the max.
This is simplistic, commonly understood, universally deployed by district attorneys, and requires no conspiracy theory to accept.
As an aside, I'm not sure what leads you to believe that judicial discretion works pretty well, or that it's something a defendant could possibly rely on. No lawyer is going to tell his client "hey, don't sweat. They could throw you in jail for years, but you'll probably get off with a fine you can afford."
Because there's every chance you won't.
How is this not understood? I can only assume that people really, really love to rely on mercy and pity when interacting with their government.
Alright lets try this for the millionth time.
1)Legislatures are allowed to outlaw speech based on the ideas expressed by it.
2)The legislature that passes the law defines what hate speech is.
3)The legislature of Alabama is(being stereotypical but probably accurate), full of racist, homophobic bigots.
Conclusion:
4)The Alabama Legislature will pass anti-hate speech laws that will suppress LGBT causes.
The only reason (4) doesn't happen now is because (1) is false.
Tennessee for example passed a law that codified its own Anti-Discrimination statute....and also forbid any city from enforcing a different statute. This isn't because Tennessee wanted to stop ongoing racial/sexual/creed based discrimination. It wanted to supercede the Memphis(maybe Nashville) local ordinances that extended AD coverage to LGBT, by leaving them out of the state law.
Modern America versus modern Europe (outside of abberant circumstances, of which I consider the Holocaust to be)? Yeah, we're pretty bad with all things race. Just because we have a black president doesn't someone mean race is no longer a factor in this country, as it has been for the past 200 years. Not by a long shot.
EDIT: We're going to stop with the race tangent here because it's off-topic. You're free to split it off into your own thread, as I split this one from the LGBT thread, but it's not going to be discussed further here.
Man has sex with 8 year old girl.
Girl sends sexual pictures of herself to boyfriend.
Are not comparable statements. Even if you really really really hate teen sexual behavior and think that just by existing they are injuring you doesn't make the statements at all the same.
(And yet both are on the sex offender list)
Dangers of legislating morality, m'irite?
No I complained when you decided to exclude: the UK & Norway.
And you need to provide that example, if you are claiming its possible to produce one. You can't just say "it being impossible is false", and act like that makes it so. You are the one arguing the existence of a Unicorn; examples of horses with a horn glued on have been provided.
So what you're saying is that even if you think your side is the only moral one, it might not be right for someone else. And presuming your mores are more correct than someone else's mores is incomprehensibly arrogant.
Do you not see the irony of using this position to criticize those saying that the state shouldn't presume to decide what is a valid position to express? Or that anti-gay expression is not morally equivalent to pro-gay expression and as such comparisons of those positions are invalid?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Just going off of your two examples (UK and Norway):
Satisfactory, yes?
The UK's baseline law is as follows:
With an added proviso for bullying (distress):
And there's a part that protects freedom of expression, too:
It's them, or the warlords. I choose them.
my only recourse is to post on US forums. They can't catch me there.
Dirty places.