Yes, I think the law makes sense. I point it out because it *is* a matter of law that speech is connected to actions.
What you quoted above *is not* about hate speech laws. Those are *hate crime* laws, which means committing something that's already a crime and tagging onto it a "hate" motive. In other words, not all motives are created equal, and one involving hate against protected or minority groups is treated more severely. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue we've been discussing, which is whether certain kinds of speech can or should be be defined as crimes on the basis that they are hateful. jasonr has stated that in Canada, for instance, there has been precedent to suggest speech on certain topics was, in fact, criminal, although if I understand him correctly that part of the law was repealed. I don't know what the laws are in each state for this so maybe someone knowledgeable on the subject could say.
Note that this digression about hate speech began when Seriati was pointing out that in his opinion liberals are no longer the defenders of civil rights, and he mentioned encroaching on free speech as one of his examples. Here were a couple of replies to his claim:
How can hate speech laws be framed as anything other than restrictions on free speech? One would have to argue that 100% unrestricted free speech is a good unto itself, of course, in order to argue that this is a problem. Since I doubt many people think it should be permitted to shout "fire" in a theatre this point seems to be entirely specious. Al, Seriati's point isn't that by championing hate speech laws the left is evil, he just means that they aren't championing civil liberties. He never specified that there cannot be a case where something should be ruled as being more important than civil liberties; that was your hidden insertion.
Hate speech is speech, just not a reflection of any civil right. If you disagree, then you would agree that all laws are infringements on free speech if they punish you for harassing people in public because they are black or burning down their churches (a form of extreme speech), or for publishing lies about businesses (your own or others) to advance your own commercial prospects. The examples of trampling on your "civil rights" get even more idiotic, but we're all leftist if we support any of them.
and:
Hate speech is nothing more or less than the disfavored and unpopular speech the first amendment entitles us to make, so that it can be held up to scrutiny and condemnation in the light of day. Repression of it is fundamentally against civil rights.
You're outright making things up here. Hate Speech is speech that amounts to terroristic threats against people based on classes that the public has an active interest in protecting from discrimination. It's not disfavored speech- it's categorial of incitement to violence or other oppressive acts that deny people liberties that the government has a positive duty to ensure and protect- in this case the positive right to freedom to act on equal terms as a private citizen unencumbered by discrimination based in any of the protected identity categories.
Al, here you were saying that not all speech is protected as a civil right, and that hate speech is (or should be) counted among those types of speech that are not protected. But in this case, also, you began to conflate hate speech with hate crimes, and indeed the rabbit hole down which this leads is where some people distinctly want it to go - that some kinds of otherwise non-criminal speech should nevertheless count as hate crimes. It is *this* aspect of the topic where the left encroaches on civil liberties or at the very least doesn't champion them.
In Pyrtolin's quote he's saying that hate speech - i.e. saying things negative or injurious about someone else on the basis of race, regardless of veracity - is a "terroristic threat" and therefore criminal (or at least he thinks it should be; he's not clear on this point). He also conflates speech that could be insulting or harmful to others with criminality, where in his view the speech itself is terroristic purely on account of it saying something hateful about a person or group. This statement, too, conflates speech with an actual crime (e.g. making a direct death treat or burning a church), thus at least implying that speech on certain topics should be banned
just in case they may have a negative impact or injurious effect on someone. I'm not saying he's right or wrong, but he certainly is not a champion of civil rights in this sense, even though I know he feels he's protected the civil rights of the aggrieved. That's always the case with authoritarian laws, though, isn't it? It's always to "protect" someone that people lose rights. In a police state, for example, the state will invariably say the zero tolerance policy towards crime is to protect the victims of crime and make the streets safe to walk. As far as it goes these statements tend to be true in a way, even though the vehicle through which they're achieved involves eliminating civil rights.
Al, the bottom line is that crimes are already crimes, and if "hate" gets tacked onto the charge to make a crime a "hate crime" then that's essentially just a matter of sentencing and not to do with whether something that wasn't a crime before is one now. 'Hate speech,' on the other hand, is about turning certain kinds of speech from being protected into being criminal. We know that not every liberal has the same view on this topic, but it would be unrealistic to argue that liberals as a whole champion civil rights in the realm of speech when many of them certainly would like to see hate speech laws on the books.
