Reply #104: I need to reframe this. [View All]

[Cleita]

I believe the First Amendment preserves all our rights to express our views and to criticize our leaders. It's intent was to preserve the freedom of the press. But along with the Second Amendment, it has become the most abused of those rights. When the so-called rights of those who choose to abuse this right with threatening language tramples over the rights of those who would disagree with them, where they fear for their safety, then you have hate speech, IMHO. It would seem that we should have protection to express our views regardless of who disagrees with us. However, none of us have a right to use ethnic and racial slurs against any group of people different from themselves because it paints them with a broad brush and it incites hate and often violence. Other countries, especially those who have experience ethnic cleansing are very aware of this and for this reason have laws against hate speech.