NYT: Unlike other, U.S. defends freedom to offend in speech

[uberllama42]

From Adam Liptak's column, American Exception:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

<snip>

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law. As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out.

<snip>

“In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.”

“But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/12hate.html?hp

I'm not usually one to defend the American legal system, but I'm glad that America is out front on this one issue. It's taken many years and numerous hard-fought cases to move US jurisprudence to where it is today.

I wonder how other Western democracies treat hate speech from religious leaders. Does multiculturalism outweigh the government's interest in preventing hate? How much tolerance must an open society show to intolerant ideas?

[tuvor]

1. Do you have a link to the Macleans article?

[uberllama42]

3. Just found it

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20061023_134898_134898&source=srch

I haven't read it yet.

[syberyenta]

2. ipse dixit

“all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”
“all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”
“all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”
“all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”
“all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”
“all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”

shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, not so much.

It is one of the pillars of our free society.

It makes for a market-economy of speech.

The most hateful, onerous, objectionable speech is protected _to be expressed_.

Not to be 'right', not 'agreed with', but 'expressed'.

Meaning that it is not 'suppressed', with pre-judice.

It is left to find its value in the marketplace of ideas.

In the best case, the most hateful objectionable stupid inciteful speech is valued at nil or less than nil.

It finds no advocates. It is shunned. As opinion, it is not 'popular'.

But this result is the work of the people, not the government.

[trotsky]

6. "But this result is the work of the people, not the government."

However, it is the role of the government to SECURE these rights, and protect them.

A little document a few centuries ago said:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

[Evoman]

4. Meh...I'd still rather live in Canada.

However much it sucks that I can't deny the holocaust or call for the death of all muslims, I stay for the atmosphere. Besides, even if some guy does deny the holocaust, no one is going to arrest him. Nobody is ever punished, unless they make threats or plans to commit hate crimes.

OHHHH MAN...Itttt'ssss sooooo restricting living in Canada. I don't even know what we would do if we had alllll your awesome freedoms.

:eyes:

[trotsky]

5. You jealous commie.

I see right through your charade. :P

[Jim__]

7. Our legal protections are meaningless.

I agree with the defense of freedom of speech. The problem with the American legal system is it is being bypassed by "emergency procedures". Legal protections are absolutely meaningless if there is a way around the legal system. Today, the president can just bypass the entire legal system and have someone thrown in jail without a specific charge or a trial. Our legal protections are meaningless.

[struggle4progress]

8. "... a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed ..

serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea ..."

Justice William O. Douglas
Terminiello v. Chicago
337 U.S. 1 (1949)

See http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/terminiello.html