…….The principle of free speech is of the essence in any free self-governed society. Through our words we can have meaningful discourse and act as productive members in our communities by expressing our thoughts to one another. Today when we look around America, we see a nation that has never been polarized to such a great extent. Our rhetoric has changed to adapt to the current environment. As a result of this political correctness atmosphere, “hate speech” is one product that appears to gain momentum in our lives. It is worth pondering what really is “hate speech”? To ameliorate our understanding, we will unravel the very principle that allows for expression: free speech.

…..Our Founding Fathers were deliberate when they set out to create the Constitution.Some of the unalienable rights that we are guaranteed by our government are stated in The Bill of Rights. Since the inception of our nation on July 4th, 1776, freedom of speech has evolved in a way that makes it adapt to the current times. The Oxford English Dictionary defines freedom of speech as “the freedom to express one’s opinions without censorship, legal penalty, or any other restraint” (“freedom of speech, n”). Although we may cherish this right, there is always a precise time and place for the things that we would like to express. In the 1919 landmark Schenck vs. United Sates case, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes narrowed the scope of free speech by ruling that it will no longer be protected under the First Amendment if it demonstrates “clear and present danger” of imminent harm (Parker). Any reasonable person could agree that yelling “fire” in a public area is immature and, without a doubt, will provoke a hazardous environment. Thus, for the safety of the public, some limitations of free speech are justified, provided that the diction of the speaker leads to serious harm to the citizens. However, what about speech that we find upsetting, feared, or disfavored, which is often labeled as “hate speech”?

……Unless we decide to isolate ourselves from society, there are going to be instances where we will hear statements that we find disturbing, hateful, and offensive. The OED defines “hate speech” as “a speech or address inciting hatred or intolerance, esp. towards a particular social group on the basis of ethnicity, religious beliefs, and sexuality” (“hate speech, n”). One vivid example that one may consider “hate speech” can be seen through the National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie case (432). I say “may” because, although many will find the expression that I am about to discuss offensive, there are a few people who actually derive pleasure and think that their speech is justified. Nonetheless, in 1977, Frank Collin, a prominent leader of the American Nazi Party, wrote a letter to the officials of Skokie to ask permission for his members to peacefully march across town. His faction even planned to wear Nazi garb, which would be very similar from Adolf Hitler’s regime. The part that made this tense was that Skokie was home to a significant number of Jewish people, especially Holocaust survivors. It would be understandable that the officials did not want the situation to be uncomfortable for the folks that reside in Skokie for obvious reasons. The American Civil Liberties Union, which vows to “defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the constitution and laws of the United States” chose to represent Frank Collins (“About the ACLU”). This was detrimental to the organization since there was a 15% drop of its members, who were either Jewish or were offended by the fact that a well-respected group was going to represent an entity that engages in “hate speech.” Ultimately, SCOTUS ruled that the appellate court of Illinois had infringed on the First Amendment right of the Neo-Nazis. Whether Neo-Nazis should be given a platform to express their fascist, bigoted, and offensive values, their speech was still protected under the First Amendment. It appears as if labeling a speaker’s dialogue as “hate speech” is at the discretion of the listener.

……The First Amendment plays a major role in American society, allowing us to express content that may be considered contentious, offensive, and disfavored. Our neighbor Canada, on the other hand, recently experienced some friction in attempting to address “hate speech.” Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Bernt Peterson has been outspoken on the Canadian government’s C-16 bill, which gives protection to gender expression by penalizing citizens who do not refer to someone by their preferred pronouns. He got in trouble since he refused to adhere to a law that “compels speech” and was asked a valid question in an interview by English journalist Kathy Newman: “Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person’s right not to be offended?” Dr. Peterson enlightens us all:

Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive…You’re certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth. Why should you have the right to do that? It’s been rather uncomfortable. You’re doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell is going on. And that is what you should do. But you’re exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me, and that’s fine (Tobin).

He conveys that no one individual’s right is more significant than the person next to them. Everyone is entitled to an equal opportunity to find their truth, which is done by exercising their freedom of speech. If there are people who are not content with this expression, then they have to accept it because being offended is an inevitable product of speech.

……When we converse, there will be times where we say something and is taken the wrong way. In our polarized society there is a notion that if someone says something that is not aligned with the other person’s ideology, then the speaker is an inhumane person. Moreover, this speaker may even be accused of “hate speech”, when, in most cases, the speaker is probably just having a civilized discourse with his/her audience. For example, if I think that affirmative action for minority groups such as African American or Hispanic students should be disallowed, then some people will label me as a racist, who does not want to see underrepresented people succeed. I am not saying that I do not want to help these people, I am just disagreeing with the method to approach this inequality. It appears as if the Overton window is shrinking. We are no longer interested in hearing an alternative idea and want to stick with the status quo.

……Exercising free speech, especially when there are two groups in a room with polar opposite ideas, is an ideal way to understand which ideas are better than the other. As the saying goes: “the best arguments will ultimately win out among the marketplace of ideas” (Blocher, 13). If we don’t give the other person, whose opinion we do not agree with, a chance to speak, then we are headed towards a slippery slope. For example, when American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro goes to college campuses to share his views, he receives a lot of animosity. Progressive students purposely meddle with his events by setting off the fire alarm because their beliefs don’t correspond with his views. Some also try to drown Shapiro’s voice by chanting an anti-Shapiro mantra (Kaiser).

……Many left-leaning students believe that the notion of free speech is merely an excuse for conservative individuals to express their bigoted views and, therefore, deem their speech as “hate speech.” This is widely seen on college campuses. Some public universities have gone as far to implement speech codes with goal of diminishing “hate speech.” The caveat is that many of these codes are inconsistent and biased when they are followed. On some American campuses, the administration tends to strike down the views of minorities, specifically people from the alt-right or anyone who questions a progressive thought. This is counterproductive because the idea of free speech was to empower those group of individuals who feel as if they are being oppressed by the majority. Whether you find the content that the minority expresses to be offensive is an entirely different story. Free speech is more than just expressing what you feel without being censored; it is the act of saying what your conscience believes and accepting the consequences if you offend your opponent.

……Our nation is one of the few that has not enforced a universal “hate speech” legislation that punishes people who offend others through their speech. One explanation for this is the overbreadth of the word “hate speech.” Nadine Strossen, former ACLU President and NYU Law professor, emphasizes that “there is no single legal definition of hate speech” (Strossen 31). In her book Hate, Strossen underscores this idea by putting the word in quotation marks whenever she mentions it. She brings up various examples in which one may think that “hate speech” laws are doing the system justice, but in reality, they can be used against some movements that genuinely want to progress. “Hate speech” can and is used on both sides of the political spectrum. As brought up earlier, Frank Collins believed his march was valid because he had the right to express his thoughts, which sounds reasonable. On the other hand, some people will without a doubt consider his expression to be “hate speech” because the content of his words were offensive and hateful. This same reasoning that one may consider Frank Collin’s expression to be “hate speech” could have been applied to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march into Cicero, Illinois in 1968. Why? Because as American lawyer and associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, John Marshall Harlan once said: “Our Constitution is colorblind…all citizens are equal before the law” (McKenna 384). In other words, all citizens are handled with due process. The white supremacists would have found Dr. King’s mere presence a threat to their core White Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and been offended by Dr. King’s civil rights views. Therefore, the government does not try to define “hate speech” because by doing so, it might violate the birthright that all people inherently have in a free society: free speech. When we look at SCOTUS, which is comprised of both loose and strict constitutionalists, their rulings that relate to free speech, even something controversial as “hate speech,” is unanimous. They avoid defining “hate speech” because the ramifications could be unfavorable since we could see a witch hunt brewing.

……To avoid arbitrarily accusing one with “hate speech” we should compare it with something that can resonate with a wide variety of people. For example, like beauty, “hate speech” is in the eyes of the beholder. Let’s take this hypothetical: I find Donald Trump to be one of the most attractive presidents of all time, but another individual might beg to differ. By making the aforementioned statement, I have defined beauty with my own parameters, which is unique because everyone has their own standards. Most importantly, I cannot enforce others to believe what I consider to be beautiful, due to the subjective nature of human taste. Similarly, “hate speech” with its broad denotation refers to speech that one may find offensive, disfavored, and hated. The point to be noted is that what one deems as offensive another may derive joy from it.

……As Americans, we should be open to varying viewpoints. To a certain extent, disagreeing with your peers in a civil and reasonable way is a good thing. It may lead to a productive conversation, and ultimately it can help us truly understand one another so we can achieve a mutual goal. From the exploration, I have realized that labeling something as “hate speech” just because it makes us feel uncomfortable or if we find the view to be resentful isn’t the best way to deal with it. Also, the broadness of “hate speech” is so dependent on the values of the listener that it is difficult to distinguish something as “hate speech” without “abridging the freedom of speech” of the speaker. What one considers “hate speech” another may consider it to be music to his/her ears. We should learn to hear expression we do not agree with and handle it in a civil manner because we will eventually be at that crossroad. On that note, I am citing the inaugural address by Ruth Simmons, Brown University’s former president and the first African-American women president of any Ivy League university:

You know something that I hate? When people say, “That doesn’t make me feel good about myself.” I say, “That’s not what you’re here for.” …I believe that learning at its best is the antithesis of comfort. [I]f you come to this [campus] for comfort, I would urge you to walk [through] yon iron gate.…But if you seek betterment of yourself, your community and posterity, stay and fight. (Strossen 93)

Robby:

Though there are some places where you can further clarify the expression of your ideas, this is a very cogent and timely analysis of “hate speech.” That you find it a subjective and mobile term does indeed seem to be a problem for those who would legally guard against hate speech, unless they consciously desire to usurp the moral judgement of Americans. You might say in your portfolio revision a little more about why subjectivity about what constitutes “hate” affects attempts to litigate speech, and perhaps also more on why even hate speech that is blatantly hateful to most people, such as fascistic propaganda, is/is not the same as inciting immediate harm. I’m not sure that you give a full answer to the “Fire!” in a crowded theater analogy for hate speech. But apart from fleshing out what is already a rich and provocative essay, you have little to do to improve this piece, which is already crisply written, nearly error-free, well organized and formatted precisely. Excellent work on this.

[A]

 

                                       Works Cited

“About the ACLU.” American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, www.aclu.org/about-aclu.

Blocher, Joseph. “Institutions In The Marketplace of Ideas .” Duke Law Journal (2008).

“freedom of speech, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, November 2018,

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/74375. Accessed 18 November 2018.

“hate speech, n.”OED Online, Oxford University Press, November 2018,

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/84550. Accessed 18 November 2018.

Kaiser, Jimmy. “Ben Shapiro Triggering Protesters Montage.” YouTube. YouTube. 1 Feb 2017,

Web. 22 Nov. 2018

McKenna, George. A Guide to The Constitution, that Delicate Balance: A Thirteen-week Telecourse. New York: Random House, 1984.

National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie. No. 76-1786. The Supreme Court. 14 June 1977.

Parker, Richard. “Clear and Present Danger Test.” The First Amendment Encyclopedia. 2011.

Strossen, Nadine. HATE. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Tobin, Justin. “Jordan Peterson Leaves Feminist Speechless.” YouTube. YouTube. 18 Jan 2018.

22 Nov. 2018