Comments on: After Copenhagen: live-tweeting Flemming Rose at Cato

By: France and its speech-throttling litigation - Overlawyered

France and its speech-throttling litigation - Overlawyered — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 10:30:05 +0000

[…] here, here, here, here, and generally […]

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 17:45:24 +0000

The other problem with hate speech laws is that they are all but guaranteed to be enforced asymmetrically. In the present environment, for example, their proponents are primarily interested in preventing offense to Muslims, but they are not applied, and there is little likelihood that they will be, even in non-Muslim countries, against hate speech by Muslims, which is extremely common. A prominent example is the Calcutta Qur’an Petition.

There is no reason to believe that at other times or in other places such laws will be used any more evenhandedly.

By: Jesse Spurway

Jesse Spurway — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 13:09:05 +0000

we’ve been there and done that –
“The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills that were passed by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798, …. Authored by the Federalists, the laws were purported to strengthen national security, but critics argued that they were primarily an attempt to suppress voters who disagreed with the Federalist party.”

By: John Fembup

John Fembup — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 10:52:42 +0000

“In dictatorships, hate speech codes are in fact used to silence dissidents”

I did not know that but it fits.

Specifically, it fits with concerns that if this administration succeeds in defining the war with Islamic extremists as a war with “extremists” – – will that then weaken inhibitions on the government’s actions? Will this or a future administration then find it easier to deem any random American or group of Americans as “extremist” and thereby turn political opposition into a criminal act?