Anti-censorship protesters in Australia
Photo Attribution: Tarale / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Have you ever been screamed at so loudly that you suddenly decided to change your opinion and convert to someone else’s viewpoint? Or worse, have you ever been told by someone that if you say something you will be fined and possibly jailed for it if it happens again? Neither of these strategies is a great way to get people to abandon their belief systems, even if what they are saying is truly evil. Despite this, the former strategy has been quite prominent for a long time. However, the latter strategy is a relatively new phenomena which has made its way into the halls of the democratic party. A 2017 Cato Institute poll found that 52% democrats believe in laws which prevent hate speech.
Unfortunately, “hate speech” is a very ambiguous term and its proponents find themselves on very shaky moral ground when they propose laws which affect it. A proponent of these laws writing for the Washington Post stated that, “there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is.” Another word that could be used for hate speech is speech that you do not like. Because there is no concrete definition, the legislature will be able to define the term in any way that it wishes. This was illustrated in Canada where bill C-16 which deals with gender identity was passed. When asked whether the bill would criminalize the intentional misuse of gender pronouns a Canadian lawyer stated that, “It might.” In fact, because the term “hate speech” is so unspecific, the prosecution of crimes relating to it would probably depend on the attitudes of the judges and the composition of the government rather than reference to concrete rules of conduct. The fact that a professional attorney did not know the actual outcome of the law means that it is left open to interpretation by those in power.
Aside from the term hate speech, the term group is also left open to the interpretation of the legislature. The dictionary definition of hate speech is “speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people.” There is no limit to which humans can be subdivided down into individual groups. It is quite possible that society could devolve into a legal hierarchy of protected classes with a number of unprotected ones whose views were treated as unworthy of expression. It doesn’t take much to recall when liberals were saying that Trump was a racist for connecting crime and illegal immigration despite the fact that he ended the quote with “some, I assume, are good people.” Therefore, it is not hard to imagine that discussions of policy, such as securing the border, that happened to relate to certain groups could be deemed racist.
Other than the obvious problems with defining terms, there is a much more pressing issue with free speech laws which could lead to a very dystopian future. This is the fact that our cultural institutions are under attack. The American Civil Liberties Union, which used to stand up for freedom, stated that America was founded upon white supremacy. As such, the founding documents must also be racist. In the future, it wouldn’t be surprising to find people calling for the censorship of these documents and people who espouse their beliefs. In fact, if hate speech legislation is passed and found constitutional, there is no rational limit to what can be defined as hate speech, which is something that is admitted by its proponents. Hate speech laws could easily be used to crush the minority into submission so that they accept a new woke agenda.
All that those who scoff at this dark reality need to do is look at the college campuses and the rhetoric that is spouted across the country. They claim that speech is violence and then go on to define racism in the broadest terms possible The founders recognized that men are not angels and that as their governments are not composed of angels, it is fickle to place your trust in them completely. The composition of legislatures changes and parties shift. Not so long ago, Southern Democrats were known as dixiecrats and would have done anything to stifle the freedoms of black people. Mandating violations of free speech would open the door to usurpations of power in corrupt administrations and would allow institutional elites to define terms in any way that they wished so as to stifle opposition to their so-called anti-racist goals.
Your humble servant,
Silence Dogood
