fschmidt wrote
The new term "hate speech" directly conflicts with free speech. Hate speech should be protected under free speech. If someone hates a race or religion or even God, he should be free to say so. It is his opinion. The new hate speech laws are destroying free speech.
Hate speech qualifies as defamation under Wikipedia's definition.
Wikipedia wrote
Defamation (also known as calumny, vilification, libel, slander or traducement) is the oral or written communication of a false statement about another that unjustly harms their reputation and usually constitutes a tort or crime.
A critical reader will immediately notice that a determination of defamation versus non-defamation requires a legal authority to determine the truth of a statement. In other words, the government must determine truth. Well, in criminalising hate speech, that is all it has done. The government has simply evaluated that statements such as "black people are criminals" are untrue and unjustly harmful to individuals.
Because you support laws against defamation, you assert that such a truth is their determination to make. You have already affirmed that when someone makes a nasty statement, the government should get to decide whether it is false and whether it is harmful, and if both, punish the speaker. I'm sorry that you don't like their decision in the case of hate speech but you gave them the authority to decide, so you can't take it back because you dislike their choice.
fschmidt wrote
But let's engage in the fantasy of good government. Should an imaginary good government practice censorship? Again my answer is no. The reasoning given for censorship is to stop the spread of bad ideas.
I disagree, at least somewhat. You're partially right, actually. The reason for censorship is the same as the reason for a male lion: To defend against other male lions. Male lions are basically worthless aggressors and kitten-killers with negative value to their species, just as censorship has a negative value to its populace.
However, it is not impossible that censorship is nonetheless a wise choice.
Let's examine two ideologies: Red, and green. The only difference between these ideologies is that the red ideology believes it should suppress the green ideology, but the green ideology believes it should live and let live the red.
So every time a red is slightly better than a green, he will advance and gain power. But once he gains that power, the reds keep it, because they won't hesitate to fire a green just for being green and hire another red. So we have a Go board where only red can ever gain new territory, because "green" territory is in actuality always and forever neutral, just waiting to be captured by red.
Now we can have a country of blissfully ignorant green guys if the government censors red exactly as hard as red would, if it could, censor green. You have to let the green guys hate the government for this and vilify them and spit in their faces, because this is the only way green can live. Honestly this is not likely to sustain and green is fundamentally designed to destroy itself.
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