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-Jared Taylor summarizes Waldron, 12, Why We Should Ban “Hate Speech”, American Renaissance, summarizing Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, Harvard University Press, 2012, 292 pp., 26.95. 8/24/12, http://www.amren.com/features/2012/08/why-we-should-ban-hate-speech/ **Note – Taylor does not agree with but is summarizing Waldron’s position //LADI |
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-First-Amendment guarantees of free speech are a cherished part of the American tradition and set us apart from virtually every other country. They are not without critics, however, and the free speech guarantees under sharpest attack are those that protect so-called “hate speech.” Jeremy Waldron, an academic originally from New Zealand, has written a whole book explaining why “hate speech” does not deserve protection—and Harvard University Press has published it. Prof. Waldron teaches law and philosophy at New York University Law School, is a professor of social and political theory at Oxford, and is an adjunct professor at Victoria University in New Zealand. Perhaps his foreign origins influence his view of the First Amendment. In this book, Professor Waldron makes just one argument for banning “hate speech.” It is not a good argument, and if this is the best the opponents of free speech can do, the First Amendment should be secure. However, in the current atmosphere of “anti-racism,” any argument against “hate speech” could influence policy, so let us understand his argument as best we can. First, Professor Waldron declares that “we are diverse in our ethnicity, our race, our appearance, and our religions, and we are embarked on a grand experiment of living and working together despite these sorts of differences.” Western societies are determined to let in every sort of person imaginable and make them feel respected and equal in every way. “Inclusiveness” is something “that our society sponsors and that it is committed to.” Therefore, what would we make of a “hate speech” billboard that said: “Muslims and 9/11! Don’t serve them, don’t speak to them, and don’t let them in”? Or one with a picture of Muslim children that said “They are all called Osama”? Or posters that say such things as “Muslims out,” “No blacks allowed,” or “All blacks should be sent back to Africa”? Professor Waldron writes that it is all very well for law professors and white people to say that this is the price we pay for free expression, but we must imagine what it must be like for the Muslim or black who must explain these messages to his children. “Can their lives be led, can their children be brought up, can their hopes be maintained and their worst fears dispelled, in a social environment polluted by these materials?” Professor Waldron insists that a “sense of security in the space we all inhabit is a public good,” like pretty beaches or clean air, and is so precious that the law should require everyone to maintain it: Hate speech undermines this public good . . . . It does this not only by intimating discrimination and violence, but by reawakening living nightmares of what this society was like . . . . It creates something like an environmental threat to social peace, a sort of slow-acting poison, accumulating here and there, word by word, so that eventually it becomes harder and less natural for even the good-hearted members of the society to play their part in maintaining this public good. Professor Waldron tells us that the purpose of “hate speech” is to try to set up a “rival public good” in which it is considered fine to beat up and drive out minorities. |