Hate Speech
UN Secretary-General António Guterres claims that “we must” prevent “hate speech” through “stronger interventions by governments & technology companies.”
IN FACT, such restrictions on speech have a track record of censoring truth, destroying freedom, and causing death. Here are the specifics:
- In 1722, the state of Massachusetts imprisoned Benjamin Franklin’s brother because he criticized the government for “failing to pursue with adequate vigor pirates who were afflicting the New England coast.”
- In response, Franklin — who was then 16 years old — used an alias to write a commentary about free speech in which he quoted a London newspaper stating that “guilt only dreads Liberty of Speech” and “whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.”
- Fifteen years later, a newspaper co-owned by Franklin published an anonymous essay thought to be written by Franklin that stated, “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
- The essay provided numerous examples from history to support that statement, such as the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar, who “introduced the law whereby libeling was involved in the penalties of treason against the state,” which “established his tyranny; and, for one mischief which it prevented, ten thousand evils, horrible and afflicting, sprung up in its place.”
- With further regard to the reign of Augustus, the essay states, “The construction of words being arbitrary, and left to the decision of the judges, no man could write or open his mouth without being in danger of forfeiting his head.”
- Under King Henry the Eighth, the essay noted that “every light expression, which happened to displease him, was construed by his supple judges into a libel, and sometimes extended to high treason.”
- Under King Charles the Second, the essay noted that a “licenser was appointed for the stage and the press,” which became “battering engines against religion, virtue, and liberty,” and “those who had courage enough to write in their defense were stigmatized as schismatics, and punished as disturbers of the government.”
- After listing the above examples and others, the essay declared that “whoever attempts to suppress” “freedom of speech and the liberty of the press” should “be regarded as an enemy to liberty and the constitution.”
- In 1791, the founders of the U.S. enacted a Bill of Rights to “prevent misconstruction or abuse” of the federal government’s Constitutional powers, and the very first of these amendments forbids Congress from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
- In the 1949 case of Terminiello v. Chicago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5 to 4) that government cannot fine someone for speech that “stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition or unrest, or creates a disturbance.”
- Quoting an earlier Supreme Court ruling, the majority justices in Terminiello noted that “the right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is therefore one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
- The same justices quoted another earlier court ruling which stated that a “function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute,” and “it may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”
- In the 1971 case of Cohen v. California, the Supreme Court ruled (5 to 4) that government cannot imprison someone “who maliciously and willfully disturbs the peace” through “offensive conduct,” which in this case, was a man in a courthouse hallway wearing a jacket that read “F*** the Draft.”
- Quoting an earlier court ruling, the majority justices in Cohen noted that “the constitutional right of free expression” is “designed and intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us.”
- In the 1992 case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a law against displaying any object that “arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender” violates the right to free speech.
- After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, wrote a pamphlet in which he stated that “National Socialism” (aka Nazism) is creating a new legal structure that places itself “beyond the possibilities of criticism,” and the “right to criticize” can “be granted only to the wiser people over the more stupid ones and never the other way around.”
- After socialists came to power in Russia and established the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), they published a book titled The Law of the Soviet State which declared that “there is and can be no place for freedom of speech, press, and so on for the foes of socialism.”
- After banning freedom of speech, the governments of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and other socialist/Communist regimes killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century.
- With disregard for Albert Einstein’s warning that “science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech,” Big Tech companies broadly adopted policies during the Covid-19 pandemic that censored and shadow banned people who contradicted government agencies like the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations.
- Throughout the pandemic, the World Health Organization spread deadly falsehoods, such as drastically understating the contagiousness of C-19, grossly overstating the fatality rate of C-19, falsely declaring that C-19 is “NOT airborne,” failing to recognize the futility and harms of lockdowns, denying the potency and durability of naturally acquired immunity, and distorting the pros and cons of masking and mRNA vaccines.
- The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that governments can outlaw direct calls for violence and can allow lawsuits for defamation, but beyond such narrow circumstances, the overriding principle reflects these words quoted by Benjamin Franklin in 1722:
In those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own.
